Brandon Minster
Are you like me – incredibly successful and devilishly sexy?
If so, maybe we’re alike in other ways as well.
Perhaps you, too, have registered for a 5K this spring, only to remember later that spring is preceded by winter, and winter is no time to prepare for a 5K.
What can the two of us possibly do?
Our success and sexiness can do a lot for us in life, but it can’t physically move us three miles. What not to do, I can tell you, is try to use the Field House track.
Don’t even think about it. The chances you will be able to find out when the track is actually available and that you will be free during that limited window are laughably slim.
Do not be misled by the hours prominently posted beside the Field House front door.
While most organizations take the view that posted hours should correspond roughly to actual hours, the suits at the Field House have a more liberal interpretation.
The sign might lead you to believe, like I once did, that a facility that is said to be open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. is, in fact, available for use 14 hours per day.
This is the policy followed by other places I frequent, such as the county library and Walmart. (I live a very glamorous lifestyle.)
The first time I tried to use the Field House track – although the door was unlocked, the time was within the posted hours and workers were on their marks – the track was not actually “open.”
Between semesters, evidently, the facility operates like a nuclear silo: fully manned, but through the grace of God, unused.
A visit to the Field House website was supposed to keep me from making the same mistake again.
Boldly declared on the left-hand side of the page were the same hours as found near the front door.
The second time I tried, I managed to advance past the card-swipe stage.
I even got so far as to change clothes before seeing that the track was being, to use a technical term, bogarted.
I found a schedule on the front desk which said, “Track: 3:30 – 6.”
All this took just long enough for me to realize that the West Campus Shuttle had already turned around and headed back to civilization.
It was on my third attempt that I found out the front desk schedule did not mean the track is available from 3:30 p.m. to 6 p.m.. Instead, it means the track team is the organization doing the bogarting during these hours
The employee was very apologetic this time, but I think it was only because she recognized me from my first attempt.
Another visit to the Field House website found a note, three paragraphs down, to check the open rec hours schedule.
Clicking on that link, however, returns a completely empty schedule, which actually is a pretty accurate schedule of the times the Field House is available for open recreation.
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