Is it possible for apple juice to get moldy? If so, how bad is it if one were to drink said juice? Hypothetically speaking, of course…

Last night Peter, Domi, Justin T., Walter, May-Ling, Florence, Florence’s friend Elaine, and I all went steam tunneling. For those not “in the know,” Stanford, like many other universities, I would imagine, has a network of underground tunnels that span the campus. It’s one of those “things you should do before you die and/or graduate” to go in these tunnels late at night, run around and get dirty, and then tell everyone how cool it was.

We decided to start with the tunnel near Terman, our engineering building, because we heard it was clean and well-lit. From the moment we lifted open the grate, it was evident that we were by far the dorkiest people ever to go steam tunneling in the history of Stanford. First, there was some concern that the tunnels were too hot. We must have forgotten that they were, um, steam tunnels. After deciding to brave the heat, we spent at least fifteen minutes dicussing whether we would get arrested, whether anyone would fall in the open grate, and what we would do if we somehow got trapped underground. Apparently accepting our fate and calling ourselves the Stanford Mole People wasn’t an option. We even called two or three different people (on cell phones, of course,) asking how much we should leave the grate open once we went inside. I wish I was joking, but sadly, I am not.

Once we actually made it inside, we discovered that the Terman tunnel was indeed the Hilton of steam tunnels. It had high ceilings, good lighting, and was, for an underground tunnel, very clean. It even had a phone inside. However, it was also disappointingly short, and we spent less time actually inside the tunnel than we did discussing it.

After the Terman let-down, we decided to check out the tunnels near the Quad, which we heard were much smaller and dirtier. After some wandering, we happened upon a small round grate. When we shined our flashlights down, we saw that the ground was littered with cigarette butts, a sure sign that this was one of the cool tunnels. And indeed, if the Terman tunnel was the Hilton of steam tunnels, this one was the HoJo. For the first couple hundred feet, we couldn’t even stand up straight. The walls and ceiling were brick, the floor was dirt, and there were cobwebs everywhere. After a couple of turns, we reached a dead end in the form of a really hot pipe and decided against the 3rd-degree burns, so we had to turn back. After wandering around the quad, the lure of Roble late-night was too strong, so we ended the night feasting on Gatorade and giant pretzels.

Ha ha, I’ll bet you thought that story was going somewhere, didn’t you? I sure tricked you.