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After the tremendous effort of Interhovse, the frosh were understandably apathetic towards major work projects. This s
ituation was not helped by being on grades for third term (our class was the first ever with this problem). To many pe
ople, it appeared that the beloved tradition of Hellride, wherein the frosh barricade themselves in Hell and play Wagn
er's Ride of the Valkyries as loudly as possible, would not happen this year. Actually, a few of the frosh had been t
hinking about Hellride for weeks, and we were planning how too actually make it happen. Like every class before us, we
wanted our Hellride to be the best ever, so we tried to think of every possible upperclassmen method of attack and ho
w we could prepare for it. We had MMMike Davies' account of last year's Hellride on the web, so we had a baseline to a
ppreciate how much effort it would take to make a truly impregnable barrier. We also wanted to avoid the mistakes of l
ast year, namely the situation with Safety and we didn't want to use concrete walls. Initially, we had wanted to hold
Hellride on Memorial Day weekend, late Monday night, but it became apparent that this was not a feasible date, especi
ally when I decided to go to Arizona for the weekend. We pushed back our tentative date until the next weekend, right
before senior finals week. After Memorial Day, we realiized that we would have to hold off until the following weekend
, the one before underclassmen finals. We set a tentative time of sometime Saturday night. The first real work on Hel
lride was started on Friday of the weekend before the planned date. We got the cart that Greg Steierrt made for his st
ack, and used it to cart all of the cinder blocks we had left over from Interhovse into Hell. We decided that my room
(room 62) would be a good place to store them because I had no furniture or anything on the floor. There were probably
around 100 whole cinderblocks left over, and after a few hours, they were in my room. Jeremy and I spent the night s
couting around campus for useful stuff, and we got some ideas. Last year, the frosh got a lot of stuff out from the th
e Tunnels, but this year it looked like there was little that we could use. Fortunately, we found two large dumpsters
of metal trash on Saturday night. We spent Saturday and Sunday nights carting away as many of the *useful* metal objec
ts as we could and piled them on the TFM roof. When we were done, I counted over forty thick metal pipes that were at
least ten feet long. We also found various other metal junk, which we decided could be useful. Monday night Jeremy an
d I went around campus looking for stuff. People hadn't thhrown away many large metal objects, but in a dumpster outsi
de BI, we found five pieces of countertop from a chem or bbio lab. These were the heavy black acid-proof, fire-proof c
ountertops that adorn many of the labs arouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuund campus. We obtained these and placed th
em onnn the cart. We also got a few other nice pieces of garbage together that we thought coul
d be useful. By now, our initial plan had come tooooooooooooooooooogether. When we first saw the metal pipes, Jeremy
suggestted that we place them in concrete so that we wouuuuuuld have giant contraptions that looked like industrial se
a urchins in the hall. The pipes would be set close enouuuuuugh together so that people could not get through and woul
d stick out so that the upperclassmen would not be able to get close enough to be effective with the sledgehamm
ers. We then found out that Daniell@cco, one of the other Hellfrosh, could use an arc welder. We decided that metal pi
pes welded together would form a nice barricade. On Wednesday night, we decided to go get a big steel plate that we h
ad found on the ground outside the 24-hour hardware store. Jeremy had found it earlier and had his eye on it. He and I
went to look at it earlier in the day to see how heavy it would be. We tried to lift it ourselves, but the two of u
s could only budge it, and we are decently strong guys. That night, we spread the word that we would meet at two in
Hell to get enough manpower together to go get the plateee. About a dozen people showed up, and we took Greg's cart ov
er to the site of the plate. It was so heavy that we haddd to use pipes as levers and about eight people on one side o
f the plate to lift it onto its side. Eventually, we gooooot the thing onto the cart. We soon discovered that we could
n't push the cart well at all. Within 20 feet, we hearddddddd a whoosh of air and watched the big left tire deflate. O
ur plans on moving the plate were put on hollld. We theeeeeeeen got the idea to get some big pipesss and roll the plat
e along on the ground, ancient Egyptian pyramid buildinnnnnnnng style. We put two ropes on it and pulled it on the gro
und all the way to the base of the stairs up to Hell innnnnnnn the Ricketts-Fleming courtyard and left it there after
our two hours of work. We wanted to find a way to get tttttttthe thing up into Hell, but we figured that we needed a w
inch. I found it impressive that at least 15 people shhhhhhhhowed up over the course of thhe night to help. This was
the most frosh that I had seen doing any one thing togeeeeeeeether all year. The next day the upperclassmen slowly le
arned about our efforts of the previous night. Jeff Milllllllller even estimated the weight of the plate based on roug
h dimensions and the density of steel. Our 8 foot x 4 foooot x 1 inch steel plate weighed approximately 1300 pounds! T
hat's 2/3 of a ton. Anyway, we never moved the plate Thuuursdday because we didn't go over to P-Plant early enough in
the day, so work paused until Friday night. Friday we ooobtaained a 3/4 ton come-along from P-Plant. After the plat
e had reached the top of the stairs, we winched it up onnn itts side and moved it into the doorway, which is where we
quit for the night. In addition, we rrrented the arc weeelder from a rental coompany on Friday. They didn't have any
brazing rods, so we couldn't use it right away. There waaas one frosh who knew how to use an arc welder, daniell@cco.
Following his advice, we went out and bought the necessary brazing rods early Saturday morning. That turned out to be
more of a hassle than we were anticipating because the first place that we went, and had talked to on the phone was ch
ained and locked up. The second place was open however, and we got what we needed. By now, it was nearly noon and peop
le were starting to wake up after the excitement of the previous night. Ryan Chornock '99 .........................
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