Today I Rode on a Semi-Truck

No, not in a semi-truck. On a semi-truck.

Today was helium day (Symbol: He; Atomic #: 2; 4.0 g/mol; for the curious) in the lab. We have two large instruments that have superconducting magnets which must be kept very cold. Liquid helium is cold (like, REALLY cold), so we keep the magnets bathed in liquid He. From time to time, they need to be refilled. That happens on helium day.

Since we go through a lot of liquid helium and liquid nitrogen, we have an account with Praxair, a company which supplies gases for labs and hospitals (those big white tanks you see next to the hospital are usually full of liquified oxygen or nitrogen). Praxair normally delivers the tanks of helium (called a dewar, pronounced "doo-er") in their tractor-trailers, but when they get too busy, a third-party delivery service is used. These third-party drivers tend to want to go to Miami's general recieving...which becomes a pain for us. So Theresa (woman in the lab who I work with) always calls the morning of, telling them to reroute to the loading dock at the chemistry building.

Turns out that Theresa is not so hot with directions, so she asks me to talk with Billy-Bob Trucks-a-Lot on the phone. There's a lot of construction going on around the chemistry building, so the wide-open and easy-to-navigate roads are not an option. Instead, I had to guide him down narrow one-way streets lined with parked cars. Keep in mind, Mr. Trucks-a-Lot is driving a SEMI-TRUCK.

So he calls when he gets into town, and I head out to the street to wait for him, sitting on an orange construction barrier. At about the same time, all the tour guides are moving past the spot with their students-to-be. I had recently talked my way out of touring with "uh, I can't really tour because I have to go flag down a semi..." The response: "oh that's fin--you what???" So anyway, I'm sitting on this bright orange wooden barrier at the bottom of High Street, and over the crest of the hill comes this huge semi truck. I heard Flight of the Valkyries in my head.

I flag him into the narrow street; he rolls his window down and asks where to go next. I tell him to head up and then veer right along Bishop Circle. He didn't quite get it and said "you wanna jump on?" I must've looked real confused because he looks at me and says "Oh when else will you get this chance, just hold on here," pointing to the bars supporting the side-view mirrors.

So, like Leonardo di Caprio on an eighteen-wheeled Titanic, I clung to the mirror with my arm outstretched, navigating Mr. Trucks-a-Lot around Bishop Circle. I wish I could've seen the view from our lab, "oh, there goes Matt on the side of a semi."

Coming down the home stretch, and Mr. Trucks-a-Lot essentially has to pull of a three-point turn to back into the loading dock. But who should be parked along the yellow curb, and blatently in our way? The curly-haired, stone-faced PARKING TICKET NAZI. Of the potentially thousands of students who have been burned by her, how many can say they told her to get out the way?

By the way, this dewar is about a foot shorter than I, and has a diameter of about 4 feet. Looking at the inside of the trailer, the semi-truck was definitely overkill.

So maybe this is a long post about a minor experience. Whatever. It was today's big thing. On a sad note, it turns out that we're going to have to pay for gas. We've been going through the summer with plenty of hot water, and never had the gas turned on. Now, if we don't do something, the showers will get cold. Maybe we can burn the kitchen for warmth.

Edit: Matt Forrest added PAC-MAN to the bottom of our little page so go ahead and freak out.