I must say, that still having a clean slate in the world of law enforcement makes getting that first offense something to fear, but like taking your first drink, afterwards you look back and wonder what the big deal was. If any law enforcement officials are reading this right now, a word of caution: arrest me once and you’ll be unleashing a monster. All those climbs that I’ve been scoping out for years downtown, but been too afraid to climb them due to fear of being caught, will fall like Christopher Reeve off a wild Honeymoon Stallion.

So anyway, onto this year’s contest already (wow, that was one of my longest intros ever. I hope you enjoyed it). This, the 4 th UBC Buildering Contest, was a smashing success. As I waited in the Student Union Building for people to arrive, person after person sauntered over (builderers saunter, they don’t walk), eager and ready to climb some buildings.

I didn’t do a final count, but it must’ve been somewhere around 30-35 people in total. The urge to break the crew into smaller groups was strong, but I was determined to relive the excitement of the first buildering contest (ever), and I think it’s safe to say that we did so, and then some.

Of course having such a large group of men, women, and children (this year wins for the youngest buildering participant ever, at the mere age of 4) climbing around on buildings, meant a high risk of being noticed and reported to the police. And that’s exactly what happened. By the time security finally did catch up with us, they had already received three separate calls.

I was kinda hoping that having a large group would work to our advantage, since (at least in my eyes) 30 people climbing on something is a lot less suspicious than two or three people doing the same. If you are in the latter, people will think you are cat-burglars or something, but if the former, you’d think that people would clue in and realize this is some sort of sport, organization, movement, at least something harmless – look at the CHILD for god’s sake! But no, people are dumb. Very VERY dumb.

At this point, I’ll mention that a few of us had brought along bouldering pads. Well…I guess some of those aforementioned rocket scientists who called the cops thought that we were breaking into buildings and stealing CHESTERFIELDS! “Well I can’t really tell officer, but it looks like they are climbing into buildings…oh wait they are leaving with some large things on their backs….I think they are stealing chesterfields!!!”

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