Revisiting old times - on the UT campus

For a number of years I was a regular visitor to the UT campus - specifically to Bellmont Hall - the home of UT Athletics, actually located under the west stands of Memorial Stadium. Men's Athletics was a customer of ours, and I spent many hours working at the ticket office and other areas in the hall and stadium (I have been places there few others have been - like the tunnel which runs under the field itself, for example).

Parking was always an adventure at UT. Even getting to the stadium without a confrontation with the people in the guard shacks was tricky; we had a back entrance route that took us across two parking lots and down a sidewalk (literally). The company had a parking pass, but it was seldom available when I needed it. There were some two-hour spaces and some parking meters where I took my chances - and most often lost.

Let me just say that I was well-known to the campus parking police. And yes, you will recall that this would not be the first time that I came to the attention of the UT police department. Finally, the campus police called the Assistant Athletic Director we were working with and let it be known that I was persona non grata and he called my boss, and well... you know about the trickle-down theory. But I digress.

Yesterday I revisited my old stomping grounds. The stadium itself has undergone a huge renovation - the two-hour spaces and meters are covered by new construction, but Belmont Hall remains largely unchanged. It was there I met an acquaintance from church who is testing people in various age groups for aging and motor behavior changes. Her doctoral thesis is based on this study.

The testing itself was interesting - you "pinched" a measurement device to manipulate a moving dot across a computer screen. Pressure from your thumb made the dot go up; pressure from the forefinger made the dot move across. The trick was to make the dot move evenly up and down at a 45 degree angle - meaning the pinch was equal in for both axises. It was harder than it looked.

And when I finished and came back to my car... nothing happened, They furnished me a parking pass for my visit. Now if I had just had one of those a few years ago!