As most UCLA students sat hunched over their computers eyeing
the weather forecast and wondering when it would be safe to venture
outside again, Katherina Jawaharlal marched up Janss Steps this
past Sunday afternoon clad in a white T-shirt, gray gym shorts and
a pair of flip-flops.
A few minutes later, she sat at the bottom of the hill, her
attire and skin a universal brown. Just a few feet away, her
Hedrick Two North floormates were making mud angels.
UCLA prides itself on its students’ ingenuity and
resourcefulness, and nowhere are these qualities more evident these
days than by the side of Janss Steps, where young Bruins have
transformed a mild hill into a wild muddy slip-and-slide.
Shortly after the basketball game against Washington, I took my
first detour toward this area to see if any adventurous souls were
making the most of their weekend. Westwood doesn’t offer much
in the way of entertainment for students, but I was really
impressed with how close the relationship was between residents of
Dykstra Six and Mother Nature on a Saturday night.
Some of them slid feetfirst in a tucked position, and others
chose to go down headfirst with their arms fully extended. It all
depended where they were willing to absorb a few bumps and
bruises.
“Every time you take a step, you feel like you have poop
in your pants,” sophomore Paul Herman said in describing the
downside of one particular form. “We call it
mud-butt.”
The group advised me that wearing darker colored T-shirts or
tank tops, tighter fitting shorts and “tighty-whitey”
briefs helps prevent some of the unpleasant aftereffects. They
didn’t seem to have an antidote for the potential pneumonia,
so I just assumed their immune systems were all natural-born
killers.
In any case, “mud-butt” seemed to be one of the
easiest problems they had to deal with. One of the Dykstra
residents had an open cut on his arm, but he didn’t seem to
mind so long as he could hide it underneath some fresh mud. Or
maybe he didn’t care because the only pain he could feel was
his naked toes going numb. Still, even when making the walk back to
Dykstra after the fun was over, no one in the group had any
regrets.
“Afterwards, I only remember the fun,” Herman said.
“I don’t remember the freezing misery.”
If anything, they still had something to look forward to while
trudging back into the dorms. I’ve always felt that dirtier
experiences lend themselves toward more invigorating showers,
basing this belief on my trips to L.A. County beaches. Buying into
this theory, Herman acknowledged that the shower afterwards was the
best part of his mudsliding experience.
“You can’t feel anything for the first ten
minutes,” he admitted. “You can feel the burning, but
it’s not hot.”
At this point, I forgot whether he was talking about the shower
or a black bowl specialty item in De Neve’s dining hall.
Jawaharlal, on the other hand, got the most satisfaction from
the slide itself.
“When you’re going down, it’s really
exhilarating,” she said. “There’s a general
rush.”
Sliding down in the mud is far from the only way to get some
kicks during this monsoon season. Herman, for instance, practices
sewer surfing, where participants ride a boogie board through
puddles of grass. It’s these types of games that rely on such
spontaneity and randomness that can make this winter weather a
little less gloomy.
“It was kind of spur-of-the-moment,” Jawaharlal
said. “We were stuck in the dorms the whole time and just
needed to get out and do something crazy.”
She said she plans on going up to Janss Steps again with her
floormates the next time it rains. So long as she doesn’t
come down with pneumonia first.
E-mail Finley your favorite rainy day activity at
afinley@media.ucla.edu.