Follow the White Rabbit

Today I decided that since I need more protein in my diet, that I would hunt down a Smoothie King and grab a protein smoothie for an afternoon snack. So while here at work I searched for the closest one, which happens to be in one of the tunnels. Now if you think back, you will recall that I am working in Houston for the summer. Downtown Houston has a series of tunnels that run under the buildings and have restaurants and shops in them. Most of the major buildings are connected, but sadly mine is not. So my first order of business was to hunt down an entrance to the tunnels. I feel weird walking into one of the office buildings just to use their tunnel access, so instead I did the exact same thing at CVS pharmacy. And immediately got lost. I generally have a very good sense of direction, and at least when given proper directions I can find places fairly easily. My navigation, however, relies upon reconizable buildings or street names, so in a series of winding tunnels with no discernible landmarks I quickly became lost. Now before you doubt my navigation skills, you must understand something about these tunnels. They were not built by the city, but the owners of the office buildings. Thus they are not organized and do not run in straight lines, or follow the streets or anything. Instead they twist and turn , and have many branches that go off to other buildings. So there is no just walking down the tunnel. You will come to many forks and have to randomly guess which way to go. Now I had the address of the Smoothie King, but those smart people at the post office assigned addresses to tunnel businesses based upon which street they were closest to. This might work for the mailman, but you cant just go to the address and expect there to be any kind of entrance to the tunnels there. I also loved the fact that the maps in the tunnels showed the surface streets, but lacked any street names. I found lots of cool places down there, but I have no idea if I will ever be able to find them again. I felt so like Alice going down the rabbit hole. Once I finally found the Smoothie King I had to find an exit that was somewhat close to my office. Here my magical navigation skills somehow took over and I emerged in the Reliant building, which happens to be only a block from my office.
And talk about an intimidating office. If you have ever seen Gattica, you will remember that to go into the office you had to walk through these turnstile looking things and touch it with your finger so it could take a DNA sample and make sure you were allowed to be there. Well Reliant isn't far off. You can walk through the lobby ok (no one accosted me), but to go to the elevators you have to walk through almost exact replicas of the Gattica turnstiles and swipe a card that gives you access. I assume if you walk through without that the motion detectors go off and some alarm will beep. It just seemed so eerie. Most banks don't have such security to walk in the building. Although granted they don't keep cash in their office buildings. If, btw, you don't know what Reliant is (and its very possible), they are one the nation's biggest energy companies, and along with Enron have been blamed for the California energy crises of a few years ago (Houston should be nicknamed the Energy City. Buildings downtown are named: ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, Shell, Penzoil, Dynegy, Reliant, Enron*, El Paso, Halliburton. Can we say terrorist target?).

*They tried to rename the building something generic but its still the Enron building on most publishings.