The lights are really bright in this basement. Most of the fixtures are bright but yellowish. There are two, though, that broadcast the brightest and whitest light. I bet they are new LED lamps. Energy efficiency and all.

The halls are lined with locked black metal storage cabinets. The cabinets are short and tall. Some of the short ones needed to be short because there were mysterious electrical boxes sticking out on the walls above them. There are plenty of mysterious boxes. There are also some short cabinets underneath free wall space. I guess they were all ordered at the same time and somebody didn’t do the measuring.

The tall black metal storage cabinets are deeper than the short ones. These were not all from the same order. There are slight variations among them. Just a few inches in height and a few inches in depth. They were randomly aligned–two tall and fat, one smaller, one taller, two smaller. The locks were also a hodgepodge. I don’t believe that the size of the lock was related to the value of the contents. But that’s just a guess.

The floors in this basement are peculiar. The hall is wide and the deck is primarily cement. There is about three and a half feet of steel in the middle. The steel is textured and bright. When you walk on the steel it feels hollow underneath. I stepped as lightly as I could to avoid the clank caused by my shoes. I preferred to walk on the edges, on the cement. The basement was empty and this made me feel less conspicuous. I didn’t want to sneak up on anyone, nor did I want to announce myself so loudly.

I stopped in the restroom. It was surprisingly nice for a non-public area. Lighting was excellent, no broken tiles, sturdy wooden doors for the stalls. The sinks were pedestal-style. I walked back out into the industrial underbuilding.

There is no wifi and only an ineffective blip of cell signal so there were no selfies. I waited for my colleagues outside the locked door. To the bowling alley. In the bowels of the White House.

For those of you at home keeping score, I bowled in the bottom quartile of the bottom quartile. My solo tour of the basement was the best part of my game.