By Adam Duerson

I'm having that dream again. The one where I'm in public and naked as a Vince Young bootleg, covering my bits 'n' pieces with all the effectiveness of Lil' Kim's latest VMA gown. It's an out-of-body experience in which the eyes of the world are focused on me. But then an air horn blows and a voice cries out, "We're going streeeaking!"

This is no dream.

I'm the anti-Frank the Tank. Where I go, the 20-member-strong Hamilton varsity streaking team will follow ... or so I'm assured.

And so begins the team's streaking "meet" at Princeton, the only other school with an organized streaking squad. The meet is likely the only athletic event you'll read about this year involving Hamilton, a tiny liberal arts college (enrollment: 1,700) nestled in the wooded foothills of Clinton, N.Y. Hamilton's streakers are a prolific bunch. They streaked 12 New England campuses in a five-day tour last fall and have received -- and declined -- offers for their own reality TV show.

On this day in April I've been invited to streak by team leader Pete Holzaepfel. A 22-year-old poli sci major, he is a former student body vice president, speaks Swahili and talks in Pete-isms like "Let's rip it!" (Read: Let's go.)

First comes exhaustive game-planning. Most of the six-hour drive (20 people in a seven-person Winnebago) is spent poring over campus maps (for escape routes and well-populated areas) in addition to the class schedules of Princeton streakers, obtained by a Hamilton team member who's in grad school at Princeton. There is also a review of the fundamentals. ("Know your route." "Underwear only slows you down when you're redressing." "Getting caught is not an option.")

At 2 p.m. our group of 14 men and six women arrives at the declothing point outside Nassau Hall, the cry of "Let's rip it!" goes up, and we explode into the open, appendages flapping and megaphones blaring, "You have been struck by the Hamilton varsity streaking team!"

Donning only costumes (mine a beard and a straw hat), shoes, backpacks stuffed with clothes and that which God gave us, we flap our arms in birdlike form, cawing and shrieking while sticking to the route: First the main quad and a series of footpaths. Two streakers announce our arrival via megaphone, and Princetonians curiously pop their heads out of classroom windows. Then it's on to the Frist Campus Center, a combination student union and cafeteria filled with horrified witnesses.

There is an array of reactions: The shock of cafeteria lunchers. The blushing male student reaching to shield an elderly couple's eyes. And the same elderly couple's fighting his advances for a peek at the passing parade.

And with that, the streak is over. In reality it's five, maybe 10 minutes, but it feels like it's been only 30 seconds when four of us duck behind a bush, extract pants and shirts from our bags, and mosey on along like nothing's happened. "Streakers? What streakers?"

Scott Welfel, founder of Princeton's team, would concede in the Daily Princetonian, "[Hamilton] completely rocked our world. Our team was put to shame." (Princeton's team was disbanded the following day after school officials threatened its members with disciplinary action if they streaked again.)

After Hamilton's 15th streak in its three-year existence, team founder Matt Stringer climbs to the front of the RV to put a fine point on the, ahem, "sport." Stringer, a Hamilton grad who traveled from Denver for the event, recounts the time the team streaked a Colgate frat party and took a serious beat-down for it. "We got roughed up pretty bad," he recalls. "Thrown to the ground. Kicked. One of the funnier things I've ever seen."

Issue date: April 28, 2005