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Escalator Action
Jul. 2nd, 2007 07:39 pmWell, today might be a new record in the field of the least successful attempt to have a quiet, relaxing lunch hour.
Today, my parents left to go back to Scotland, and they came around to the office to have lunch with me before they headed on to the airport. After meeting the few people that were around and being impressed at the number of St Andrews graduates around the place, Whitney arrived and we all went down to the taquiera that I frequent along the road to get burritos (or indeed burritoes).
The taquiera (or taquoieaeria) had the potential to be stressful as neither of my parents were used to ordering Americanized Mexican food, especially at the rate that Anna's goes at which is usually something like "AAAAHDOYOUWANTBEANSRICEWHATKINDOFMEATSALSALETTUCEANYTHINGELSE". But after the perfect situation where neither the Hispanic people on one side or the Scots on the other could really understand what the other were saying, we got them and we sat in the square to eat lunch. Afterwards, my dad and Whitney went to get ice cream while my mum gave me some last-minute life advice (are you sure you have enough money, don't talk to strangers, don't drive too fast, brush your teeth three times a day, chew your food before you swallow it). That all went fantastically, and we went up to the office again to get the luggage and then went down to the station, which is literally ten steps away from the door of the Vanguard building.
This was where the trouble started. I stepped off the long escalator leading down to the underground station, and Whitney tapped me on the shoulder.
"The escalator ate my flip-flop", she said. I turned around and first glanced at her feet, one of which was indeed bare. I then looked over at the foot of the escalator and saw my mum and dad standing next to it, peering down into the brushes at the base of the rolling staircase and watching the back three inches of a struggling sandal twitch from side to side as the flat bit of the escalator rolled past underneath it. After learning down to see if I could free it and then deciding I would rather keep my fingers, I looked at the Emergency Stop button, wondering whether this qualified as an emergency or not, and made the decision that it was probably best at this point to call for help.
The bored man in the box at the other end of the platform seemed rather glad of the excitement as I ran towards him and told him about the trapped shoe, and he leapt into action at a dazzling twelve feet a minute as he plodded towards the escalator. As I turned to follow him I was just in time to see the escalator grind to a halt. I hoped that that was something that the attendant had done from his box with the vague blinking lights in it, but on approaching the few people that had now gathered to watch the action it emerged that my dad had "helpfully" tried to free the trapped sandal by stamping on it a bit. The effect of this was not sliding it out of the brushes as I presume that he had intended, but instead causing them to swallow the rest of it and stop the escalator entirely.
By this time my parents really needed to leave to catch their flight. They only had five hours left before their plane to Glasgow took off and my dad's passport contains such friendly locations as Kazakhstan, China, Russia, and various other Eastern European territories that form and collapse faster than an IKEA dresser, so they have to allow for potential terrorist questioning time. So we said our goodbyes next to a broken escalator in a subway station and Whitney and I waited for the inspector to arrive from the next station down the line.
I had had images of an annoyed station inspector questioning us about how we'd managed to break the escalator with a shoe (and I'm still not entirely sure how it happened myself), and I was planning on getting off the hook by saying that the man actually responsible was now on his way to the airport to flee the country. But the inspector was actually very friendly and his first concern was for Whitney and whether all her toes were still present. I would have thought that a toe count that came up short would be fairly easy to notice and that we wouldn't have had to wait for him to decide whether she needed medical attention or not, but it was a nice gesture all the same. In the end he took Whitney's name and address so he could report it as a "no injury" incident and said that there was a repair crew on the way.
So the next task was to get Whitney a replacement pair of shoes so that she could get home. After returning to the office once again, which was still almost entirely empty, I left her in front of my computer, made sure of her shoe size and then left her to entertain herself or continue writing my DOT Report Definition form controller if she so desired. I hurried to the pharmacy along the road from the square.
Pharmacies in America are very different from the chemists that we have in Britain. They're like miniature supermarkets for household items, with aisles full of odds and ends of varying size and usefulness. After wandering around for ages I had to ask if they had any sandals or flip-flops, using as many synonyms as possible to make sure that I had at least some chance of being understood, and was directed to their meagre selection. There was only one pair in her size. It would have to do. I paid for it and some cold drinks and left.
No one had arrived back at the office when I came back, and frankly, what I'd told Whitney about four entirely different companies working in it was beginning to look suspect. But it's probably just as well that none of them arrived when Whitney was around and thought that I'd turned into a woman. I approached her with the pharmacy bag.
"Whitney... I'm really sorry," was all I could think of to say, and lifted out of the bag the most horrendous ugly pair of yellow and clear plastic sandals that grossly overworked people in China have ever put together. They were made up of a sheet of rigid translucent plastic for the foot with a brightly coloured band in a V shape that was meant to go across the toes and the rest of the foot, provided it hadn't shrivelled up and fallen off from the embarrassment at being seen in it. There are devices in the Edinburgh Dungeon that look much more comfortable to wear than these things, and you'd also have the advantage of no one being able to pass by, look at your feet and think what an awful taste in shoes you have.
But finally she was on her way back home for a lie-down to recover from lunch, and if she had any sense left I'll probably find the plastic monstrosities in the recycling bin when I get there. When I came home this evening I was to retrieve the earthly remains of the sandal that brought half the access to Davis Square Station to a standstill, but when I asked the people at the subway about it they said that it had been mangled beyond all recognition.
Whitney should come for lunch with me more often. It's always entertaining.
Today, my parents left to go back to Scotland, and they came around to the office to have lunch with me before they headed on to the airport. After meeting the few people that were around and being impressed at the number of St Andrews graduates around the place, Whitney arrived and we all went down to the taquiera that I frequent along the road to get burritos (or indeed burritoes).
The taquiera (or taquoieaeria) had the potential to be stressful as neither of my parents were used to ordering Americanized Mexican food, especially at the rate that Anna's goes at which is usually something like "AAAAHDOYOUWANTBEANSRICEWHATKINDOFMEATSALSALETTUCEANYTHINGELSE". But after the perfect situation where neither the Hispanic people on one side or the Scots on the other could really understand what the other were saying, we got them and we sat in the square to eat lunch. Afterwards, my dad and Whitney went to get ice cream while my mum gave me some last-minute life advice (are you sure you have enough money, don't talk to strangers, don't drive too fast, brush your teeth three times a day, chew your food before you swallow it). That all went fantastically, and we went up to the office again to get the luggage and then went down to the station, which is literally ten steps away from the door of the Vanguard building.
This was where the trouble started. I stepped off the long escalator leading down to the underground station, and Whitney tapped me on the shoulder.
"The escalator ate my flip-flop", she said. I turned around and first glanced at her feet, one of which was indeed bare. I then looked over at the foot of the escalator and saw my mum and dad standing next to it, peering down into the brushes at the base of the rolling staircase and watching the back three inches of a struggling sandal twitch from side to side as the flat bit of the escalator rolled past underneath it. After learning down to see if I could free it and then deciding I would rather keep my fingers, I looked at the Emergency Stop button, wondering whether this qualified as an emergency or not, and made the decision that it was probably best at this point to call for help.
The bored man in the box at the other end of the platform seemed rather glad of the excitement as I ran towards him and told him about the trapped shoe, and he leapt into action at a dazzling twelve feet a minute as he plodded towards the escalator. As I turned to follow him I was just in time to see the escalator grind to a halt. I hoped that that was something that the attendant had done from his box with the vague blinking lights in it, but on approaching the few people that had now gathered to watch the action it emerged that my dad had "helpfully" tried to free the trapped sandal by stamping on it a bit. The effect of this was not sliding it out of the brushes as I presume that he had intended, but instead causing them to swallow the rest of it and stop the escalator entirely.
By this time my parents really needed to leave to catch their flight. They only had five hours left before their plane to Glasgow took off and my dad's passport contains such friendly locations as Kazakhstan, China, Russia, and various other Eastern European territories that form and collapse faster than an IKEA dresser, so they have to allow for potential terrorist questioning time. So we said our goodbyes next to a broken escalator in a subway station and Whitney and I waited for the inspector to arrive from the next station down the line.
I had had images of an annoyed station inspector questioning us about how we'd managed to break the escalator with a shoe (and I'm still not entirely sure how it happened myself), and I was planning on getting off the hook by saying that the man actually responsible was now on his way to the airport to flee the country. But the inspector was actually very friendly and his first concern was for Whitney and whether all her toes were still present. I would have thought that a toe count that came up short would be fairly easy to notice and that we wouldn't have had to wait for him to decide whether she needed medical attention or not, but it was a nice gesture all the same. In the end he took Whitney's name and address so he could report it as a "no injury" incident and said that there was a repair crew on the way.
So the next task was to get Whitney a replacement pair of shoes so that she could get home. After returning to the office once again, which was still almost entirely empty, I left her in front of my computer, made sure of her shoe size and then left her to entertain herself or continue writing my DOT Report Definition form controller if she so desired. I hurried to the pharmacy along the road from the square.
Pharmacies in America are very different from the chemists that we have in Britain. They're like miniature supermarkets for household items, with aisles full of odds and ends of varying size and usefulness. After wandering around for ages I had to ask if they had any sandals or flip-flops, using as many synonyms as possible to make sure that I had at least some chance of being understood, and was directed to their meagre selection. There was only one pair in her size. It would have to do. I paid for it and some cold drinks and left.
No one had arrived back at the office when I came back, and frankly, what I'd told Whitney about four entirely different companies working in it was beginning to look suspect. But it's probably just as well that none of them arrived when Whitney was around and thought that I'd turned into a woman. I approached her with the pharmacy bag.
"Whitney... I'm really sorry," was all I could think of to say, and lifted out of the bag the most horrendous ugly pair of yellow and clear plastic sandals that grossly overworked people in China have ever put together. They were made up of a sheet of rigid translucent plastic for the foot with a brightly coloured band in a V shape that was meant to go across the toes and the rest of the foot, provided it hadn't shrivelled up and fallen off from the embarrassment at being seen in it. There are devices in the Edinburgh Dungeon that look much more comfortable to wear than these things, and you'd also have the advantage of no one being able to pass by, look at your feet and think what an awful taste in shoes you have.
But finally she was on her way back home for a lie-down to recover from lunch, and if she had any sense left I'll probably find the plastic monstrosities in the recycling bin when I get there. When I came home this evening I was to retrieve the earthly remains of the sandal that brought half the access to Davis Square Station to a standstill, but when I asked the people at the subway about it they said that it had been mangled beyond all recognition.
Whitney should come for lunch with me more often. It's always entertaining.
