Good to know other people are nervous of these things.
My mother, a paranoid safety nut of the highest order, drummed into my infant head all the horrible things that can happen on escalators.
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– be very careful getting on because those sliding metal plates can catch the tip of your shoe. (??)
– stand only in the direct center of each step, because a shoelace, trouser hem, heel, etc. could get caught and I’d be pulled into the machinery, thwacketa, thwacketa, thwaceta until they could call some far-away service guy to shut off the machine, but of course I’d be shredded by then.
– hold on tightly to the handrail at all times, because the mechanism could lurch and we’d be pitched forward like marbles out of a sling.
– hop off the step precisely when the previous step is just starting slide under the plate, because the toe of my shoe could get sucked in too. Hesitate and all could be lost.
– don’t touch my face at all until I’d washed my hands after clutching the handrail in a deathgrip because it was dirty and had germs all over it.
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No wonder I don’t like escalators. OTOH I adore those long horizontal thingys in airports. Edge to the left side, work up to fast trot and ZOOM. It has a stupid science fictiony feel to it. (“Where’s the null-gee tube?”)
Veb
Who’s neurotic by upbringing but easily amused
I love those. You go along them at super speed like you’ve got go-go-gadget legs and then when you get to the end you keep running and it’s like you’ve run into molasses. Too cool.
So you don’t like yogurt in containers, but you do like frozen yougurt? Ha! That sounds like me and fishballs / fish paste. I love fish balls, but cannot stand fish paste. I’ve had it explained to me dozens of times that fish balls are made out of fish paste; I know that one full well. Maybe it’s something in the finished presentation: fish balls just look (and taste) more appealing than just globs of fish paste.
Larry, remind me never to tell you the story of the Englishman who was stuck in an elevator over a long weekend.
Billy Rubin, I too have no idea why the man in the wheelchair would choose to take an escalator (of all things) when there was an elevator nearby. I’d certainly think twice about that course of action, but maybe he had his reasons.
LurkMeister, that image in your mind’s eye probably doesn’t help if you’re going to go on a down-escalator. I totally understand.
TVeblen, I know they have those moving walkways at a mall we have out here… they’re great! People may not get on escalators with a zillion shopping bags (or I wouldn’t, anyhow), but give them the moving walkways? Hey, they’re golden!
Escalators never used to bother me, but then one day I almost mis-steped in getting on a down escalator. I found myself about to step on a step that wasn’t there. I had to grab the handle and scramble to keep from falling. Now, I’m okay while riding them, and I have no problem stepping onto an up-escalator, but stepping onto a down-escalator scares me.
Once again proving that you can learn more about a person on a message board than you ever could be meeting them…
Last year I ran up the down escalator in the JC Penny’s in Northpark. It was quite a bit more difficult than I thought it’d be. Like climbing tall stairs in lower gravity; didn’t have to lift as much each step, but it was a long way up. I was so surprised I almost bashed my face in when I first started. I don’t think anyone would have noticed.
lurkernomore, yours was a joke; mine’s a true story. Now, if I could find it on the Guinness World Records site. Hmm. The story I had thought of was from the 1996 edition; since then, the record’s been broken. (no pun intended on broken elevators) If you want to find it, search for “elevator” in the search box.
Wikkit, I don’t think I’d ever run up a down escalator!
People are trapped in elevators all the time. I was briefly trapped in one myself at work. That lady didn't have to travel around the world, though - she could've gotten trapped for a shorter time right close to home. Some guy got trapped in Rockefeller Center a few years ago:
My Pa used to take me to the mall as a kid so I could ride them for hours. That was then!
I don’t know when it all changed but I simply can not take that step off the top onto the disappearing stairs without someone to hold my hand and count three with me! Once I was with a friend who didnt know and she got halfway down only to turn to see me frozen at the top. Must have looked stupid to the rest of the people to see her running up the down stairs to rescue me.
You know, escalators have never bothered or scared me. Just lucky, I guess. However, I do get a bit of an anxiety reaction when I use the escalator’s cousin… the moving walkway. When our newest airport terminal was built, these were installed because the walkways between the concourses are gawd-awful looooooong. So these things are a necessary evil, I guess. I use them, and I am very glad the ride’s over when I approach my concourse. They are a bit of a people-mover from hell.
First, there is that initial touch of nausea in the pit of my gut when I get aboard the thing. It is moving about the spead of a swift jog. I am used to escalators moving slowly. So that feeling is kinda like being sucked in to a jet engine while fighting a feeling of falling backward.
Then I start walking, all the time keeping my eyes straight ahead. I get a feeling of motion-sickness if I look out the windows or glance at the folks who are not on the moving walkway as I past them and they disappear in my vapor-trail.
If that isn’t bad enough, there is that obnoxious female voice overhead telling stationery people to stay on the right so the sprinters can pass them on the left without knocking them over. Of course, there is bound to be that one elderly couple that insist on standing arm-in-arm on the walkway and accidents are bound to happen. (Bet they never stand next to each other ever again on this thing without being plastered against the right railing!)
Getting off the moving walkway is always a trial. I’m moving what feels like 20 MPH, and I suddenly hit solid ground. I have to run about 6’-8’ or so to slow down the momentum and also to avoid the passengers behind me who are being slingslot-ted off the thing.
Our airport adds another delightful feature… it has spaces between the walkways so some people can get off and grab a bagel or cup of coffee (or barf bag). So once I get used to the movement and the rituals necessary to keep going, I have to get off, walk about 15-20 feet, and get on the next one. So my brain and my delicate tummy are subjected to stop-and-go traffic feelings until I find my gate. BRAAACK!
When all is said and done, I get to my gate about 5 minutes sooner than I would have if I had simply walked it. Ready for a couple Valium and a dose or two of Dramamine, but earlier for the flight!
I’ve never had trouble with them until The Princess Without A CountryTM got her sneaker caught in one at Universal Studios Florida. The whole side of the damn shoe got caught between the treads and the side of the rail and I totally freaked out till we got it popped out. I should have sued the bastards!!!
I was in Mexico on a family vacation when I was about 12 and had a habit back then of kind of kicking everything with my foot when I was standing still. So, at the airport, going up the escalators, I was kicking the steps on it. Just as I got to the top, the toe of my foot got stuck at the seam where the steps start to disappear. THE ESCALATOR HAD EATEN MY SHOE!!! In fact, about 2" of the front end of my shoe had gone forever, clamped in the merciless, voracious jaws of those evil, endless mechanized steps. Clearly panicked, and not having any idea what I could do or how to get help, I had a sudden, superhuman burst of adrenaline and jerked my threatened (and then favorite) foot back from this verge of agony and somehow that was sufficient to cause my shoe to tear and for me to escape with all of my shoes (nary a scratch, in fact) and 3/4 of my sneaker.
When we arrived at the hotel, my uncle, in his dry wit, observing my well-worn shoe, asked if I “played a lot of tennis?”
Ever since then, I’ve understood why some of the escalators say “no rubber shoes”.
My other escalator experience is that we used to use them as giant slides, squeezing onto the flat metal ramp in the middle, between the walls of glass of a pair of up (or down) escalators, and sliding, hurtling down at breakneck speed to the bottom, much to the consternation of the grown-up mall shoppers around us.
Sometime after we started doing that, I began to notice that bumps were being installed on those metal ramps, so that stopped our fun.
For what it’s worth, neither escalators nor elevators are as potentially terrifying as an antique lift device that one of my friends encountered on her travels. If I recall correctly, it was in Prague. Picture a vertically-oriented Brobdignagian bicycle chain, with 2’ square platforms fixed every eight feet or so, spanning four storeys. Two 2.5’ square holes in each floor, one for up, and one for down. The whole affair moves at a constant rate. You step on a platform when it’s near, and step off at the appropriate floor. Timing is essential. Try to ignore the fact that it was built in the 1920’s. If you’ve been drinking, take the damned stairs, or you’re liable to fall through the floor or break your neck getting stuck in-between. Not for the faint-of-heart, I should imagine.
Not too long ago a local kid got onto the down escalator with his shoes untied. :smack: As could be expected, he got caught at the bottom and couldn’t lift his feet.
I was on the crowded escalator at the time, and wondered why, suddenly, everyone started backing up. There was this huge “clot” at the bottom because people couldn’t get around the kid or each other to get out. The herd mentality started to kick in and people started to panic. !!:eek:!!
A friend of mine happened to see what was going on, lept down the handrail, grabbed the kids legs one at a time, and ripped the shoelaces off.
I’ve had a lot more respect for him and for those metal treadmills to Hell ever since.
But I will never again hold onto the handrail. Some people don’t wash their hands, and those rails are never cleaned.
-Nardo “stairway to Heaven and escalator to Hell” Polo
I saw a guy cleaning an escalator handrail in a New York City Subway station of all places. He had a very good system. He had a big bucket fulla water and disinfectant cleaner. He stood at the top of the escalator with a rag, dipped it in the bucket and placed it on the handrail. Then he let the handrail move beneath the rag. Every few feet of rail and he’d re-dip his rag. Then when the whole thing made its way around he took out some paper towels and dried the thing off in the same manner.
Although I have no memory of it, I did get my shoe and foot caught at the bottom of a down escalator at the downtown Marshall Fields with my mom. She tells the story occasionally and it is enough to make me squirm. It’s odd that even though I don’t remember the incident itself, the fear is there and was there before I was ever told the story. I must remember the experience on some level.
And as for looong escalators, some of Atlanta’s MARTA stops have escalators that make me queasy just to look at. The Peachtree station maybe. Easily over two stories of escalator. Yikes!!!
Flamsterette_X’s brother teased her about something that has actually helped me solve my own discomfort with down escalators:
quote:
"Hey Eric, you know what would happen if someone in front of us were to fall? That means we'd all fall with them! That would be cool.. a really huge domino effect!"
My own technique is to wait for a group of people to step down on the escalator first, then follow a few paces after them. And as I descend behind them, I try to think about the fact that those people very closely in front of and below me will physically serve as cushions, if for some odd reason I slip and start to fall. I think of the people preceeding me as my own human life preservers. This technique got me through Christmas shopping in many malls this year going down many escalators.
Escalator discomfort is not unusual. Sometimes a bad experience of almost slipping and falling while on one will give a person bad memories that are hard to shake. This happened with me, but I’m learning that the fear can be overcome.
sixseven, that’s another way to look at it. I’m not sure I had any of those scarring experiences on escalators as a young child, but maybe I’ve blocked it out of my conscious memory.
Escalators shudder Also, sidewalks with the grates that go waaaay down into the ground. I avoid these like the plague! Unless of course I’m with my S/O, and then I hold on for dear life.:eek:
