Damsels in Distress

Last night Darcy and I went to the subway stop to pick up diapers from a friend. (My target shipment is coming more slowly than I expected.)

On our way up to the subway platform, the elevator stalled out and we were stuck. We pushed all the buttons inside and the people waiting to get in pushed all the call buttons, but nothing helped.

(Thank goodness the elevator had windows on all sides and there was only one other passenger, our new buddy, Javier.)

Finally the subway station attendant came over and yelled through the doors, "PUSH THE DOOR OPEN BUTTON."

Me: "I HAVE PUSHED EVERY BUTTON IN THIS ELEVATOR!"

"Oh..."

Then he left.

A few minutes later another person came to try to get on the elevator and when I explained (yelling through the closed doors) that we were stuck, he talked to the station attendant, who explained that we had to wait for the fire department to send fire fighters to let us out.

AWESOME.

I will have lived in NYC ten years this April, and this is a pretty exciting experience to add to my list. I have never had a run-in with "New York's bravest" before.

Here is a picture Javier took for me while we were waiting.

This is a picture of the firetruck I took through the elevator window.

My friend, Wendy, took this shot of the firefighter trying to unlock the doors. They had this huge ring with tons of keys and they had to try them one by one to find the key to let us out.

They keys unlocked the outer doors, and then they had to just use brute force to wrench the inner doors open.

When they got the doors to open, we could see that the elevator doors wouldn't open because the elevator stopped about six inches below the platform. I don't know why it malfunctioned. 

Here I am with one of our rescuers.

They were all super thoughtful. They helped me get my stroller down the stairs before leaving.

Darcy found the experience way less exciting than I did.