“What happened in there?” (With apologies to ABC’s The Nine)

Well, I’ll tell you what happened. I was on my way to the gym, which is located on the top floor ( the 10th ) of a parking structure in Downtown Dallas. Ironically, the only way to get there is via elevator. Very slow and sometimes not running elevators.

Since they run so slow, there a lot of people waiting to go up. An elevator finally comes and we all pile on. All 11 of us. Including the guy who has just finished his several mile run around downtown and another guy with his pizza lunch to go. On the way up, we stop at the 4th floor and let someone off. Then the doors close and we don’t move. Door Open doesn’t work. Pushing all the floor buttons doesn’t work. Yep, stuck in an elevator with 10 people. Did I mention these elevators are outdoor and don’t have any sort of temperature regulation?

We hit the emergency phone and the guy has us try a few things we’ve already tried. Then he says “I’m calling the elevator technicians, they’ll be here soon.”. There is general dismay at this in the elevator. One of the women grabs her cell phone and dials 911. They dispatch Dallas Fire and Rescue.

In the meantime, the elevator is starting to warm up. Like, fogging up any glass surface warming up. Luckily, everyone had a decent sense of humor about the situation.

Fire and Rescue arrive, but they have a hard time locating the elevator because we weren’t able to give them the address of our building. Instead, we had to give them the address of the building across the street we could see through the elevator windows.

Finally, they get up to us and pry the doors open with a crowbar. We all rush off and into air that is easily 15 degrees cooler. As I step off, the other elevator opens and is going up. I actually jump on and continue on my way to my workout. Albiet 30 minutes later. One guy asked me, “Are you sure you want to get on another elevator?” and I was like “Well, I gotta get my workout in.”

The conclusion of this story is that I ran into the elevator techs after my workout standing in front of the elevators in the gym. I asked them if they had shutdown the problem elevator and they said “yes” and I said “Good, I got stuck on it.” Then they proceeded to ask me a few questions about how it happened and then they told me the reason the elevator stuck. “A Jolly Rancher was wedged in the track. Doors wouldn’t shut, so the elevator wouldn’t release.” Good to know our sleek elevators can be brought to their knees because of some candy.