Shakin wit fright in an ole elevator

Only 150 pesos for a phone call, I think to myself, as I walk up to the elevator and press the up button. I t gloes red as i wait for the elevator to come down to floor 1. The number panel says 15, so I sit on a step and wait for the elevator to make it down to 1. I sit and wait 2 minutes....floor 11, 10, 9...finally the elevator sounds home as it hits floor 1. Ting.....the white elevator doors open and two young COlombian dudes with heavily jelled fro-hawks step out. they brush by me as I stand up. I walk into the elevator without company, like a lawyer working over time and walking out to his car in a vacant parking lot, to find he is the only one there.I press button 11, where my apartment is. It gloes up red and two seconds later the doors shut. I"m the only one riding in this elevator as it creeps slowly...floor 1-2. 3-4. The lights are dim and the comeras that were inside the elevator were stolenm last week. The transition from 4-5 seems a bit rusty as I feel a shudder throughout the frame of the elevator. In an instant, this shudder heightens, and the elevator rattles to a stop at floor 5. Damn, I think, I almost made it to floor 11 (where my room is), now someone is going to slow me up here on floor 5. I was in a hurry and didnt want any of the hundreds of kids living in the building to be playing tricks with the elevator buttons. 25 seconds go by...the doors dont open, the elevator stays at floor 5. Hmm, I think, maybe the elevator is simply responding slow to the push of a button from whoever was outside the elevator. 60 more seconds go by. I looks to the right of the closed elevator doors and the panel that is normally lit up red with whatever floor the elevator was going to at that present moment, was blank! I push the button for floor 11. It doest light up a bit, but laughs at me, staying blank. Bastard, I think! 60 more seconds go by, and all of a sudden like a bucket of icy cold water down my spine, it hits me! Shit! Im stuck in an elevator in COlombia at 9 oclock on a Sunday night. Salsa music is blasting from every room in the building and I"m sure the last thing these rumba-ing colombians are going to want to do on a Sunday night is bust some gringo out of an elevator. They probably couldnt even hear my pathetic cries if I cried for help I think. I go into Zen mode and tell myself not to panic. 2 minutes go by. I hear nobody and the elevator isnt moving. I dig through the mess of lint, waded maps, and gum wrappers in my pocket and pull put my cheap cell-phone that I had bought in Cartagena. I try to call Santiago. Damn!!! Im out of minutes! Scratch that option. The lights in the elevator begin to flicker on and off. I feel like Im in some Hollywood horror flick. 2 more minutes go by... this is not good I think...im losing it....clastraphobia...wait maintain ZEN mode I telll myself...dont panic.
I think: if I have to spend the night in an elevator (if the oxygen supply lasts), then so be it. I pull the alarm to the elevator now. It sounds off like an ambulance siren. Damn, thats loud. I plug my ears. The alarm sounds for 2 more minutes. There is no reply! I begin to loose it, pounding my fists on the door like some cage fighter, violently screaming "necisito ayudar!" There is no answer. I tell myself, if the power goes out in this elevator, I"m not staying in here! I think of the beginning of Speed 1 with Keanu Reeves, when the terrorist plants a bomb on the elevator full of people and attempts a high-end high-jack. I"m not staying in here I tell myself. The alarm continues to sound, I hear nobody coming. I jump up, trying to break the ceiling panels. However, they are not like the typical elevators in the States, where it is possible to move them with a slap of the hand. The ceiling dosent budge. The damn thing is bolted down by heavy industrial size bolts. Scratch that option. I now try to pry open the doors. I get the inside door open and stick my hiking boot between the two doors to hold it open. I then try to pry open the second round of doors. It doesnt budge. I take a sigh and let go of the doors I was holding open with my hiking boot. Its now been about 20 minutes. I take another sigh, and lean against the fall, excepting my faith: I"m staying in this elevator for the night. That is that. I may have to stay in here until the only 2 security guards for the entire 2 apartment blocks with a total of 10 elevators, realize that in one of the ten, there is a damn gringo stuck inside. I think: they"re probaby getting a crack out of this. Muuuhaaa, the States had prisoners at Guantanamo ay and now the rest of the world was getting their revenge, starting with the latinos. A gringo in an elevator....muuuha mmmuuha muuhaaa. I stand up and now planned on pounding the doors until someone comes beacuse surely, the alarm wasnt getting anyone"s attention. There were 50 boom-boxes with cracked speakers, blarring slasa music with as much trebele as the speakers could handle. 5 more minutes go by and like a message from the COlombian Salsa God, I hear a tapping below the elevator. All of a sudden the elevator shakes. I feel like I am dropping, only not smoothly, but like someone is manually cranking the metallic cable attached to the elevator. I hear metal on metal. The doors open a crack and two giant crow-bars poke through the crack in the doors. They widen and I see light from the hallway. Then I see a security guard, who was probably drinking rum in his security booth, while giving salsa dancing lessons to the local town poney girl, appear. I go stumbling out, glad to be alive. I literally get on a knee and hug the mans leg! Andres was his name and if I had a child in the future, I was going to name sure as heck going to name it Andres. SEcurity guards were now above Civil Rights leaders, celeberties, and famous politicans of the world. The man saved me from anight in an elevator. I thanked him over and over. He began to laugh uncontrollably at how shook up I was. To him, this was probably the most excitement he"d see all week. I left and climed to floor 11, using the stairs this time...maybe even forever in any builing in COlombia that had an elevator. I didnt want to take any chances this time, nor in the future. I"m sure Andres would forever remeber the gringo he busted out of the faulty elevator and I would forever remember my first time to ever get stuck in an elevator was in COlombia. This was what the human connection was about. This was traveling: laughing at the frightening moments with a bit of becoming spine-tickled and short of breath at the joyous ones.

Shakin wit fright in an ole elevator

Medellin, Colombia