Erin Miller

63,000 verticle people-moving machines

I realized recently that I use lots and lots of stairs everyday. It's quite an interesting shift from Honduras. A friend of mine suggested that I bring slinkies to give to my Honduran host family's children as gifts when I arrived. I thought it was a terrific idea, but in the end I was glad I went with something different because there were virtually no stairs in La Esperanza. There was lots of space and everything could be very spread out, and therefore, virtually everything happened on the first floor. NYC is a different story. There are 63,000 elevators and escalators in the city. I am currently sitting in the 6th floor basement (as in 6 floors under ground). I live on the fifth floor, and due to the crawling speed of our elevator, I end up walking up those stairs more than I would like. I walk down to the subway platforms and then take elevators to the platforms below. I am constantly going to classes somewhere between the 6th basement and the 17th floor. And I am pretty sure that the elevators at the NY Presbyterian Hospital are even slower than the one in my building. My thighs ache; even Spot gets out of breath walking up to our apartment. I would go up and sit out in the sun in my break between classes, but the surface of the earth just seems too far away for now.