Let's continue on with our tales of the Argentina trip, shall we? In the first installment, I regaled you with the circuitous route our plane took to land at our destination. If you haven't already read it, we basically got re-routed to another country because visibility was poor and the plane didn't have enough fuel to stay in a holding pattern. It all worked out in the end, but it meant a longer trip than expected and more amusement than one would hope for on a flight.
After all of that, we were happy to just arrive at our destination. We had some decent conversation with the cab driver, but even so, we just wanted to get to our room. First, though, we had to navigate one last obstacle. No, not the check-in process; that actually went smoothly. No, we had to use the elevators.
I'm guessing that, like me, you don't generally think of elevators as a challenge, but there's a reason why I'm writing this post. There was a learning curve for this particular set of elevators.
With that context, let me give you the lay of the land. There were four elevators in this elevator bank, all of which went to the same eight floors. We didn't have to pick a particular one to get to a particular floor, so it should have been straight-forward. They were a little farther apart than I would have liked, though, enough so that getting from the left-most elevator to the right-most elevator took a few seconds. I'm going to guess that they were about thirty to forty feet apart. That's not a huge distance, but that's also enough where you'll notice it.
The real rub, though, was that these elevators had the attention span of a gnat. They would come to your floor, ding to let you know they were going in the direction that you wanted, wait for what felt like a second and a half, then close the doors to be on their way. The first time we tried to get to our room, we were left standing there as the elevator went on its merry way without us. It just opened, closed, and then left. Remember, we had luggage with us and we were a bit on the tired side, so we weren't about to run for the elevator.
We did figure out what had happened, though, so we were prepared the second time. We rushed over to the correct elevator as soon as we heard the ding, and we managed to get to our floor. All was well, at least for that day.
However, this would not be our last encounter with these elevators. We were in town long enough that we had to deal with these elevators dozens of times. Over those first couple of days, we hadn't quite honed our elevator hunting prowess to the point where we could consistently board one. Like I said, there was a learning curve.
Fortunately, we acquired the necessary experience as the days went on. In fact, I found myself taking a big step back to scope out the four lights above the elevators immediately after pressing the button. The basic idea was to give myself as much time as possible to head towards the correct elevator, especially if I had to head to one of the outer ones. I also found myself preferring the buttons near the middle two elevators, for roughly the same reason. I also wanted to avoid the trek from one side to the other in the time it'd take the elevator to close.
All of this was a set of learned habits, born out of necessity. In the middle of doing this one day, I realized what I was doing, and I couldn't help but laugh at myself. I'd had to adapt in order to get to the correct floor, and it'd happened in a relatively short time. Still, as funny as it was, I didn't stop scanning or using those middle buttons. I wasn't about to lose out on my elevator like a rookie.
After all of that, we were happy to just arrive at our destination. We had some decent conversation with the cab driver, but even so, we just wanted to get to our room. First, though, we had to navigate one last obstacle. No, not the check-in process; that actually went smoothly. No, we had to use the elevators.
I'm guessing that, like me, you don't generally think of elevators as a challenge, but there's a reason why I'm writing this post. There was a learning curve for this particular set of elevators.
With that context, let me give you the lay of the land. There were four elevators in this elevator bank, all of which went to the same eight floors. We didn't have to pick a particular one to get to a particular floor, so it should have been straight-forward. They were a little farther apart than I would have liked, though, enough so that getting from the left-most elevator to the right-most elevator took a few seconds. I'm going to guess that they were about thirty to forty feet apart. That's not a huge distance, but that's also enough where you'll notice it.
The real rub, though, was that these elevators had the attention span of a gnat. They would come to your floor, ding to let you know they were going in the direction that you wanted, wait for what felt like a second and a half, then close the doors to be on their way. The first time we tried to get to our room, we were left standing there as the elevator went on its merry way without us. It just opened, closed, and then left. Remember, we had luggage with us and we were a bit on the tired side, so we weren't about to run for the elevator.
We did figure out what had happened, though, so we were prepared the second time. We rushed over to the correct elevator as soon as we heard the ding, and we managed to get to our floor. All was well, at least for that day.
However, this would not be our last encounter with these elevators. We were in town long enough that we had to deal with these elevators dozens of times. Over those first couple of days, we hadn't quite honed our elevator hunting prowess to the point where we could consistently board one. Like I said, there was a learning curve.
Fortunately, we acquired the necessary experience as the days went on. In fact, I found myself taking a big step back to scope out the four lights above the elevators immediately after pressing the button. The basic idea was to give myself as much time as possible to head towards the correct elevator, especially if I had to head to one of the outer ones. I also found myself preferring the buttons near the middle two elevators, for roughly the same reason. I also wanted to avoid the trek from one side to the other in the time it'd take the elevator to close.
All of this was a set of learned habits, born out of necessity. In the middle of doing this one day, I realized what I was doing, and I couldn't help but laugh at myself. I'd had to adapt in order to get to the correct floor, and it'd happened in a relatively short time. Still, as funny as it was, I didn't stop scanning or using those middle buttons. I wasn't about to lose out on my elevator like a rookie.
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