Many people celebrate New Years Day in different ways.
I celebrated OUR New Years Day running down 23 flights of stairs, trying to escape for my life from a raging hotel fire. It was VERY dramatic.
Or, not. But I learned something during this experience. It’s called “Every man for himself”.
As an airline pilot, part of my job requires me to “lay over” in hotel rooms in various cities. Why they call it a “layover”, I really don’t know. Why not “lay under”, or “lie over”? I don’t know and probably never will. Some might think that the life of an airline pilot sounds glamorous. But often said hotel room is at the “Roach Motel” where you often see, well, ROACHES. “Dinner” is often a bag of potato chips, and the “transportation” to and from said hotel is in a white-knuckle ride in a rickety van load of smelly people and exhaust fumes. Aaah, the glamor of the airline life!
This “layover” however, was at a VERY nice hotel in Vancouver, British Columbia. It also included my wife and two children (“Scooter” and “Daughter”). The hotel was much nicer than normal, and we were given almost 32 hours (a LIFETIME to an airline crew) to enjoy the last day of 2006.
All went well until….the morning of our departure. The fire bell began to ring at 5:15 am. Thankfully (?), our van ride to the airport was scheduled for 5:45 am, but I was still getting ready when the bell rang.
“Let’s get outta here”, Scooter yelled.
“Nah, it’s a false alarm…always is” my wife replied, as I called the front desk.
WRONG.
Being the (anal-retentive) leader that I am, I very calmly directed my family to the elevator/stairs area:
“EVERYONE RUN FOR THEIR LIVES!!! STOP, DROP AND ROLL! GET LOW! GIVE A HOOT, DON’T POLLUTE! WE NEED WET TOWELS!! I WANT MY MOMMY!!”
The elevators were not responding to my frantic button pressing.
(I always believed that if you press the button 285 times, it will come to your floor BEFORE the guy on the other floor who just presses it ONCE. After all, wouldn’t YOU respond as such if you knew 285 people were waiting on you? This time, however, that did not work.)
Calmly I directed my family to the stair well:
“ACK!! THE ELEVATORS ARE INOP!! EVERYONE…TO THE STAIRS!!! GET LOW!! GET TOWELS…SAVE OXYGEN!!! BREATHE SLOW!! LADIES AND INFANTS FIRST!!! BOARD THE LIFE RAFTS!!!”
After I finished yelling, I looked around. My family was gone. They were already two floors down. I grabbed my (overfilled and way too heavy) bags and dashed after them.
On the way down, I encountered many other hotel “guests” who were none too happy about the situation. I was able to determine from their posture, blood shot eyes, slurred speech and messed up hair that they had indeed enjoyed hours of party time fun the night before (New Year’s Eve). What fun to be woken up by a fire alarm after 20 minutes of total sleep, thus allowing you an opportunity to race down some concrete steps in your PJ’s.
“Isn’t this FUN?” I asked a nice lady who looked as if she had spent 6 hours in a tumble-action clothes dryer.
She gave me some sign language that, to the best of my knowledge, is NOT officially included in the sign language, er, uh…language.
At about the 18th floor, I began to smell smoke. The crowds in the stair well began to increase, and I heard a couple below me arguing in Spanish as we made our way down. It went something like this:
Female voice: “Que esta el fireo?!! Me no wanna el descendo downo esta estaireos!!!!”
Male voice: “Yo soy descendo now-o!!”
From my command of the Spanish language (as evidenced above), I was able to determine that the female was NOT happy about going down the stairs at 5:30 in the morning. Hello? Do you think ANY of us were??! But alas, the male voice was telling her, in not so many words, “GO! DOWN!! NOW!!!”
As I listened in, I noticed the stairwell door to the 18th floor was open, and visible through this door was a fire hose entering the nearest room, which had smoke billowing out into the hallway. Out of this door ran a gushing waterfall, approximately 6 to 8 inches deep. The water was going, yes you guessed it, down the stairs!
Now this got EVERYONE’s attention, and at this point I realized that “Consuela” (or whatever her name was) WAS going to go down the stairs whether she liked it or not. This is because “jungle rules” began to take over and everyone around me decided we had entered a game called
I AM GOING TO BE THE FIRST ONE DOWN THE STAIRS AND NOBODY IS GOING TO STOP ME.
Any sense of order, courtesy or congeniality went out the window. We were going to walk…no, SWIM, our way down and there was no stopping to rest.
Hauling my (overstuffed and WAY WAY WAY too heavy) bags, I hoofed it through the water and down the (very) slippery steps. The water remained fairly deep and “followed us” down several floors. At one point I felt my back muscles pull like those “Stretch Armstrong” action figures (notice I did not say “dolls”) I used to play with as a boy. This was the kind of pain that shoots to your head and makes you want to curl up in the fetal position and suck your thumb.
Now, I’ll stop here, as I’d hate for you to have to deal with that mental imagery for the next week. So now, take a break and imagine something nice…gentle…sweet. Like….oh, I don’t know. PUPPIES. Imagine PUPPIES, all fluffy, licking your face. Now imagine the puppies being trampled by CRAZED (and hung over) hotel “guests” escaping for their lives.
There. Don’t you feel better? Now, back to my story.
As my back screamed out in agony, I looked behind me to see if the crowd would allow me a moment to put my bags down, hold my back and scream out in pain. I looked into their eyes.
Nope. Keep going. That aint gonna happen. Alrightey then. Nice seeing you too.
I finally made it to the lobby. There were no hotel clerks in sight. They had all run home and crawled into their beds (probably in the fetal position). I couldn’t blame them. After all, we’ve all heard the 911 stories of the World Trade Center folks trying their best to escape for their lives. This was, on a much smaller scale, a tiny taste of what that was like. It wasn’t pretty.
So there I was, in my pilot duds, surrounded by hundreds of pajama-clad “guests”, milling around wondering what the heck was going on. I made my way down the first couple of steps, trying to wade through this crowd to get outside. Nobody moved but rather just looked at me, wondering who I was and why I was dressed up so fancy.
(Apparently you’re not so bright on the morning of New Year’s Day at 5:30 am.)
HELLO? I’M A PILOT! YES, THAT’s WHY I’M WEARING THIS HAT! THAT WOULD MEAN I HAVE A PLANE TO FLY….CAN YOU SAY “ON TIME DEPARTURE”??
But nobody moved. The dumbstruck crowd stood their ground. I had to make a choice.
Time to go bowling.
In one approaching shot, I “rolled” my bags, knocking over whole groups of dumbstruck “guests” and got the equivalent of a 300-game of bowling in one grand “strike”.
It was a thing of beauty.
I calmly strolled down the spiral steps to the street level. I felt, in a strange way, like the male-equivalent of Cinderella, entering the grand ball room. But instead, I was a, uh “pilot guy”, surveying the throngs of onlookers, who had just made way (albeit FORCED) for my grand departure. Aaah, it was a grand departure at that!
The flight went on time. My back is still hurting, but an airline pilot’s job is to safely fly the passengers to their destination on time. Not only did I succeed there, but I bowled my first 300 game!
So remember, when you hear that fire alarm, keep this in mind:
1. Carry heavy bags. They’ll come in handy.
2. Wear goloshes. (does anyone ever wear those anymore?)
3. Learn Spanish…at least the phrase “Get down the stairs before we run you over!”
4. Bring Metholatum…you’ll need it.
And understand the practical application of “Jungle Rules”…even your own FAMILY will leave you behind in a heart beat.
Thankfully, they knew I was the guy who had to fly them home. Yep, they were waiting in the van. Why?
Because every New Year’s Eve (and Day) requires a designated “driver”, and I was the guy. Thank goodness, or I’d be in the fetal positon, sucking my thumb on Robson Street in Vancouver. (oops…think PUPPIES.)
…pass the Mentholatum, and Happy New Year.
