Audrey and the Great Glass Elevators

Last weekend, as you know, I went houseboating on Lake Shasta. It was a three story boat, with a hot tub and a waterslide. Three stories (plus the slide) meant you could jump off from any number of places. I preferred the slide, which involved about a 6-foot drop. But braver members of our group were back flipping off the third-story. 30-foot drop? 40? I have no concept of distance. Anyway, it was high.



I never did get up the full courage to jump off the top, but I did jump off the second story (20-feet or so?) The jumping part was fun, but as I landed, I remembered that I don’t like jumping from high distances. Why? Because it hurts! The boys can play it all cool like smacking the water didn’t burn their skin and bruise their arms and pop their ear drums, but I know that it did.

My ears were particularly sore. And, for at least a week afterward, my left ear felt like it was full of water. I tried everything: shaking my head, pounding it against the ground, Q-tips, handstands, everything at once.

Finally, my roommate Rich suggested that I needed a quick change in pressure, like an elevator ride. What a perfect excuse to visit my favorite place in the city: the glass elevators at the Westin St. Francis. I rode my bike over to Union Square, dodged the elevator security guards by heading up to the second floor (shhh, that’s my little secret), and rode that elevator up and down to my little heart’s content.

I’ve been enjoying that view since I was a kid. I don’t remember the first time I discovered the glass elevators there, but I do recall riding them up and down with Carolyn our freshman year of highschool on a trip to the City. And I remember my friends “kidnapping” me for my 18th birthday, blindfolding me and taking me to the glass elevators. I’ve visited them many times since.

And now I have a new reason to love them: they cured my ears.