Did that escalation thing seem terribly complicated to you? If so, we can try an analogy that was coined near Salt Lake City.

Imagine there's a runner running through a forest, with a straight route. On this route, there are posts. The runner has a preferred speed (we might call it a default speed), which means that it normally takes T seconds for the runner to go from one post to the next one.

On the posts, there may be instructions. The runner starts from the very first post, and checks for instructions there. Instructions can order the runner to do various things:

• Send an SMS to somebody at this post only
• Send an SMS to somebody from this post until post N
• Change speed from this post until the next post so as to arrive sooner or later
• Change speed from this post until post N

The route is taken by the runner no matter what. If there are no instructions at the current post, the runner just continues to the next post.

If this analogy clarified how the action escalation steps are processed by the runner, it might be worth reviewing this section and possibly gaining a better understanding of the details, too.