Back before Amazon.com sea changed retail space forever, the local mall was the place to be. It was a Friday morning, though, and the place was rather empty. My cousin and I wandered the vast space looking for the good laughs held within Spencer Gifts.
On our way past the food court, we were stopped cold. Smack in the middle of burgers and stir-fry loomed a Treadwall™. An endless conveyer belt-like climbing wall used as a training tool to build endurance in the forearms. But here in the mall, the owner of the thing tried to make a few bucks with a fitness challenge whose rules were simple; five dollars to try, and if you could hang on for a minute, the owner would hand over one hundred bucks.
Shit, I thought. I was back not a few days from a two-month climbing road trip that took me from Idyllwild, CA, through City of Rocks, NM, Hueco Tanks, TX, Enchanted Rocks, TX, El Potrero Chico, Mexico, and Red River Gorge, KY. I was as fit as I’ve ever been and gripped in the blissful financial ruin that only a jobless climber could appreciate. A hundred bucks would be a windfall.
On my feet, I sported a pair of Guide Tennies. These are essentially climbing shoes, sticky rubber and all, designed for steep and rocky approaches to the crag. As such, I strolled up to the wall with all the confidence of Joey Chestnut before a Coney Island hot dog cart and proffered a borrowed fiver from my cousin. The proprietor, thankful for having someone willing to take a spin on his high-priced wall, took the crisp Abe Lincoln, applied it to his billfold, and began to whip up the few onlookers as a travelling snake oil salesman might. “We have a taker!” he crooned. “A hundred bucks if this young man can stay on for a minute!”
I grabbed a starting jug and got my feet on some holds. The shoe rubber stuck like glue. The wall began rotating vertically, and the stopwatch started. After ten seconds the wall tipped back a few degrees past vertical. Ten seconds more and it leaned again. Each time it tilted, it put more pressure on my arms and core, but I held on, needing the money and hating to lose.
By the time I fell off, the wall had angled as far back as it could go. “How’d I do?” I asked, fully expecting my payment.
“You did great,” said the proprietor.
“How long did I get?”
“Not long enough,” he said and showed me the stopwatch. It read 00:00:00. Cleared before I could see.
“But you cleared it. How do I know what I got?”
“Look, just come back later tonight when there are more people around,” he said.
“Huh,” I said. I smell a rat.