Not long ago, a buddy of mine invited me down to the gym to check out the new mountain climbing façade. It is one of those giant fake rocks with the holes in it, where you strap yourself onto a bungee cord, and start climbing up the side. It’s actually harder than it looks, but it is a lot of fun. In case you fall, all you hurt is your pride as you slam onto the mats below. Indeed, I can totally understand why the owners of that gym put it in, because their customers love it and it increases the number of gym memberships.
After all, working out on free weights all day is more than I can handle, and I don’t need a treadmill to do my walking, the weather around here is pretty good all year round. But this fake rock is fun to climb, no matter what age you are. Nevertheless, after practicing on this fake mountain, I thought to myself wouldn’t it be nice to have a fake building façade, where you can practice climbing up the side of a brick building and pulling yourself up as you go.
Perhaps the building might have slats going vertical where you could put your foot in, and have places to grab hold, and perhaps between the various floors, and window ledges you could grab on as well? It wouldn’t have to be more than about two or three stories, to get a real workout. That’s about all the taller the fake rock is anyway. I can indeed imagine that three or four hours of climbing up and down something like that would be a massively strenuous exercise, not to mention a lot of fun.
It also occurred to me that some entrepreneur that manufacturers these fake rocks, might wish to consider creating a fake building using a similar methodology. After all, people like to pretend that they are into extreme sports, and such a simulation would do just that. It’s not every day that you get to play Spiderman and climb up a building, however these fake rocks, seem to be a dime a dozen these days. They have them at all the County fairs, and they’re going into more and more gyms as well.
Indeed, hope you will please consider this, and think on it. If you have any comments, concerns, questions, or additional innovations and ideas along this concept please feel free to e-mail me. Perhaps we can exchange notes and sketches as well.