Early in the pandemic, we canceled our membership to the YMCA and bought a treadmill. It was more than just a Dick’s Sporting Goods treadmill—we were told it was a grade just below a gym treadmill. For a year or so, it worked fine. But then it developed some curious traits. The deck seemed to have a unique divot-and-hill feature where your foot would sink down and then go back up. When used at high speed, it squeaked like crazy. Very annoying because it could be heard all over the house.
Finally, Lauren contacted the company, and the deck was still under warranty. They sent us a new one, and since ultimate handyman Brayden was living with us, he took apart the treadmill, put in the new deck, and got it back running again. Awesome. I used it, all good. Lauren used it, all good. Graham used it on a snowy, icy day when running outside made no sense.
“How was your run, Graham?” I asked him after he finished.
“Good,” he said. “This deck has that divot in it, too, though.”
Wait, what.
“Nah, it couldn’t,” I said. “We just got it.” I got on the treadmill, started a slow walk, and yep, there it was, but in a slightly different place. “Damnation, son, what did you do to this?”
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the shattered deck of our old treadmill, which survived precisely three uses.
See the cracked particle board in the bottom third? When you walk on that, you sink, and when you come out of it, you rise up again. Graham’s damn foot strike is so powerful that he punched a hole in a brand new board.
The rest of us mourned, but Graham only saw opportunities. “We can get a better treadmill now. I want one that can go more than 13 mph. That one only goes 12.”
“Send me a link to a treadmill that you want, and we’ll talk about it,” said Lauren.
Graham’s choice was a mere $8000. The kid is 16 and wants a treadmill the cost of a used car.
“Uh, no, we’re not doing that,” I said.
Lauren is more resourceful than I am, so she went online and found a used version for a couple of hundred bucks in Rhode Island. “But you and Brayden need to pick it up,” she said, “because they charge a $350 delivery fee.”
“Wtf, why?” I said. “I don’t know. That’s just what they do.”
So on a Saturday, we three boys hopped in Brayden’s Tacoma and headed to Rhode Island, and then, we discovered why they charge a delivery fee the price of the actual treadmill . . . because a professional treadmill that goes in a gym weighs 500 lbs, almost all of which is loaded in its front! It took a forklift to move it to the edge of the warehouse where we could load it.
We drove it down to our backdoor and found that the three of us couldn’t get it off the truck without likely dropping it. So we had to pile couch cushions from our old couch up to the bed of the truck and push the treadmill onto that.
Then we had to take the whole sliding glass door off because the treadmill was too wide. And when I say “we,” I mean “Brayden” because I don’t do things with tools—I’m still at five-year-old’s plastic tool capability.
Then came the big moment—getting the treadmill OVER the threshold. It took an immense amount of hefting and lifting, and it seemed to be going well . . . until it wasn’t. We stood panting, exhausted, unclear why we couldn’t get up that last two inches. Then I stood back and realized. Oh.
You see the problem, right? The thing covered with a trash bag on top is the built-in TV. So we had to take that off while the treadmill basically sat on the threshold. And by “we,” I mean “Brayden,” and by “sat on the threshold,” I mean that I had to hold it tilted and just so to allow Brayden to reach it and keep it free of the frame.
Eventually, we got the damn thing in, fired it up, and it worked.
That treadmill is never leaving this house. Or if it does, it’s going out in pieces after it meets a Sawzall.
Brayden was a great sport about all of this. At least outwardly. Inwardly? Well, there might have been a revenge plot scheduled for just a few weeks later. But that’s for another post.
His Smile Lit Up a Room and Other Things to Say at My Funeral 