X-Treme Challenge: Are You a Gladiator?

Heather

13 years ago

Tuesday was my best friend’s 30th birthday. Since she is awfully similar to me in the sense that we knew the whole “going out and getting trashed” theme was not quite her style, we had to come up with something different and fun.

Like the X-Treme Challenge Arena!

This place is located next to the rock climbing gym I go to, and Angel and I stuck our heads in a few months back. We observed that it was very similar to one of our favorite childhood shows, American Gladiators, and talked about how much fun it would be. And then we dropped it…until Tuesday night 🙂

We all showed up, not quite sure what to expect and whether or not we truly needed to be wearing the athletic wear the liability waiver suggested. Naturally, Craig took the “no loose clothing” suggestion to an extreme:

Yup. That happened.

Anyway, the X-Treme Challenge Arena turned out to be a blast for a group of adults! They started us off with a “warm up” where one person stood on a podium, and we basically launched exercise balls at them, trying to knock them off. After we were sufficiently warmed up and loose, they set up various stations around the arena. Some of them were a little frustrating, but other were awesome!

For example:

The human cannonball~

See Adrian holding the exercise ball? And Angel on the swing? Yup, she got to push off the wall (not visible, on the right) and launch herself at Adrian as hard as possible. The goal if you’re the guy? To remain standing!

Human Jousting~

I am pretty sure the picture does this one justice!

Out-of-Control Bicycle~
(Can you tell I am making these names up?!)

Yup, we got to tether ourselves into a harness and ride a bicycle around in circle. The point? Once you really got the momentum going, the bike would lift off the ground at the corners and you could bank off the bright yellow walls. Seriously. How freaking awesome is that?!

Hang Tough~

This series of ladders, monkey bars, rings, and poles was strung across the length of the gym. The goal was to get all of the way across the series, but no one was able to do that. Missy, the one shown in this pic, made it the second farthest, and she is one tough chica! Climbing the ladder was pretty nuts in itself!

And then, yeah….we went and ate Mexican food and drank a couple of beers. After all, it was her 30th! 🙂

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I also wanted to send a quick shout out to Russ, the Wine Hiker! If y’all will remember from this post, I have had a few icons on my blog that have been black/blank for oh….a couple of months (Technology savvy, I am not!) I put a plea/whined on Twitter last week, and Russ came and saved me! He wrote up the correct HTML code for me, and when I was too stupid to figure that out, he actually went in and fixed everything for me.

Even better? He totally didn’t jack with my blog while he was in there! If that isn’t the sign of a good person, then I don’t know what is!

Bottom line? He reinforced my belief in the kindness of strangers, and I really appreciate it. Thank you again, Russ!

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Have you ever done a gladiator similar to this?

Would you like to do this for your birthday or do you think it is totally lame?!