Treadmill Work Out

I know most of you are thinking, "Duh. Treadmills are made to give people workouts." But in this case, it was bringing the treadmill into the house and setting it up that ended up being the true workout. And Andrew's in all the pictures, not just because I was the one taking them, but because he did all the work with it - my feeble arms were just not up to the task! The sad part is that this was technically his Christmas gift from me, but he ended up putting all the work into getting it to work!

Our tale starts on Tuesday, where it was seriously FREEZING in Boston - I'm talking close to zero temps with the windchill, where your fingers felt like they were getting frostbite after a minute of exposure. This was the night that our treadmill was delivered. As it cost an extra $100 to get the treadmill delivered into your house, rather than "curbside," we opted for drop-off in one of our driveways. Andrew used his brute strength to push the gigantic box through our garage to the other driveway:

I don't know if you can tell how big the box is from this angle, but I think Andrew could lie in it comfortably without having his head or feet touch the top or bottom of the box - it's probably eight to nine feet long and four to five feet wide:

Since it was cold and hard to maneuver the box with gloves on, we literally had to go into the house every few minutes to warm our hands as we figured out how to move the box. Even with a two wheeler, it was hard to keep the box from tipping over as it was extremely heavy and the wind kept blowing it over. Keep in mind, this is with the box emptied of everything but the main track portion of the treadmill - it was incredibly heavy and Andrew refused to let me lift it as he was afraid it would fall on me. In the end, he ended up using the two wheeler and supported it with his back up our sloped driveway and around the hedges to our front walkway:

It was around this point that I told Andrew that it would've been well worth it to pay the delivery guy to bring into our house!

After several more minutes spent maneuvering the box down on its side to fit through our front hedges, Andrew pushed it to the front door. Since the box was too heavy for us to lift over the door's lip, Andrew very cleverly had me push an old roll of carpet beneath the box as he lifted to create a ramp for the box to be pushed over. At this point, it looks like I'm doing serious work to get the box through the door...

...but really, it was Andrew taking a quick shot of me before he continued to push the heavy box through the door:

The box took up most of the room in wood-paneled den, which we had previously used just for storage. Between the cold and the effort put into getting the box into the house, we decided to wait until the weekend to build the treadmill:

I use the word "we" but it was really Andrew that put the treadmill together. Here's Andrew figuring out how to slip the cardboard box from the track - it was too heavy for us to lift and remove it that way:


Andrew studying the instructions to figure out how to attach the side panels. Literally, my role at this point was "spotting" him to make sure the track didn't fall on him as he tightened the side panels from the bottom. There was a piece of cardboard that came in the box to hold the treadmill that literally did more heavy lifting than I did!

Success! Andrew attaches the control panel to the treadmill and is thisclose to having it ready to go:

Thanks to Andrew's hard work, our treadmill is up and running (haha). It faces our tiny TV but also offers an iPod dock for music and best yet, a built-in fan!

Here's to a healthier 2010 for us as we whip ourselves into wedding shape.