Stairway to Hell (or Running with the Devil)

I remember thinking to myself, a long time ago, that classic beliefs about heaven being somewhere above us and hell somewhere below must be wrong. This was due to the fact that people kept talking about a stairway to heaven. That would only make sense (to me) if it was going down. I mean - who the hell would expect you to climb what would surely be an endless series of stairs to get to heaven?

This all came back to me as the four of us (Misha and Ali, Tessa and myself) were looking for a parking place in the town of Bisbee, Arizona. We were all pretty tired. Waking up at 05:40 can do that to you. And I guess we were all feeling (to some degree) what Ali so nicely put into words: not only do I have to wake up so early on a Saturday morning and drive for a couple of hours, I also have to pay someone for the right to run!

The "run" was the Bisbee 1000 - a 5K race which goes up and down Bisbee's streets and surrounding hills. The "up" part of the "up and down" is done by climbing a series of stairs - over a 1000 stairs (1034 to be exact) in all.


Once the car was parked we went over to the registration desk. We picked up our number-badges and high-tech ankle timing chips and were getting ourselves ready when we noticed Ali's number.


All those stairs and now this.... to me this was proof enough that we were on our way to hell (if not already there). As if that wasn't enough the organizers also have a mini-race which is called the ice-man competition. This competition "requires that you climb a set of 155 stairs while carrying a ten pound block of ice in a set of antique metal tongs".


So hell had finally frozen over. Yikes. Bad news. The end of the world was coming. I was 99% sure of it. And the Bisbee church was happy to provide me with the missing 1%:


See you all in the next life!