Klemmer's Rat Race Was Insane For Making Bloggers Climb A Skyscraper On The Windiest Day Of The Year
"Did you look up the windiest spots in New York for the windiest fuckin' day of da mudder fuckin' year?!"
Outrageously strong wind speeds almost kept this episode of Rat Race from being filmed. The buildings in Manhattan make the city one giant mudder fuckin' wind tunnel, so on one of the windiest days in the history of New York City, there was no escaping the wrath of mother nature within the concrete jungle. Rat Race had a new wrinkle thrown in this time around called The Rat Trap - a challenge which involved climbing up the side of a sky scraper, and leaning off a platform 1,300 feet up in the air a.k.a. the windiest place you could possibly find in the city a.k.a #FrankWasRight.
We filmed the intro to the Rat Trap a week before the actual challenge, and while walking to Edge (the tallest observation platform in the western hemisphere) the producer said to me, "We will be able to film the challenge rain or shine. The only problem we'd run into would be incredibly high wind gusts, but don't worry they would have to be record high 60 mph winds for this place to close."
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Welp, that's the kiss of death. What a jinx. What a complete idiot. Because on the day of the challenge, I looked at my iPhone weather app, and there was a severe weather alert: wind gusts up to 55-60 mph. Walking to the challenge, the wind was so strong that it could almost sweep your feet out from under you, so 1,300 feet up in the air could only be worse.
The professional climbers in charge of Edge took everyone's safety seriously, and did a million tests on the platform to see if it would be safe for a bunch of Bambi legged bloggers to use, and the wind speeds were slightly under regulation, so we got the green light.
The challenge turned out great, and the whole episode is fantastic. Forcing someone to film at elevation during insane wind conditions almost made Klemmer the next Brian Kelly, BUT luckily everyone involved survived and Brian Kelly is still the only scumbag murderer. Go watch the episode.