1._Finding Peace

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And, really, it took me a while to find peace with that. I really did feel bad about it, but I had to bootstrap myself up from somewhere, and I couldn’t think of a better alternative than the gear store.

A gun shop I’d’ve gotten shot at for sure, a pawnshop too. I think I heard a statistic somewhere that something like 80% of pawnshop owners keep guns on them, or close to that.

Besides, what would I even take from a pawnshop?

Guitars? Too heavy.

Bikes? Too cumbersome.

Guns or Gems? Those’d be locked up in a safe and I don’t know how to break into a safe.

That’s the reason I couldn’t do a bank either. Well, that and the fact that they’ve got security and cameras and all kinds of people going in and out all the time. Too many eyes watching.

And I heard another stat somewhere that bank robberies are one of the most solved crimes. “Clearance rate” is what they call it, and it’s 60-something-% for that particular crime. Honestly lower than I’d’ve expected, but still too high for me.

So that basically left me with grocery stores, liquor stores, and shopping centers. You know, retail places.

But those places all lock up their cash in a safe overnight too, so if I wanted actual greenbacks I’d have to rob them during business hours, and realistically I’d probably only manage a few registers worth of bills anyways.

So what, a couple hundred, maybe a thousand bucks max?

Not worth the risk. Retail stores also have cameras everywhere. And nowadays more an’ more have armed guards too.

How was I supposed to take on an armed guard? I didn’t even have a gun yet.

Even if I did have one, I didn’t want to hurt some poor guy just doing his job.

I only wanna hurt people that actually deserve it, you know what I mean?

So anyways, cash was off the table basically. Big sums would be locked away where I couldn’t get to them, and any smaller sums I could get to came with too high a risk of either getting shot in act, or busted like a week later when my face was plastered all over the news and crimestopper websites.

So I needed steal a thing. Ideally something light, small, easy to move, and worth a lot, but that wouldn’t be locked up after hours.

And I was tryna think of all the things that fit this criteria. I was racking my brain. I even said to Wave “Wave, I am racking my fuckin’ brains out on this!” and he didn’t say anything back because he’s just a dog, but right after I said it, it clicked.

Maybe it’s because I heard myself say “rack”, or maybe my subconscious had already figured it out and just chose that exact moment to give me the epiphany, but i realized then that racks were exactly what I was looking for. Or at least parts of them.

Not slings or webbing or any of the fabric stuff like harnesses. Not even biners or whole quickdraws necessarily.

I mean, sure, some of those are pricey, but Black Diamond Camalots are no bigger, and they sell for $90 apiece.

The gear shop had heaps of them, just hanging behind the desk, not locked up or anything.

I had just been in there with Gus not 3 days before because he needed a new water bowl for Wave, so I remembered the selection pretty well, but I went back again to give myself a refresher on the layout and to see if there were any other small big-ticket items I could snatch, and oh boy were there ever!

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The Big Bros were right next to all the cams. There were at about ten of each size 1 through 4, and I saw four #5s, which go for $400 apiece despite being basically just a foot long piece of pipe. Talk about small, light, and expensive. I figured I could fit all the Big Bros and most of the cams in a large hiking pack.

And of course they had plenty of those there too, but I just used my own 70 liter.

Breaking in and taking a pack off the shelf and opening it up and adjusting the straps and all that before even getting to the main course would eat way too much time.

I just emptied mine out and saved myself the trouble.

It was like being a kid in a candy store looking at all that gear. I made sure I didn’t stare too long though. What would they think if they checked their cameras after the break-in and saw a dude of similar build had been scoping out the store? That would be majorly no bueno.

I thought maybe it wasn’t a good idea to get a mask and gloves in town either, just in case the cops pulled video from other places after the robbery, so I drove to Grand Junction and got all that stuff there.

I mean, I didn’t drive there just for that.

My buddy, Bryce, had hit me up earlier that month and said he was moving there and needed help with all his shit, so I gave him a hand and we climbed in the canyon for a few days after he got everything settled and I just bought the balaclava and shit while I was up there hanging with him. Was nice to get a shower too, it’d been a couple weeks.

So after nailing those 2 birds with 1 stone I drove back, but I made sure to stay away from the center of town, or at least kept my van out of sight.

I parked in the neighborhoods over east by the cemetery and dog park and just kinda hung out during the day.

Nighttimes I walked around and casually strolled past the store until I could figure out what route was gonna be best to take. I found a nice cinderblock in an alley a block away as well.

I really did feel bad. I’d’ve so much preferred it if I could’ve stolen from a bank, since those places are insured. I wondered if a gear shop had insurance for stuff like that.

I made a promise to myself or the universe or whatever, that if I ever made it through all of this, I would go back someday and buy thousands of dollars worth of their stuff to balance the karma.

I don’t believe in karma, but I promised anyway.

There was a hotel across the parking lot from the shop, but there never seemed to be any late-night check-ins or outs, and the back entrance was kind of blocked by this big green dumpster, so it wasn’t really line-of-sight with anything anyways. I had watched the place a few nights from around midnight to 4, and it seemed pretty dead during those hours.

I decided that 2am was as good a time as any.

I slid my van door shut as lightly and quietly as I could while still actually shutting it all the way and then with the pack on I walked past the park and the seminary and then cut up through the trees along Mill Creek Parkway and pulled my mask and gloves on. Well, actually, I didn’t pull the mask over my face, I just kept it high on my head like a beanie so that it was ready to pull down. It was chilly, but not so chilly that anyone would be wearing a full ski mask. That would’ve looked a little suspicious I think.

I stayed up in the trees north of Mill Creek until right before that campground and then I cut down behind the grocery store and across the street. I waited for about 15 minutes by the corner of the inn to make sure there were no stragglers about, then I pulled the mask down and trotted over to the gear shop.

I grabbed the cinderblock I’d put behind the dumpster, and the ratty towel I’d folded under it. I wrapped it up in the cloth and heaved it against the glass. It didn’t muffle as much as I would’ve liked, but it was better than nothing.

I reached through, unlocked the door, and propped it open real quick with the cinderblock. My heart was, like, exploding out of my chest as I ran over, jumped the counter, whipped my bag off, held it up under each row of cams, and just started grabbing the farthest ones back and pulling whole lines of ‘em into the bag, over and over.

A couple times I stopped to shake the bag real good to get everything to settle better to the bottom, and after I’d tossed the Big Bros in there was still more room than I had expected, so I pulled a bunch of biners and draws and GriGris into the bag too. I had actually completely overlooked the GriGris—can you believe that? Thank god I noticed them, hundred bucks a pop is fuckin’ good.

It had probably only taken, like, 4 minutes to fill the bag. There wasn’t an alarm blaring or anything, at least not one that I could hear, but I thought that they maybe had a silent one, and also the pack already had like 40 or 50 pounds of loot, so I decided it was time to leave.

I cinched it up real quick and threw it on and got those hip straps nice and tight and then footed it out the door.

That weight added up, I’ll tell you that much. It wasn’t even a mile to the van, but about halfway back I realized I was winded. I mean, like, I still felt like I could’ve sprinted a marathon, but I just noticed at that point that my whole body was shaking and trembling and my lungs felt like they were stretching 3 times as big as normal on each breath. I’m pretty sure adrenaline was the only thing keeping my sprint up.

I think I remember hearing statistics about how adrenaline gives people 5 times the strength and stamina of a normal human, like they can lift cars off of children and run to the hospital with people on their backs, shit like that.

Seems true in my experience.

I tossed the shit in the van and immediately headed towards I-70. I’d filled up earlier that morning so I knew I could make it almost all the way to Denver, but I stopped in Grand Junction again because after an hour I was nodding off at the wheel. Adrenaline crash I assume.

I didn’t bother telling Bryce I was in town. I was just passing through and I planned to be off-grid for a while anyways.

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