going nowhere fast

Whilst we had a stationary exercise-cycle device at home when I was smallish it's not something I've ever missed enough to want to acquire one of my own as an adult. It was a useful thing to have sitting around the house (usually stuffed in the extension, where the floor was lino-covered concrete rather than noise-transmitting floorboards and where it disturbed no-one except anyone wanting to get past to go out of the back door, use the toilet, access the freezer or get at the washing machine, ironing-board or any of the many cupboards around the wall) s it meant that it was possible to turn watching television or listening to the radio into a non-sedentary activity, though the only television usually able to be watched whilst using the cycle was one of the wee analogue dial-tuned black-and-white things, both of which still work and one of which is still used as the kitchen telly, though only until this October without the aid of a digibox. It was primarily intended as a weight-loss-aiding device for my dad but as everyone in the house cycled it was a relatively non-offensive form of aerobic exercise if it was too windy to make cycling or running outside any fun or if the grass was too long to be able to skip on the lawn.

I started vaguely looking at real-bicycle-appendage indoor training devices during the winter after spending almost a week without cycling when the rutted ice outside was too rutted and icy but never got any further than looking at prices when my sister revealed that she had a slightly broken but allegedly quite good (and rim-using rather than tyre-wearing) spare; her husband is a personal trainer and probably has a cupboard full of carbon-framed disc-braked pro version turbo trainers. After a few wasted chances to swap it when we met at winter festive period and when she popped up for Edgar's birthday I finally picked it up when visiting our parents last week. The resistance-adjusting gear-cable thing doesn't work but can probably be persuaded to using a spare gear lever from my old bike. At the moment it's only really detectably resistance-applying when the bike's in its highest gear, though it still feels a bit like cycling downhill with a tailwind and having to pedal to maintain a high speed rather than imitating cycling up a hill or at variable speed along the flat, though there is a sort of simulated-momentum effect where the wee spinning thing keeps spinning slightly after applying a wee burst of speed. It's very hard to judge what it's equivalent to in terms of normal cycling but it's at least doing something as (especially without the cooling effect of the ncreased airflow usually experienced when cycling normally) a noticeable heating is experienced along with a slightly raised pulse, though I didn't want to go too fast as there was only a thin double pane of glass between me and a sleeping Edgar and it's probably also noisy enough to irritate nearby neighbours, though I'd specifically chosen tonight to try it as there were lots of them sitting outside yapping and a little extra noise didn't seem too unreasonable.