Going nowhere fast

I got a bike trainer. No, my bike doesn't need training and a bike trainer is not a person. It's a thing you attach to a bike that allows you to simulate a riding experience, or to put it differently, that allows you to pretend to ride your bike inside.

In truth, this is profoundly silly. As a general rule I hate to exercise by pretending to do stuff. Treadmills, rowers, and especially climbing stairs, all ways to pretend to do something. And a big reason I bike for exercise is because it's fun. The biggest single difference between the pretend activities and the real ones is the lack of fun. I mean, it's nice that I don't have to wear a helmet when I pretend ride, although I can't quite get over the fear that the bike is going to somehow wiggle loose and I'll careen toward the basement steps at 20 miles an hour (and 20 miles an hour, while slow in a car, is very fast when you're indoors). But the only way I'll feel the wind in my face if I turn on the fan.

The best thing about pretend riding is that you can watch TV while you're doing it. All of my attempts to do that when riding on the streets have been brutal failures. But what am I going to watch? As hard as I look, I can't find any shows that are wordless video of passing countryside, so I need some options. Commercials are annoying, and I don't want to have to keep changing channels. The best thing I've found so far is soccer. If you can start watching right around the beginning of a half, they run for at least 45 minutes straight. Fortunately, on Comcast there's lots of soccer on channel 1513, and I just like the idea of watching channel 1513 anyway.