Ride from 'ell

Back in the day - back in high school - I was in Track. You know, where you run in circles 'til the cows come home. That used to bore the crap outta me. That's why I liked running Cross Country... you never saw the same cinder twice. Got to run thru the woods - sometimes fast, sometimes not so fast, but the scenery was better than any cinder I ever saw on a quarter mile track. Flash forward 30 years and 40 pounds (hey, stop laughing - I was a friggin' stick in high school and coulda used maybe 20 of those 40 pounds). Nowadays it's not cool to ride mountain bikes when the trails are sloppy... and of course the trails are often sloppy during the faux winters here in g-d southeast PA thanks to daily highs in the 30s and 40s. So what's a guy without a road bike to do? Well yer looking at it. Yeah, the picture above. Its my wife's 1988 Trek 820 "Antelope" hunkered down on a mag trainer. Yeah, it reminds me of track practice... whir whir whir friggin' whir and going NOWHERE. But it's gotta be done. Now you're saying to yourself, "I don't recall pipe clamps on the front of those old Treks?!" And you'd be dead nuts on. To take the edge off some of the boredom, I read while spinning my wheel. The bottom end of the pipe clamp is resting on the trainer's front wheel stand. A ball bungee holds the pipe to the bar. And the Pony clamp on the pipe is holding a clipboard, which is holding a book. Only problem is the plastic clipboard bounces a bit, so I need to find one of those fossilesque wooden clipboards. But it works pretty well. Now an hour on the trainer goes by in what seems like a mere 58 minutes. Now if I could figger out a way to keep sweat from dripping on the pages...