Thanks

It's Thanksgiving tomorrow, the holiday that demarcates to slow decline into another depressing  round of commercialism disguised as altruism, followed by two brutal months of artic suffering in January and February (at least in Wisconsin).

But this year I'm immune to it thanks to two things: COVID-19 and indoor smart cycling. I'm kind of glad COVID put the kibosh on the usual holiday hassles. It also put the kibosh on our gym membership, which is why Deborah and I invested in smart bike trainers. These contraptions allow you to ride your own bike indoors on virtual bike routes all over the world, with high resolution videos of the places you are biking through. The trainers are smart because they link to cycling apps via Bluetooth and they respond to actual changes in terrain, increasing the resistance if you are going up a hill, for example.

I've been able to bike fair distances almost every day since we bought the trainers. This in turn has allowed me to eat more calories each day, something I very much like to do. I have two bike rides scheduled for tomorrow on account of it being Thanksgiving, and I plan to make a lot of yummie food that I'll need to compensate for.

The End.

Virtual Bike Riding

Deborah's and my new smart bike trainers are fantastic. These are going to be a game changer for exercising during the Wisconsin winter when it's too cold to go outside and too zombie apocalyptic to go to a gym. We canceled our gym memberships over the summer and spent the early fall debating what to do for winter exercise, in between walks and bike rides outside in the uncharacteristically mild fall weather. Mid-level smart bike trainers were what we opted for. These will pay for themselves in about a year in money saved on a gym membership, not including the $15/month membership for the smart bike trainer ride apps that connect to the trainers and simulate actual real world bike rides (riding our own actual bikes, which attach to the trainers). $15/month definitely beats the $90+/month we were paying for a family gym membership. Plus, we can have multiple family members on one membership in the cycling app called Rouvy, which is what we'll likely use, having expired at least one of our free Zwift (another app) trials as of this writing. There's also an app called RGT Cycling, which is indefinitely free and works well (although it's limited to just a handful of routes and training regimens unless/until you upgrade to the paid premium membership). This morning, we participated in a group ride on RGT Cycling, which included me, Deborah, and my buddy Brian from California, all of us transported to Europe, virtually and instantly, for a ride through some computer rendered Italian countryside. There were about 20 other cyclist on the ride, who all pretty much lapped us. But we didn't care. It was our first such virtual group ride, and thus very much experimental. No matter what cycling app we end up subscribing to (probably Rouvy), it will be nice to have RGT Cycling available for free.

I think that's about it.