Minneapolis, MN
During the dark and snowy days of Minnesota winters, I came up with a way to keep me motivated while exercising.
I call it Spinball!
It dawned on me one day that the width of a pinball machine wasn't too much different than the handlebars on my bicycle, so that lead to the idea of combining my trainer with a pinball machine. Spinball was born.
Simply mount the bike on a trainer, remove the front wheel and rotate the handlebars out of the way to get the bike as close as possible without actually touching the machine. Handlebars may need to be moved off to the side slightly if the plunger is in the way- you won't be using them anyway. Then just spin as normal on the bike, but instead of resting your hands on the hoods of the brakes, just play pinball!
My front fork mounts were custom made by a friend of mine who liked this idea so much he used his shop skills to put together some aluminum stands for me, but earlier incarnations of Spinball had the front fork simply sitting on an upside-down milk crate on a couple 2x4's. There is almost no weight applied to the front fork in this setup anyway, and you're not steering, so almost anything will suffice.
It's admittedly not great for nudging the machine while playing, so your scores may suffer, but I have found I can absolutely get a 30+ minute exercise session in without a complaint. I actually look forward to exercise now.
If you've got a new year's resolution coming to lose some weight, this might be worth a try!
