After breakfast this morning, I decided to tackle Dennis's rollers: a contraption of metal rolling pins on which to ride your bike in place. p.s.- Dennis made us pancakes for breakfast. It was the first time I had seen someone put eggs into the pancake batter (along with bananas and apples). Maybe that's why they were so good. Anyways, so I dug his rollers out of the closet and set them up on the deck between the garage and the hottub so I had something to hold onto if I needed to. I started with my hands securely on the bars and a mosquito almost immediately attacked me. Uh-oh, I was going to have to learn more quickly then I had planned. So I quickly learned to take one hand off the bars. Then I practiced changing my hand positions. Eventually I worked up the courage to take a drink out of my water bottle. By the end of an hour of spinning and staring at my front wheel spinning on the roller I had managed to ride without hands, stand up, and even raise my head to look up for half seconds at a time.

For those of you that are laughing at me for finding this so challenging I will claim that you've never attempted to ride on rollers. I think the challenge is more mental than physical. In all reality, it's not any harder than riding your road bike down a straight sidewalk one foot wide. Balancing your bike without actually moving in unnerving. Basically you have to convince yourself that you can actually sit on your bike, clipped into the pedals, and balance, unsupported (unlike in a trainer where the rear wheel is stablized), all without the sensation of moving forward. Try it.