Making a recumbent bike "desk" with off-the-shelf parts for under $400. Is it possible? I'm finding out.

I've needed to get back in shape for a while, but I'm working full time, then add 3-4 hours a day for day-care pickups, dinner prep, baths, bed time stories, etc. Then add another 60-90 minutes after the kids are off to bed that I have to be at home because the wife's still at work. The only way to get to the gym is to go at 10 p.m. or 4:30 a.m. The rest of my day is mostly booked.

But I'm sitting at my home office's desk right now, writing a blog post. I'll be sitting at it tomorrow, working on my novel. And I'll be sitting at it next month, working on learning Flash and programming a game. So why not get in some exercise while I'm sitting at my desk?

I could do a treadmill desk but they run pretty expensive, in the neighborhood of 2-4k. Additionally, the point of an exercise desk is that you exercise slowly enough that you can still concentrate on work, but you end up putting in more time because you do it for a few hours.

So, because it was cheaper, lower impact, and it looked more comfortable for putting in hours per day, I picked a recumbent bike. But when I went looking for an office solution, there was nothing. There were some hobbyists and a cheap upright bike with a desk. There were some stand alone pedaling thingamajobbers that go under your desk, but there were no solutions with completely "off-the-shelf" products that guaranteed I would not be bumping my knees whenI pedaled or having to sit too far back from my desk to reach the keyboard.

I started looking for something that I could fit over or around a recumbent bike, adjust to accomodate the movement of my legs, and maybe tilt up a bit in back and down in front to make it more friendly.

If you've ever been in the hospital, you've seen those long, thin tables for the hospital beds. They're sort of shaped like a big U on its side, so the wheeled base slides under the bed, the table slides over the bed, and the "bottom" of the U is adjustable so the table can be at the right height. I figured a table like that, coming in from the side, with adjustable height, would possibly create the right work environment.

Imagine my surprise when I found there are laptop caddy tables that offer a single support at the side, or at least off-center.

I ordered the Schwinn A20 recumbent bike from Amazon for $248.99 and the Windsor laptop stand for $89.99.

And here's how they look together...
  

It all works together nicely, but just works. Having it in a comfortable position puts both the side pole and the under-table support within an inch or two of being hit by my knee/leg. I was, however, able to do a nice 2 miles on it in a test run during the set-up without hitting anything and comfortably typing away. When I needed to do something sort of precise, I found myself slowing down my bicycling so I could concentrate on what I was doing with my hands, but overall it worked very nicely.

Two things that will take some fine-tuning to cure. The first one is that I have everything angled so I get the reflection of the office window on my glossy screen. Turning/positioning the whole shebang better should handle that. The second was that the table is slightly wobbly on carpet. Sliding a board under the bike and putting the table on the solid surface helped immensely with the wobbling.

Now the question will be whether I can use this consistently and knock down the miles and calories while I use my laptop, and whether I can actually work at it well, not just answer e-mails, facebook, and watch videos.

I'll post again in a couple of weeks to let you know.

Part of the concept of the site is that I invite people to submit reasons to be happy. My mom did it and she provided an interesting insight on it that I wasn't expecting: it made her think about what makes her happy and just added to her happiness because it brought all those good thoughts to mind. Bonus!

If you haven't visited Tweeted Blessings yet, do it. If you haven't told your friends about it yet... do you hate your friends and not want them to be happy? Go, enjoy some reasons to be happy and then share them. Help start a happiness pandemic.

Some of you may remember my post on counting your blessings last month. That incident sparked something in me. Besides helping reverse a descent into a dark place, it made me want to share that insight... that there are all these reasons to be happy all around us.

So I built Tweeted Blessings to find and share those reasons... in small, bite-sized pieces. Right now, I'm generating all the reasons because it just went public today, but hopefully people will tweet in or mail in their reasons, and it will become a little juggernaut of happiness.

I'm having a hard enough time finding work right now, so I decided to make some... this site. What better way to spend some of my time than working on something intended to spread happiness.

So, please, copy the video URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVh1T3I4TiQ

Send it to your friends, tell them to send it to their friends. Help me snowball this into an avalanche of joy. As an added benefit, you help keep me indoors working on positive projects.

Thanks!