stationary bike shenanigans

Today I rode the stationary bike for an hour. I went just over 20 miles. Brandt, who is still sick but acts like he's completely well when under the influence of Tylenol, came down and played in the workout room while I ran. He walked on the treadmill (with the safety attached and me 1 foot away) for a few minutes. After he grew bored of moving the incline up and down, he moved to the workout bench and did acrobatics on the lat-pull bar for a while. All this time I was engrossed in "Becoming Jane, " a very good movie for Jane Austen fans--which I am and Brandt isn't.
Soon his boredom drove him to invent a fun new pastime for when Mommy is on the bike. He found that he could throw objects at my rapidly turning feet, and the objects would fly across the room. He gave his own commentary along the way. "Cool!", or "See that??" He tried light objects, like his slippers and small stuffed dinosaur. He tried heavy objects, like 5 lb disk weights, which he didn't throw but quickly and methodically placed just behind my foot so that I would come to an abrupt stop. He thought that was hilarious. Then he found a pillow just big enough that when I kicked it, it bounced against the wall behind the bike and back to my foot in time to be hit again. When he saw this outcome he said, "That's totally awesome!!" And I pretty much let him experiment. The heavy objects only got one try, though.
I remember as a child when we had a triple bunk bed, that top bunk was the perfect launch pad to test out how things would react to being thrown into the turning ceiling fan. I specifically remember placing a Barbie on each fan blade then turning on the fan and quickly taking cover in the Earthquake Drill Position. Screams ensued. My parents were, of course, not in the vicinity of these experiments. Those are fond memories; and so, thanks to a good movie that kept his mommy's interest away from dealing with his shenanigans, he got to conduct his own experiments in centrifugal force.