Day 20 of the Spanking Blog Challenge

I love my treadmill desk. It allows me to get some exercise in and write at the same time. I first heard about such a thing on the Kboard’s writer’s cafe. They were talking about treadmill desks that cost $1600! Holy Cow! There’s no way I could spend that kind of money. Especially since I already owned a treadmill. My treadmill is a pretty decent one, though a bit old. I bought it somewhere around 2001 I think. But it was still working great and there was no need to spend such an exorbitant amount of money for a new treadmill.

One of the posters on the writer’s cafe mentioned they had modified their treadmill with a shelf to hold their laptop and Voila! Treadmill Desk for super cheap bucks. I drove myself to my favorite big box do-it-yourself home store and purchased a 48″ shelf that was 10 inches wide, 4 u-shaped clamps, and a little bag of 10 screws. I only needed 8 screws but the bag had 10. The entire cost of these items was under $14!

I placed the shelf on the the arms of my treadmill – luckily mine stick straight out – and put my laptop on it. It was almost a perfect fit. I could have used a 12 inch wide shelf, but what the heck, it was fine like it was. Then I took those clamps screwed them into the the bottom of the shelf  and I had my own Voila! moment. Here’s the result.

I didn’t do well with walking and typing at the same time. I could do all right at just over 2mph but anything faster and I had all kinds of typos. So I installed Dragon Naturally Speaking and little by little I worked my way up in speed to 2.7mph. So far anything faster than that makes Dragon mess up because I’m gasping for breath after 20 minutes or so. I can walk for 1 hour and 9 minutes and during that time I get between 1200 and 1700 words written. Not bad for what I always considered a total waste of time. There’s so much I can do in that time I’m on the treadmill. But now that I can write, I actually look forward to it.

Of course, it’s summer now and I live in the desert so I must swim. I swim a half mile every day, 64 lengths of my pool. If only I could devise a way to type while I swim. Maybe a waterproof covering for my laptop that could balance on a kickboard as I kick my way back and forth in the pool. Hmmm…I wonder if that’s an idea for a viable invention..

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