Say it ain't so.

It's a sad day. One that marks a change with long-term psychological and lifestyle ramifications. It's a day cyclists point to with foreboding. With sadness. With gloom. With, well, I'm running out of adjectives.

It's not the end of the racing season I reference. And it's not daylight savings, although that bag of fun is coming soon too.

No, this evening, I rode the indoor trainer for the first time this season. And it's not even autumn yet. (editor's note: actually this happened last week, but Rider 3's multi-part book review got in the way of posting this sooner.)

If you've been riding for more than a year or two you likely know of what I speak. And while some minority of riders actually LIKE riding a trainer, much like there are some people that enjoy wine coolers or having fillings replaced, I am most definitely not one of those riders.

You see in addition to being as boring as, say, watching grass grow, I have a theory about riding an indoor trainer. My observation is that it temporarily drops a person's I.Q. by at least 25 points. Of course I have no idea what 25 points actually equates to in real-world terms.

But I do know that last year, in the depth of winter, I watched Driven, the car-racing movie starring Sylvester Stallone. If you're not familar with this fine example of film making, it's loosely, and I mean loosely, based on the Drama with a capital D surrounding a fictitious Formula 1 auto racing season. And after the movie's gripping conclusion, which saw Sly's protege find his mojo on the racetrack by humming while driving, I thought to myself, "huh, that movie was kind of good."

Seriously? As a friend put it, Driven singlehandedly put open-wheel racing back 20 years in this country. Really, it's quite horrible.

So, I guess winter is on the way. Dark evenings certainly are, anyway. Unfortunately, living in Spokane, riding indoors is part of my reality. Hopefully my I.Q., and a couple of other important things, will survive a long winter.