Trainer vs. riding outdoors

My daughters took a pillow and put it on the top tube then used a chair to each take a turn climbing atop the pillow and pedaling my bike on the trainer. I put the bike in the easiest gear and they pushed it through a few revolutions. More than I've gotten to do so far.

One key difference between riding out in, e.g., Central Park vs. trying to use the trainer: when you're out on the bike in the Park, your family can't come up with priority requests for assistance with their projects etc. etc. -- once you're out the door, you're more-or-less free (esp. if you turn off your cell phone :-) ). I think the thing to do is get up very early, slip out the bedroom door and spin. Admittedly, part of the interference issues come from parking this contraption in the family room where everyone is coming and going etc.; if I clean out my office and get the file cabinet put back I might have a chance at the "out of sight, out of mind" effect.

Mind you, most of what was asked of me was important -- the trouble comes from lack of pre-planning on the part of the requester (or her teacher). Perhaps that's an overly-cynical system sort of administrator perspective.

I had to start work extra early this morning for a system migration test (which failed due to ineptness of various other departments who are notorious for things like hard-coding IP addresses into configuration and source code) so I get to leave at 5PM instead of 6PM (I already did my overtime this morning . Of course, that still gets me home well after my daughters get home from school -- and even if I do get in some spinning, they will subject me to much loud complaining if I dare to put on a TV show/movie of which they do not approve (not on moral grounds, mind you -- it's not the 'mature audiences' thing, it's Daddy's taste for things like "Enter the Dragon", "Golden Voyage of Sinbad", "Fistful of Dollars" etc.).