New Bike....New story

FINALLY bought a bike!! I have not had a bike since I was a little kid…..in fact, I have had only one bike my entire life prior to this bike purchase.
Well, the opportunity recently presented itself for me to get a bike, and after some debate, I bought it (I should’ve debated within myself just a little bit longer as you will discover soon)
Well, I placed my order and after a couple of missed FedEx deliveries, I had my box with my precious bike inside of it….
I should have been scared at that point, but I was oblivious of the pain that was soon to come.
I should have been scared when I read on the box “Some assembly required” and then a list of tools I have never heard of (but, I was just thinking this was due to my lack of tool experience)….but I wasn’t then….

I should have been scared when I borrowed tools from my coworker…but I wasn’t…

And I should have definitely been scared when I opened the box and saw the poor bike tightly packed inside….I was kind of scared then.

Well, I had one of my friends stay the night to 1) stay with me when the Time Warner Guy came to FINALLY put internet in my studio (that’s right…no more stealing unprotected wifi’s for me) and 2) TO HELP ME PUT MY BIKE TOGETHER! Hahaa!

Well, I can honestly say if it wasn’t for my friend, I would have definitely left the bike in pieces. On my patio...no joke.

How hard can assembling a bike be when all you have to do is put on the FRONT WHEEL, HANDELBARS, KICKSTAND, SEAT and REFLECTORS?? Actually, it’s pretty difficult and requires a lot of brainpower and energy…..
Let me just say for the record, that the front end came out of the box in the reversed direction that it should have been facing…..This statement is really important because when we screwed in the front wheel, the tire hit the frame making it impossible to turn the handlebars (at this point I was thinking “oh great! Does this mean I have to ride in circles from now on??”). Well, we figured something was not right and I was ready to blame the people who manufactured the bike…..the Time Warner Guy walks out of my studio and sees us on the porch and says “I think the Front part is twisted the wrong way”…or something to that affect….and then the light clicked on and we figured out what was wrong….Let me just say that just getting the wheel on took AT LEAST 45 minutes…I want to say it took an hour, but don’t want to seem like I’m exaggerating. HA!

Ok…so everything is coasting along all hunky dory (did I just say “hunky dory”? ….yes…I think I did…), and we get to the handlebars….dun dun DUUUUNNN! Well, we were thinking that one of the tools that we needed to use was a large wrench…and since I only had a regular sized wrench, I went to my neighbors house to ask to borrow a wrench…he didn’t have one but said that a different neighbor might have one….

Well, that particular neighbor happened to have been sweeping his porch earlier in the morning so he knew we were putting my bike together…well, bottom line, I ended up with all the neighbors on my porch doing a “once over” on the bike…they even put air in my tires with their air compressor….all in all, I have some nice neighbors, but it was still awkward to have to ask!

After all that work though, my friend and I rode the bike one time around the parking lot and then went back to my studio on to the next project (which happened to be cooking our lunch!)
This ends the tale of the construction of a bike.

-DB