Orange Bike, The Trilogy: Part One

After several months of mourning the loss of green bike, Alex decided it was time to get a new one. He didn't really want another $20 bike, but he didn't want a top of the line bike either. Nor even a middle of the road one it would seem. Alex went online and purchased a lovely orange cruiser bike from Amazon for $100.

The bike arrived IN A BOX! Like IKEA furniture. But with worse instructions on how to put it together. The directions came in 14 languages, so perhaps they were intelligible in Albanian.

I was not going to get sucked into this one! He was on his own.

It took 2 days before he asked for help. I think the only reason he finally succumbed is that it was lying in shambles all over the living room and he got tired of me laughing every time he tripped on it.

I have to admit, I could not solve this riddle. We were able to put on the right pedal, but the left pedal wouldn't screw on.

After an hour, I decided to call George. George deserves an entire blog post to himself. Actually, an entire blog to himself. Let me just say that George knows everything. He has been, over the course of 20 years, my mentor, doctor, family, friend, handyman and therapist.

I began to tell George the problem and he cut me off, "reverse tread". Huh? I didn't even finish my sentence. And what in the five boroughs was a reverse tread? He explained, "screw it in counter-clockwise."

I kept him on the line while I tried out his theory. 10 seconds later the second pedal was screwed in.

I like to think my husband and I are relatively intelligent. Apparently, relatively is the operative word. In that moment, we both felt utterly humiliated in our complete stupidity. And then, we laughed about it for 20 minutes.

Coming soon in The Orange Bike Trilogy: Part Two - The Fortune Teller of 86th Street.