Now what do I do?

[howeird]

It's a LONG time between 9 am and 12:30, so I dragged the box with the exercise bike into the livingroom, pulled everything out, and read the directions. "Some" assembly required, my ass. They did make it simpler than most bikes, but by the time I had everything laid out and had read the instructions it was time to stuff my baritone into the trunk and go to Shoup Park for the band concert.

The way the concerts work, we don't know what we are playing, or in what order, until we get there and grab a program. There are hints during the rehearsals, but this first month was also for trying out new numbers and reviewing old ones to see if they should be retired.

Since this is Memorable Day weekend, we did a lot of patriotic stuff. And this is the only time except the 4th of July when we play the Star Sprinkled Banana. I won't be at the 4th ceremonies this year, Westercon calls. westercon66

On the way home I stopped off at Draeger's expecting them to have the sheep milk cheese I like, but they didn't. They had some other stuff of the goat milk kind which I got. Next stop, The Milk Pail, which did have the sheep milk cheeses, and I also grabbed three chunks of fondue cheese and a sourdough bastard for tonight's dinner. In the back of my mind I thought there might be an ingredient which I also should have bought, but couldn't think what.

Home, tried some almond butter as a snack (Diabetes doc suggested it) but that stuff is not very tasty, I ended up making an & jelly sandwich with it. That worked.

Got down to assembling the bike, and hit a snag right off. The first thing to attach was the rear cross piece on which the bike stands. There is a similar front piece. In the instructions, the two pieces have different part numbers, but their drawings are identical. IRL one has wheel-like inserts, the other doesn't. After a while I just guessed. Managed to not miss any pieces until the very end. There is a holder which needs two screws to attach to the bike. I have no idea what it is supposed to hold. It is too thin to hold a water bottle. Maybe it can hold a cell phone or music player. Anyway, I can't find the second screw. When I vacuumed after the build (lots of Styrofoam bits) I heard what could have been a small screw get sucked up. I don't think it's worth digging for.

Time for dinner. Fondue requires more assembly than I remembered. And the thing I forgot to buy was white wine, but I still had half a jug of something cheap, so no worries. It took a while to grate all the cheese, even using the food processor.

It came out great, I finished about half a loaf of sourdough. There is enough left over for omelets, I just need some eggbeaters which are not past their expiration date.

I bought this particular bike because it's supposed to fold up for storage, but folded up it only takes up about 2 feet less room. :-(

I tried it out, it works well, has a smooth feel (magnetic traction) and I got the seat height right the first time.

Plans for tomorrow:
No clue.

Comments

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

Here's a bit of overkill for you and other hardware-droppers like me. Who drops more hardware than anyone? Roofers. I just had my roof replaced, and noticed that they use an industrial magnet on a stick for cleanup to get most (not all!) of the leftover hardware off the lawn. These are available at Home Depot. If you don't want to go that far, what I use is my late father's grabber, which has a magnet on the end that will pick up about one screw. Something like that would have nicely pulled the lost bit of hardware out of all the styrefoam. Perhaps.