Rooting AGAINST the Eagles?, E-Bike comedy
The Eagles romped all over the Cowboys last night which I was very happy about. However, being in a fantasy football league changes the way you look at games. The situation was this, I was 2 points ahead of my opponent. He had Terrell Owens and The Eagles D on his team, I had Jason Witten and Brian Westbrook. The outcome of these players was going to decide my FF game. When Owens jumped out to the quick TD’s I was happy for the Birds but I was assessing the point total against me at the same time. When the Eagles were in close and Levens scored the TD, I cursed the Eagles for not letting Westbrook run it in for the score. But even with the big performance by Owens, I matched it with a good performance by Witten and Westbrook. With less than 5 minutes to go in the game I was ahead by 2! Then the Birds intercept the ball, run it back 100 yards for a TD, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. The defensive TD gave my opponent the few points he needed to take me down. It was strange having the guy running the ball back and hoping he gets tackled. Of course if the game was close, FF wouldn’t matter as an Eagles win is of utmost importance over anything else. But with the blowout, I was hoping the Birds could do me a favor and just coast for a little longer. It’s ironic, the pass that was intercepted was intended for Witten. If he makes the TD grab I win. FF is a strange beast.
Last night we anxiously awaited the arrival of Ali’s E-bike. The E-bike is half scooter, half bicycle as you can pedal it or ride it like a moped. I got it off ebay for less than 200 dollars shipped to my door so I knew there were going to be some “issues”. The UPS guy got stuck covering 2 runs instead of one and didn’t show up until after 8. I anxiously greeted him and drug the 70 lb box inside to open it up. The box looked like it had a bumpy ride so we were a bit concerned before we even opened it. When we opened it we weren’t very pleased. The bike was thrown in the box with a few pieces of broken styrofoam and tools, parts and instructions were laying around everywhere. The wire basket that is for the front was bent to hell. The bike itself seemed to be intact although it had numerous scratches and nicks on the paint.
I pulled it out, unfolded it and opened up the instructions. I immediately start laughing as I read the directions to Ali. This is obviously made in Hong Kong or Taiwan. They didn’t make any effort in trying to make the English version of the instructions make any sense to someone who spoke English. This manual will be the source of many blog laughs to come. The first funny line I come to is:
1. Front handle: Install the plum screw of the flexible handles firstly, (lsoen) and make tight the screw of the plum lock, then turn tight the screw
There are no typos above, that is exactly how it is written
Let’s skip to step 3:
3. Whole body check; Turn on the switch of the power and switch key, check it if light. The rear brake if ok. The air pressure of trey is noaml. The screws of every parts is losen. After check everywhere is ok. Then can for road test.
As soon as I saw this manual I knew it was going to be an “interesting” assembly procedure.
I got the bike unfolded ok, and the handlebar installed. Next I went to the seat. The seat adjustment clamp was designed to be tightened with no tools, however it would not get tight enough to actually stop the seat from sliding down the tube. If you tried to apply too much torque, it would simply spin and get no tighter. After f’ing with it for awhile I decided to temporarily take the clamp off one of our bikes to lock it in place. That worked.
My next issue was trying to figure out how the kick stand worked. I pulled it down and managed to unseat a metal clip that kept in place. I had to use a screw driver to pry it back up into it’s original position. Then I figured out how it was supposed to work. Then we tried to figure out if the electric part of the bike was functional. The manual was next to worthless for anything except for repeated laughs at the attempts at English. There were keys but when we turned them we got no lights, no action from the motor, nada. So we plugged in the cheesy looking charger that draws an ominous big blue spark everytime you plug it into the wall. Again we tried some of the switches and got no signs of life. Hmmmm.
Ok well let’s at least see how it functions as a bicycle. We wheel it outside in the dark and Ali hops on. She rides it to the bottom of the driveway and back. It is clumsy and slow but at least she is moving. She went to go back down to the road for another lap to show me how some of the indicator lights sorta glowed while she pedaled and all of a sudden the back tire locks. Hmmm, I tell her to back up and try again and to not squeeze the brakes. “I’m not touching the brakes” She tries to go forward again and again it locks. Ah shit, I do a closer inspection. The chain that runs from the electric motor to it’s sprocket has hopped off and is wedged between the sprockets and the spokes of the rear wheel. After some aggravated, cursing minutes trying to unwedge it with a screw driver, I got the chain back to where it belonged. I then tried to adjust the rear wheel back a bit to take out some of the slop on the chain. Ali did another bicycle mode test run and we took it back inside to throw it back on the cheesy charger.
When Ali went back to take her shower during halftime of the Eagles game I decide to start playing with it again. I discover that the key turns in another direction, and that direction turned on some lights!! I nervously twist the throttle and the rear wheel spins! Yahoo. I immediately notice that the sprocket on the rear wheel has a bit of a wobble to it, but it doesn’t seem to affect it’s functionality. I excitedly tell Ali to come out and look. She sees my triumph and I convince her to come outside with me again so we can do a powered road test. She is scared to try it first so I jump right on it and take off. I go down the driveway, into the road and down to the neighbor’s driveway, do a loop and come back. It is a bit clumsy but has decent power and was easy to operate. Seeing my test run gave Ali the courage to try it. She did the same run at a slightly lower speed with little trouble and returned safely. Well it works.
Tonight we will do more practice runs. I am very skeptical about the long term reliability of this obviously cheap product but if it holds up for a little while it will be a bargain. We intend to throw it on the back of the car for Ali to use to take to and from the gym during the day so we don’t have to spend an extra hour at the end of the day for her to work out. It should be an interesting experiment. Pictures of the cheesy e-bike will be forthcoming.