Help

It's Friday, folks, which means it's time to get ready for the weekend. It's time to clear off the ol' desk, drive home with the windows down, pour a glass of lemonade, throw up your feet, and then, when your lemonade is done, help me assemble my bike rack.

Tomorrow morning I'm headed to the beach for leisurely bike ride on this beauty before having brunch with a friend.

Unfortunately, my new bike rack isn't quite as simple as my old one. Unfortunately, I returned my old one. Fortunately, this new bike rack looks like it will be much sturdier and more reliable than my old one.

If I could just figure out how to assemble it.

It looks simple enough. It even came almost completely assembled. All I have to do is "insert pins at ends of wire struts into holes in top of foot assembly."

Translation: Put this loose end of this pin....

...into the hole on the black bar. My thumb is in this hole. Notice how the hole is on the opposite side of  the pin on the the bar.

Notice how the pin is very, very sturdy.

Try not to notice how my nails need paintin'.

How in the dickens am I supposed to get the pin into the hole?

Clearly I need to muscle the pin onto the other side of the bar.

Which is what I did with the pin on the left side of the rack:

But about eight seconds in — once it was on the correct, hole-y side of the bar — I realized I did not have the strength to pull the pin out far enough to get it into the hole. At which point I lost my grip on the pin, and it and the black bar began to crush my fingers. At which point I panicked and hoped that some neighbor would be home to hear my screams for help. At which point my adrenaline kicked in and I had enough strength to pry back the pin just enough to get my fingers lose.

At which point I fell back onto the floor exhausted, and stared at the ceiling for approximately 12 minutes.

Then I texted an aerospace engineer I know to see if he could magically fix my bike rack via text instructions. I don't mess around when I need help assembling/fixing things. If you build rockets and such, then you're my guy. Or gal.

Anyway, I still haven't heard back from him. He's busy aerospace engineering today, and will probably have to wait to solve bike rack quandaries until the weekend. Which starts in approximately five hours.

Which means you folks have five hours to help me.

Is there some super simple pin trick that only the mechanically adept will see? Do these pins function in some sort of magical way, like the metal rings that magicians can effortlessly connect?

Or are the instructions just wrong? Should they instead say, "Find a giant, muscle-y body builder to insert pins at ends of wire struts into holes in top foot assembly"?

If there's help you can give, I'll take it, man.

Thanks, thanks, thanks, and happy weekend!!

Love,

Mechanically inept and weak as a bean pole Sarah


© by scj