Day 24 - Sunday cooking - or not

The Sunday cooking post will have to wait (maybe I'll get to it Tuesday). I have more urgent things to say.

1. Finally bought myself a bike trainer. The purpose of this is so that I can train on the bike all winter long and not have to pay gym fees to ride a bike when I already own one.
2. I researched. I asked questions. I got recommendations. I budgeted. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I know.
3. So, here we are. A cold November Saturday. But it was sunny and I decided to just do it already and get training. Lucky for me the bike shop is less than a 5 minute walk from home. Bought the trainer. Brought it home. Went back to the bike shop with my bike and had them change the back tire for a special tire to use on the indoor trainer. Brought that home.
4. After a pot of tea and an online chat with Yvette, I mixed together the ingredients for some Irish soda bread, threw that in the oven and figured in the 45 minutes it would take to bake, that surely I would manage to put a few screws in a few holes and get the whole thing set up.
5. What planet do I live on?
6. Not earth. Clearly.
7. I spent the first 20 minutes trying to figure out how to read the damn pictures on STEP 2.
8. Then had to find a measuring tape and try to figure out what size wheel I have.
9. Then had to text Brother #2 (Hi, Nick!) and ask him, if I was supposed to measure from the inside of the rim or the outside of the tire. Where was that helpful piece of information written? Oh yeah, NOWHERE.
10. As I was obviously out of my depth, Nick called me and while trying to get to the earphones (yes, the ones that fall out of my ears all the time), so I could plug them into the phone and be able to talk and do things at the same time, I promptly tripped over the Styrofoam packaging from the box and may have dropped a swear word or four.
11. Only to discover during this brotherly consulation that I also needed to change out the pin holding the back wheel in place and insert the pin that came with the trainer. For the love of chocolate, people, it's an indoor bike trainer, not a frigging space machine! (Editor's note:  Do you [I] mean space ship? My note:  Probably.)
12. Then found the bike tool bag Brother #3 (Hi, Marc!) which contained, among other things, such as old greasy rags, some kind of multi-sized ummmm.... tools for ummmm ... unscrewing things. (Honestly, how I even manage to speak some days is beyond me.) 
13. Of course, I had to go through all three of these "tools" and the last one was the one that fit but the nut/bolt/whatever (I have no idea what the difference is and will not pretend I do) was on the wheel so tightly, I couldn't budge it. And as soon as I tried to turn it too hard, I could feel my trusty messed up right shoulder start shouting at me not to do that. Yes, with those exact words.
14. Some more consultation with Nick. Mostly consisting of Nick laughing at me because apparently it sounded like I was getting pretty violent.
15. Oh yeah, and while this was happening - I am not even making this up - the oven timer went off to let me know that the Irish soda bread I was baking was ready to take out. So yeah, 45 minutes later and I still didn't have a bike ready to ride.
16. Nick suggested I get Brother #1 (Hi, Eric!) (Good thing I have lots of brothers, I know, right?!) to come and help me and ask him to bring a ratchet set with him. 
17. After putting the tools away, pushing the bike and boxes and training stand out of the way, I texted Eric and he will be able to help me Sunday.
18. Then I noticed I'd screwed fly wheel (oh look, I learned a new term today, way more technical than "round metal thing that screws on to training stand thing") onto the stand backwards.
19. Yes, backwards.
20. So I left it there.

Let's hope things go a little better today. Updates to follow.