story of the birthday bike

As you just saw in the previous post, Jacob got a new bike for his birthday -- which was very cool and which he enjoyed for all of about 10minutes before it started quickly causing us grief. The main culprit was the chain -- it kept falling off. Ryan got the chain back on once and then after a short spin around the block it was off again. Ryan fixed it again and it again fell off. Another spin, another chain fall-off. Ryan and Jacob decided it was time to get serious about a repair. Deciding that the chain guard was in the way of them getting to the chain adequately, they proceeded to rip the chain guard off in pieces. Easy enough to do when it's made of
plastic. When I came out to the garage and saw the bike in pieces, I freaked out and chewed out the kids. Bad mother moment. At that particular moment I was in a hurry to get the kids loaded into the van to go out to G&G's, so we just stuffed the bike and its pieces in the garage and left. A day and a half later Dad got out the tools and proceeded to fix the bike. It seemed that the bike was just put together rather sloppily, so a few tightenings here and there with the chain & wheel seemed to do the trick. Jacob was about to pull out for another spin when we noticed the handlebars being wiggly. Another few turns of the screwdriver took care of that. Well, all went well for the next week. Today turned ugly however, when the chain fell off again and the repair process went awry. Time to chew out the evil empire and ask for a refund despite the fact the bike was now battered, bruised, and only slightly used. Unbelieveably they gave us absolutely no grief and refunded our money. Hallelujah! Take the money and run, I say. We're again in the market for a bike -- a good one this time. Wish us luck.