Buying an exercise bike from Amazon.com, that is. Seemed so simple: read the customer reviews, study the features and prices, pick one and get it with free shipping. So I did. Picked a low-end, low-price one without a bunch of bells and whistles that the higher-end bikes offered and which I had no interest in; yet the customer reviews were positive. Entered the order last week; got it delivered this week.
I’ve just spent the better (worse?) part of the last hour putting the thing together. Dunno if it will burn a lot of calories in use, but I sure worked hard assembling that sucker. One plastic piece inserted in the curved plate that sits on the front support bar arrived in pieces, but I think it won’t affect the operation, since the beast went together just fine and snug without it. Heck, judging by what I could make of the pieces, it might have been some sort of leftover mold thingy from the manufacturing rather than a required part, and I saw no sign of it in any of the assembly illustrations or parts lists.
The instructions say have two people assemble it. That would have been helpful when I was struggling with inserting major heavy frame part A into major even heavier frame part B, failing repeatedly, and finally realizing that the receptacle part was juuuuuuuuuuust slightly compressed from its correct dimension. Oh, well, the plastic buffer that was supposed to slide in there between parts A and B could be left unslided and then – with a judicious bit of hammering on another bit – in it went.
Gah. At least every necessary nut and bolt and washer and so forth was actually included, the instructions were decently easy to follow, and by golly, not only does it work, but it fits in the living room right where I wanted it, so I can read or watch TV while pedalling away.
Ha! Well, one neat thing – I just cruised over to Amazon.com and discovered that the bike is now priced 20-some bucks higher than what it cost when I ordered it. Takes a bit of the sting out of the aches I can feel developing in the assembly aftermath.
Hey – and now they’re charging shipping for it! So I saved around 60 bucks overall, buying it when I did.
I bought one of these recently - only I bought it at Walmart, because they had the lowest price and I could go to the store and get it without having it shipped.
I’m pretty surprised by the workout I get with it - it’s also much sturdier than I expected. But, yeah, the putting it together by myself was a little harder than I expected.
Heh. My husband got a recumbent exercise bike (from Amazon, no less, but a different model) several months ago. I was skeptical, I have to admit, but he’s been using the thing every single weekday since he bought it, so it was certainly worth it. It also is so much less noisy than every other piece of home exercise equipment I’ve used. Now if only I could motivate myself to use it…
The more I think about it, the more I think that plastic piece was really some kind of sacrificial buffer to protect the plate it was rubber-banded to during shipping.
Ayuh, Ponder, I felt pretty good when I got up this morning, and I hopped aboard for about ten minutes while I watched the news and weather. Now, three or four hours later, I feel a very slight burn in my thigh muscles. The program for the first couple of weeks will be a few short bursts every day to get my leg muscles used to the idea they’ll actually have to do some work.
