Mountain Bike Update 2

I got the parts for the bike in on Monday but I was thinking I was going to get a full back tire ready to be put on.  A quick take off and put on type of deal.  In the box was the rim and in another box inside that box was the gears.  The handles were in the box just bouncing around.  Good thing they are just rubber.  There were to big black round discs off the side on each side of the rim to keep it straight up and to help it from getting damaged.  If something heavy got on that box, it would have bent it pretty easily.

So I researched online for how to move the tire over.  It looks fairly simple to do if you have the right tool for the job.  Which of course I don't.  The guy at Wal-Mart said he would fix it if I brought it back in with the parts.  I called to confirm it and made sure he would be there on a day I could come.

When I took it in, he had it all swapped out in like 15 minutes.  It looked straight and I couldn't see any wobble in the gears.  I could tell that there wasn't enough air in the tire just like last time. I didn't say anything but I knew when I got home I was going to need to check it all out again.

Sure enough, he only put like 5 lbs of air in the tire.  I just don't understand how hard it can be to read the tire PSI and put 50 in as required.  So I pump up the tire and test the brakes.  They are way too loose.  I had to fiddle with that and finally figured out the pad was up to high on one side to the point it was hitting the tire.  It should be even on both sides and hitting the rim to stop.  Once I got that adjusted I had to get the left side of the brake to move out as it was rubbing the rim the entire time.  After some more research online I figured out how to adjust it better and now its set up perfectly just missing the tire all the way around.

Now the moment of truth arrives for the gears.  Take it for a short spin down the street and the front gears shift smoothly.  The back gears switch very smoothly as well until I went to gear 7.  It wouldn't switch to gear 7 at all.  So more research and I'm getting close to getting it to switch properly.  I ran out of time though and I need to get some time tomorrow to finish fixing the gears to switch properly.

I did switch out the new grips on the handle bar.  The new ones inside hole were a lot smaller than the ones I took off.  It took some twisting to get them on and they are very snug now.  They didnt move in during my fear testing runs but will see how they do when I go for a longer ride.

I'll post one more up update once I finish with the gears and give a good ride.  YouTube is your biggest friend if you need to figure out how to do anything on a bike.  Some things you can do but others you need the pepper tools.  If you dont have those tools, you'll need to buy them or take the bike somewhere to have them fix and adjust everything.  I plan to buy the tools later on when I have to fix something on the bike.  For now though I am using the store and company to fix the bike for no extra cost.  Outside of gas and my time.

Time to Download Malwarebytes

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Mountain Bike

So I invested in a mountain bike to get some exercise in and to ride around with my kids.  I didn't have a bunch to invest so was looking at retail stores.  I did research and read reviews on a few bikes.  I ended up liking a Hyper Havoc bike from Wal-Mart. Here's a picture of the bike.

Green is my favorite color but they have black and blue for colors as well.  The green color wasn't available anywhere near my local area.  Plus it showed out of stock online.  The blue was out of stock as well.  Black is like the only color you can get.  Finally found a green one an hour drive from my house and that's when all the fun begins.

The bike was ordered at 7 am online to be picked up.  Order went through fine and it showed the bike would be ready at 11:40 am that day.  I should get a text and email that it's ready.  So 4 pm rolls around and I haven't gotten anything.  I called the Wal-Mart up and the employee tells me the bike is still in the box, it hasn't been built, and the person who puts them together has already gone for the day.  That didn't sit well with me so I asked to talk to the manager.  Told him the situation and he said the online store shouldn't put that information on the order.  He said I would also never get another email or text on the bike from them either.  He said he would send up a report to them in hopes of getting it corrected so it's not confusing for customers.  At this point I had 2 options: 1. I could go get the bike in the box and put it together myself.  2. I wait until tomorrow and pick it up put together.  Told him I would wait since they will put it together, plus I've never put one together before so it works in my favor.

I called the next day around lunch time and the bike is ready.  Drive up and get the bike with no problems.  Now is the part where reading the reviews online matter.  I knew from what I read that they never put the bikes together properly and I needed to check a few things. 

First thing I checked was the tires.  Every tire shows what psi you put in them right there on the tire.  It's not hard to figure out.  The front tire was at 25 psi and the back tire was at 20 psi.  The tire shows 50 psi on it so I had to pump them up.  The manager praised his bike person but now the doubts rise quickly.  I adjust the seat for my height which is just a clamp to hold it, so no problem doing that.  I get my kids and we go for a short ride.  While riding the bike keeps making a rubbing noise, the grips where sliding off the handle, you can hear the gears grinding and the gears are slipping.  I see the brakes are rubbing on the tire as it goes around.  Head back to the  house and I work on adjusting the brakes.  I can't get it right for anything so I spin the tire around and sure enough the tire is not straight.  You can see it going in and out hitting the brakes.  Read online this happens so I got a small wrench to try to adjust the spokes as I don't have the spoke wrench tool.  They make 3 sizes of those spoke wrench tools and the manual does not tell you what size you need.  (On a side note the manual doesn't tell you how to change the gears on the bike either.  You would think that would be something it should have?)  They run about $7 a piece so you would need to buy all 3 to make sure you get the right one if you try to fix it yourself.  Saw you could use a wrench but don't use any with the grips or you can mess up the spokes.  I own a small wrench but it slips even though it looks like it's turning.  So I ended up warping the tire more as some did turn but others didn't.  So now the bike is messed up to the point where I can't ride it.

I'm pretty frustrated so the next day I called the only bike shop in town and they charge $70 for a full tune up on the bike.  I'm not trying to spend more money on a bike that wasn't right to begin with so I call my local Wal-Mart, twice, as the lady answering the phone didn't have a clue.  Asked for the manager and she was more than helpful.  She told me to bring the bike in and her bike employee would look at the bike to fix it.  So I took off a couple hours from work to get the bike and take it to him.  Walked into the back with him and he is trying to adjust the brakes to make it work even when I told him the tire is not straight.  I had asked him earlier if he had spoke wrenches, which he said yes but I didn't see any around.  He never tried to adjust the spokes at all.  He finally said the tire was just bad.  He went and pulled a tire off another bike which was better but it still isn't quite straight.  It is better than the one I had though. 

While he was away I was checking out the gears in the back to see if they lined up properly.  While looking I saw that the chain was always touching this metal part that the chain went through.  Asked him if it should do that and he said no, it should touch at all.  He adjusted it some to to keep it off.  The other thing I noticed while he was gone was the gears on the back tired.  When you spin the tire, there is a wobble to the gears.  He said he had never seen that and knows it shouldn't be like that.  I was out of time and had to get back to work.  So I left the bike with him while he worked on fixing it.

I came back later that day and he had it ready.  Said he grabbed and replaced out the back tired but it did the same thing.  So the wobble is still there.  I called up the company since I can't find this green color anywhere else and I'm trying to keep the bike, not return it for a refund.  They initiated my 1 year warranty and are sending me a whole new back tire with gears.  I'm also getting new grips to replace the ones I have now.  They shipped it UPS ground so it's going to be a week before I even get the parts to see if this is going to fix it.  Good thing I get 90 days to return the bike back.

So while I'm waiting, I'm going to ride this bike to see if it's worth keeping.  I've rode it three times now.  Twice with my kids and once by myself.  After the first ride I realized the guy never pumped the front tire up to 50 psi and it was at 25.  So stupidly aggravating when I told him about it, yet he still did the same thing the other guy did.  So pumped the tire up like it should be.  He adjusted the front brake so good that if have to stop immediately, it literally stops the front wheel.  The back tire goes up and I literally almost went over the handle bars.  Yet the back brakes do stop me but are loose.  I can tell they are not right as the brakes almost touch the handle bar when I pull on them.  If they touch, they are not adjusted right.  So I'm going to have to adjust the back brakes to make them tighter.  I hope the tire isn't warped any where because if it's going in and out. I'll never get it adjusted right.  At least it'll be good practice before the replacement part comes in and I'll have to do it anyway.  I still think the front tire is not quite straight but it's pretty close, so I'm not messing with it.

After riding for 30+ minutes on the bike, the seat is definitely too hard.  My butt was starting to hurt and I was ready to get off the bike.  So if I keep the bike, I'll be looking at getting a new seat.

Another thing I already bought was a pair of gloves with my fingers exposed.  The grips on this bike dig into my hand and they were hurting the entire afternoon after I got done riding.  Having the gloves gives me padding and helps my hands out a bunch.  So yet another investment.

I'll post an update or I'll update this post once I get the new parts in and test out the bike with them.  If it's not worth keeping the bike as it's still bad, I'll be looking for a new bike.  If anyone has any suggestions on a good cheap bike, please let me know.

30 Free Apps on Amazon

I'm excited as I get Carcassonne for free.   I loved playing that game on the Xbox.

Amazon's offering 30 free Android apps to help make you a better person http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/31/amazon-appstore-free-android-apps/?ncid=rss_truncated

Minecraft

Never thought I would play this game.  I just couldn't bring myself to play it because of the way the graphics looked.  However, my oldest kid got into it and now the younger one has as well.  We got the pocket edition of this for them to play on the kindle.  They are really enjoying it and seeing the stuff that they create is probably the most interesting part of it for me.

Of course they have watched some videos on it and we ended up buying the Xbox 360 version of it.  Which adds on a ton of stuff the pocket edition doesn't have.  I didn't find out an update is coming to add more stuff to the pocket edition but that's a few months away.

So I put it on my phone and created 3 places to live as I know they would join in once they knew I had it.  I started playing also so I could see what they were doing and figure out answers they kept asking.  Even though I ended up asking them questions all the time to learn new stuff myself.  Never thought that day would come this soon.

So they love joining my world for the stuff I've built for them to run around it.  They've been gone for the weekend so I've done a few things that they will have to explore to find.  I'm sure they will like them once they find them.

I'll definitely be buying the Xbox One edition when it comes out later this year.  I just hope they are smart enough to allow a Xbox 360 edition to connect to the Xbox One.  I know the Xbox One will be bigger but when you connect, you connect to that world, not your own so it should be able to handle it unless the code just isn't going to allow that to happen.  Guess will see.

LEGO The Hobbit

Switched over from playing Titanfall to get started on my LEGO Hobbit game on the Xbox One this weekend.  They've added a few new things as is with each release so it's not the same game everytime.

You'll definitely recognize the world you're running around in if you play the LEGO Lord of the Rings game.  I can it's going to be a little different but the same even though I'm still currently running through the story line. I've had to stop a few times just to take a better look at the graphics in the game.  The details are extremely good and you almost don't even realize how good they are just running through the game without paying attention to it.  They've done a suburb job on the graphics in this game.

One thing I'm noticing is that when you break certain objects, you get items out of them and not just coins this time around.  Running through the game you will hit spots where you have to use those items to build something.  Without them, you can't do it.  I'm only going to assume that when you're playing during a level that if you break all the objects you'll have what you need in the board at that time to do it.  However, outside of that, you can trade items for other items which means this could be a daunting task to get something if you don't have the materials needed.  You'll be doing some hunting around to say the least.  So far I've been trying to collect all I could along the way and I haven't ran into but 1 place where I didn't have an item that someone wanted.  The game told me I could only get it in a certain board and I wasn't even to that point in the game yet.  I just ran through it so I think I picked up what I needed, just not sure if I got enough of it, which will require a replay of the board.  Not like I won't be doing that anyway to 100% the game.

All the rest of the norm you're use to is back in the game.  So finding and collecting everything is going to be a daunting task as always.  I've finished all the rest up to the point, don't plan to stop now.  Plus my kids always enjoy playing these games so we keep them.

Sword Art Online

I started a new anime, Sword Art Online this weekend and finished it as well.  Got wrapped up in it to the point I just kept watching the next one. 

I guess what pulls you in is the fact that it's not to far off in the distant future.  They are using head gear to immerse themselves into a virtual reality game.  Only problem is when SAO comes online, the Game Master (Creator) came in and had turned the log off option out of the game.  All the head gear was built to where if they died in the game, they would die in the real world as well.  The helmets were designed to fry your brain for easy terms.

The only way to escape is t beat the 100th floor of this tower.  No easy task by any means.

It's definitely something worth watching as you can relate to it in the real world for how people act in MMO's online.

Sword Art Online 2 just started on July 4th and I've watched the 1st episode of that.  I'll definitely be waiting to watch each episode each week.