Treadmill

Ok, so we recently bought a new treadmill.

A big, nice treadmill !

Ordered it online and had it shipped to our local store for pickup.

Well, after two weeks of waiting, we finally got a notice that it had arrived and was ready for us to pick up.

So we cranked up the pickup truck and went to get it yesterday.

As I mentioned, it was big!

255 lbs. of BIG!

They loaded it into the back of my truck with a forklift.

It took one guy to operate the forklift; one guy to supervise the guy operating the forklift; and two other guys to stand by and watch the guy operating the forklift and the guy supervising the guy operating the forklift.

Did you get all that?  It was quite an operation !

But of course once the massive box was loaded into the back of my truck, their jobs were done.

Not ONE of them offered to come to my house and help us unload the 255 lb. box.

And get it through my back door and into my house.

And assist us in putting it together.

So, My Better Half and I commenced to doing just that.

Getting it off the truck was no problem.

We simply slid it off the tailgate and onto a portable dolly.

However, the box was so heavy, the tires on the dolly were quickly flattened!

And if you've ever tried to move a 255 lb. box on a dolly with flattened tires, then you know it's next to impossible.

Despite that, we managed to dolly it over to the back door of our house.

But of course the box was too big to fit through the back door.

So we unloaded the box from the dolly. 

Lowered it to the floor of our carport, opened the box and began carrying the contents of the box into our home piece by piece.

Lots of pieces!

I had no idea how many pieces we were going to have to put together.

Let me mention here that I'm not a very good "putting-together" kind of guy.

I'm very impatient with that kind of stuff.

There was a huge assortment of arms, legs, poles, computer displays, screws, nuts, bolts, flat washers, star washers, and hex wrenches.

And a booklet of instructions that might as well have been Tolstoy's War and Peace !

So, while My Better Half patiently read the installation instructions, I began searching for the proper screws, nuts, bolts, flat washers, star washes and hex wrenches with which to put the treadmill together.

4 hours later, the job was complete.

Well, almost complete.

There's still one piece of the apparatus that we haven't quite gotten in place yet.

Worked on that piece for nearly an hour, but still haven't figured it out.

May have to call in the National Guard to help finish it up.

Or maybe the forklift operator, the guy supervising the forklift operator, or the two guys watching the forklift operator and the guy supervising the forklift operator!

I hope the damn thing works!

After putting it together, we were too tired to get on it and try it out.

Maybe we lost a few pounds just putting it together and won't ever have to use it !

But probably not.

Until next time....