I got the bike over to the local shop this afternoon. He looked it over, tightened up the handbars, etc. The verdit:

1. The bike is too small for me.

2. The bike is a piece of junk. I knew this. And he didn't say it like that, but that was the jist of it. It was assembled poorly, for the most part.

The bike needs a lot of work done to make it an efficient one (and to assemble it correctly), but it will cost me way more than I actually spent on the bike to do this. And seeing as how it is too small for me, there really is no point in doing that. So I decided to keep the money and put it aside. I'm going to start saving for a new bike. It will take a few months to do, but I'll get there eventually.

He looked it over and apparently my saddle is fine. It's actually worth more than the bike is. LOL! But he said it was a good size and shape for me. He adjusted it and raised it, a measure he said would hold me until I got the money up for a new bike. I can no longer reach the ground... well, I can, but just barely.

I haven't ridden yet as we had horrible thunderstorms this evening. I'm aiming for sometime tomorrow afternoon to test it out. If I can fix it. I somehow screwed up the breaks on the way home, everything is tangled and the breaks won't release.

A new "starter model" bike will cost me around $400, and I think I can save that up over the next few months. That includes a fitting to make sure I don't get the wrong size again.

Anyway, the future of my bike will be to hang in there - hopefully - until I get a new one, and then it will be donated to our local "bike man" who fixes up old, broken, or unwanted bikes to give to less fortunate kids at Christmas. I'll keep the saddle and put the original one back on before I do that. But I think it's a good future for the bike. He knows what he's doing, so some kid won't be getting a piece of junk.