Adventure 47/50 : (Un)Boxing Day for My New Bike

It's Boxing Day -- which was the perfect day for me to take my new bike OUT OF THE BOX and assemble it.

I started a new job in November (hooray!) for Rad Power Bikes and one of the benefits is a bike. Because of the holidays and various other schedule conflicts, tonight was the first Thursday that I was able to attend a Bike Build Party at work ... and build my bike!

Thanks to a lot of help from gen-u-ine bike mechanics Josh and Chris, I was able to put my bike together and install all the accessories (fender, passenger package) on my brand new RadRunner.

Here's my bike, still in the box:

We lifted it out of the box, I cut off all the zip ties and removed all the foam, and it looked like this:

We attached the handlebars first, then set the front wheel, and then the front fender and headlight. This all went so quickly I didn't take a single picture.

Then we flipped over the bike so we could take off the rear wheel to attach the rear fender. I'm not gonna lie, this would have been a bit beyond my skillset. Maybe not if I watched the videos, but it seemed difficult. Here's the frame with the rear wheel off.

We attached the fender, re-attached the rear wheel, and then flipped it over to attach the passenger seat. Then Josh put it up on a rack, checked all the brakes and double checked the torque and such, and I was good to go. Not that I took a picture of my assembled bike, somehow... but here's a picture of what the passenger seat and rear fender look like:

Wil came down, met the guys, and we rode off together into the night. Bonus awesome: for Christmas Wil bought us new bike helmets with microphones and speakers so we can talk to each other while we're riding. I love my Sena R1 Smart Helmet!

It may not have been a traditional Boxing Day, but I'm really happy to have my bike and can't wait for the weekend to take it out for a longer spin!