Real Life Adventures by Gary Wise and Lance Aldrich for July 06, 2022

I used to hate changing or patching the tube on the kids bikes when they’d get a flat. It took me forever. I never understood how bike racers could swap out a tube in a couple of minutes.

Did you read the instructions?

It said “Some assembly required.”

He took it apart too much – and now even more assembly is required.

I was adjusting my kid’s bikes at the school bicycle safety fair and a mom was having problems with her kid’s bike. Her husband didn’t have metric tools. I did and helped her.

Just like Tom Sellick?

Who knew all the wheels had to touch the ground!

That’s the thing with parenting … so much of what you have to do is stuff you’ve never done before.

then there’s adjustments to the brakes and shifters ahhh

when i got assembly required stuff as a kid i had to do the assembling

Back in our racing days, we had a friend who had a pit-crew member with OCD. The guy was always taking things back apart to check if he’d put them together correctly. It was difficult to fire family but eventually they found him another job.

If I was still teaching tech writing, I’d use this cartoon in class. Generally speaking, assembly instructions are written horribly, often by techies whose native language isn’t English. My message to students was that if you find yourself tasked with writing assembly instructions, show what you’ve written to somebody who doesn’t already know how to assemble the thing.