Sarah flipped to page one.
That’s when she noticed the handwritten note in the margin, in faded blue biro. Someone had owned this manual before.
Sarah found the knob. It was fused on like it had been welded by a vengeful god. She turned it. Nothing. She turned harder. Her knuckles went white. She considered swearing at it. Then she spotted the small diagram— “Turn counter-clockwise” —which she’d been doing wrong for the last four minutes. davina mccall exercise bike manual
She located part D. It looked like a small metal ski. The bolts, however, had unionised and gone on strike. She found three. The fourth was presumably on an adventure with the rubber washer.
Sarah laughed. A real, surprised laugh. She grabbed her toolbox, found the 15mm wrench, and gave the bolt a quarter turn. The haunting maraca sound stopped. Sarah flipped to page one
She sat back on the carpet, defeated. The manual lay open to a section titled “Troubleshooting Your Workout Experience.” It was mostly cheerful Davina quotes: “No pain, no… oops, I mean, listen to your body!” and “Consistency over perfection, darling!”
The bike stood in her living room like a smug piece of modern art. Its digital display blinked 00:00 in an accusing red glow. The resistance dial wouldn’t budge past “gentle breeze.” And the left pedal made a sound like a haunted maraca every time she so much as looked at it. Sarah found the knob
Sarah underlined the last sentence. Then she wrote her own note next to it, in fresh black ink: