Hello folks, My GF and I are doomed to sit in office chairs all day and we're both a bit on the heavier side. We settled on bikes for exercise, and we just purchased his/her Giant Escape 2 bikes. Escape 2 (2014) | Giant Bicycles | United States Maybe we should have asked for lessons from the bike shop we purchased at, but we're having trouble with changing gears. I can't see to get google to understand our problem, so I'm coming to the pros here. The bikes were using gear 2 on the front of the bike when we tested them at the shop, and we had to switch to the first gear to tackle the hills we live around. So mid range gears to low range for the hills. We can't seem to get the bikes to go back up the middle range of gears now! I'm sure it's user error here, but when we try and switch to the front middle gear we're just greeted with loud noises and we're still on the smallest front gear.

Is there a newbie guide you'd recommend or is there a quick fix for this sort of thing? 1000 apologies if I'm posting in the wrong place for this sort of question.