Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Lawnmower headaches

I should ask Will Shortz -- is "lawnmower" the only English word that has "wnm" as a consonant cluster?

Anyway, mine won't start. Bought a new sparkplug. Didn't do it. Emptied the gas tank and let it dry overnight (since there did seem to be, um, WATER in the tank, and surely the mower wouldn't be happy about that). Refilled the tank with fresh gas. Didn't do it. Bought some Gumout and poured it in, left it overnight. Didn't do it.

Came home last night, and my neighbor in a combination of annoyance and helpfulness had mowed my driveway (taking out several nice flowering plants -- a platycodon and a California native with nice coral flowers) that had been engulfed in weeds, and leaving a 6-foot-high hawkweed [giant dandelion to you, city boy].

-- Rachel

2 comments:

OneHungMan said...

I feel your pain. I have a Y chromosome and I still don't understand lawnmowers.

My last lawnmower was a warrior. After several years of using the same oil, I decided to change the oil. I emptied the oil pan and found that none came out. Odd, I thought.

I put in new oil and cut the grass. At some point during that night, the lawnmower threw up and oil was all over my garage. I certainly wasn't going to force the issue, so I kept running without oil and never again did I have a problem.

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