Sunday, December 11, 2005

SMOKING GASOLINE

I've never had luck with weed wackers. They die soon after the warranty explodes, I mean, expires. The one I have now has two states of running (admittedly intermittent and rare) - in one state the motor turns the nylon strips in a clockwise fashion, the way you'd expect. In the other, it goes back and forth, about 180 degrees one way, then reverses and goes 180 degrees the other. It shudders a lot while doing this which must be the shudder of the laws of mechanical motion being violated.

One day recently we went into the garage and smelled gas. I crawled down to critter eye level and looked for dangerous puddles under the cars. Nothing. Then Terri discovered that the weedwacker had sprung a leak.

I banished it to the outside.

Nothing looks loose, and nothing appears disconnected.

Just now I decided to try to start it and sure enough, it cranked after a few hundred pulls. Okay, I exaggerate, but I still have that spasm in my right arm from all that yanking and I tell ya it's hard to type. Or keyboard.

(You still type at keyboards? Just like CDs are records?)

Anyway, I ran the wacker all along the places that needed trimming up to a point at which it crapped out for no reason. I noticed the dripping gas was smoking. Time to call it a wacked-day and walk-away.

Yesterday I pulled on the lawnmower so many times I think I'm permanently crooked. It was only after rigor-armis set in that I discovered the spark plug cap had come off.

I tell ya, Steve Martin will play me in the movie.

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