I have a nice Craftsman lawn mower. I like my lawn mower. I have no desire to get another lawn mower. And yet, I got another lawn mower. Jen bought a cordless string trimmer from someone she knows and they offered to throw in their mower for free, so why not?, we took it home.

I began mowing the lawn this weekend, and at one point I stopped to adjust the deck height on one side. When I tried to restart the engine, the pull cord snapped. Well, I couldn’t very well leave the lawn half-mowed, so I figured I’d try the “new” one. It started, which gave it an immediate advantage over the other.

After about two laps around the yard and listening to every single moving part squeak, rattle, or tick, and given the number of knobs and levers on the thing, I named it Max, as in “Mad Max”. If the bad guy from “The Road Warrior” had a wife, and she made him mow the lawn, he would have built something like this.

I guessed that it had to be either the cheapest, junkiest mower I’d ever seen, or the nicest I’d ever been around, for two reasons:

1. It was monstrously heavy. It was self-propelled for the same reason as a Cadillac Escalade: if it wasn’t, it would be pretty useless.
2. It had no safety equipment whatsoever. I don’t know how many times I got nailed by flying debris that shot out from the back of it.

And yet, it ran and did a pretty nice job. With any luck I’ll be able to fix the regular mower and use it next weekend, but if not, it’s nice knowing that the other hunk of snarling, deadly iron is available.

Summer’s upon us again. The kids just got out of school on Wednesday, which reminded me that my last post was to say that the kids were just starting back and I haven’t said a word since then. Anyway, we have them signed up for pretty much every summer sport offered and Gabby’s getting ready to start piano lessons, so they’ll be keeping pretty busy.

Jen and I have been mulching the flower gardens, to the tune of about one pickup load of mulch per weekend. We’ve put down about 4 tons now, and I think we’re finally getting to the end of it. Which is good. Because at this point, if I never move another handful of the stuff, that’ll be fine by me.

It seemed like such a simple idea at the time: I’d buy a cheap bike and ride to work whenever possible. I’d get fresh air, exercise, and a tan, and most importantly I’d save money on gas (because I’m a cheapskate and hate paying $3.00 per gallon regardless of whether I can afford it).

So, I went to Happy Fun Land — what we call Wal-Mart when we want to antagonize the kids — and picked up their $80 generic mountain bike. In short, that lasted for a grand total of two (2) round trips to work before a broken chain ended my patience with its mechanical problems.

Wal-Mart kindly allowed me to exchange that lame horse for a slightly more expensive and much nicer Schwinn. I rode it to work exactly once before getting a flat tire.

It’s the little things, really. Chains are easy to fix and cheap to replace, and flat tires aren’t a big deal, but as of today I’ve spend about $50 per ride and I still don’t currently have a working bike. Maybe some of us are just meant to drive.