Selecting and Transporting Your New Riding Lawnmower

The following story was written in 2006 and is 100% true. Yes, believe it or not, it is. - Scott

How to select and transport the proper lawn tractor in Burleson, Texas.

About three years ago, my family and I packed up our stuff from our Fort Worth home and moved to the home of our dreams near Burleson. It has a pond, lots of trees and lots of grass. Although I was initially thrilled that the prior owner of the house decided to “throw in” a free riding lawn mower, I wasn’t so thrilled to learn that, among its many problems, our freebie only turns left. The grass was getting very high and it’s no fun mowing three acres with a push mower, so I set out to quickly find a new riding lawn mower. No doubt some of you may be in the market for a new mower yourself, so take good notes. Here’s what I experienced.

First Step
Vanity concerns.
You don’t want to look like a nerd riding around on some second rate weenie machine. Mowing your lawn on a rider is as much about looking cool as it is about having short grass. Don’t even give a second glance to a lawnmower that’s the cheapest in its class.

Second Step
Accessorize
Make sure it has lots of buttons, gears, gauges, aerodynamic design, headlights, and a drink holder is a nice touch. Even if you have no idea what these accessories are used for, they are essential.

Third Step
Check out your cruising speeds. Make sure you’ll be able to adequately impress your neighbor by starting your mowing at the same time as he does, but finishing five minutes sooner.

Step number 4
Fuel efficiency. As you are attacking the four foot high grass on the extreme corner of your property that challenges your very constitution as an American, nothing can be more frustrating than to feel the defeat of running out of gas while in the midst of your task. Besides, gas isn’t cheap right now.

Step number 5
Ensure that the mower handles well under diverse conditions. Does it corner, accelerate, and break well. These features are very important in avoiding the stealth sprinkler head or covert tree stub that will lie in wait for you to pass over them.

And that’s it.

Oh yeah… and make sure it cuts grass well.

After looking all over town for the perfect machine at the right price, I ended up at Lowe’s, credit card in hand. I had made my decision and I was ready to take my prize home for its test run. The clerks were friendly and helped me unlock the mower and gather up all the accessories that accompanied my new purchase. He told me to pull around and he would help me load my mower on to my truck. Have you ever seen the bumper sticker that says “yes, this is my truck…and no, you can’t borrow it”? Well, I’m the reason why they made that bumper sticker. You see, I own a Honda Civic. And that’s just not big enough to hold a shiny new red lawnmower. I’m also of Scottish decent. So the thought of paying $20 to rent the Lowe’s truck that would deliver the shiny new lawnmower to my house never even crossed my mind. So, with filled gas can in hand, I checked the oil and informed the clerk that I had no truck and my intentions were to “drive this bad boy off the lot”. I assumed by his reaction that not too many people choose that route.

Well, if any of you know Burleson, you know my first hurdle was to get over I-35 on Alsbury. This is where I first learned how important your cruising speeds are. Mine, it seems, topped out at 6 mph. I also learned that stop lights are not generally designed to accommodate lawn mowers traffic.

I knew the first mile would be the most difficult, as there were no sidewalks or road shoulders for me to drive on. I would be forced to share the road with other cars and trucks. The heavily trafficked stop light experience was a close call, but I felt it was home free from there. Once I made it Race Trac (a gas station/convenience store), I told myself, I could drive on the sidewalk most of the way home. But before I got to Race Trac, I noticed the crossing arms dropping on the railroad tracks. My progress would be delayed. Cars started pulling up next to and behind me. An attractive blond woman rolled down her window, whistled at me and said “Hey man, I like your new ride! – did you get that at Lowe’s?” and then proceeded to tell me that she works there and watched with pride as my whole transaction transpired. All I could do was answer with a smile and compare myself to Jeff Foxworthy (“If you decide to drive your new mower home from the store, you might be a redneck). After the passing of the train, I inched my way to the Race Trac where I managed to get up on the sidewalk for about an hour of cruising time, all the way to Renfro. Observation #2 Handicap access sidewalks are a joke and totally unusable. What sadistic moron would design a sidewalk that allows a wheelchair to enter on one side of the street but requires them to plunge off an eight-inch curb on the other side of the street? Or worse yet, allow the wheelchair to get to the middle of the block and then stick a telephone pole right smack dab in the center of the sidewalk. It makes one’s lawnmower navigation a bit tricky – I can’t even imagine what it would do for the wheelchair driver who is not equipped with 16 horsepower Briggs and Stratton mobility. But I digress…

With minor challenges and brushes with traffic, I made it to the Kroger gas station. Need to check my fuel efficiency. Pulled up to the gas pump amid the jeers and cheers of fellow gas pumpers and topped off my tank. Had only used about half a gallon! Next challenge was to get past the 60 mph traffic of Crowley Road without being killed. As I’m doing so, I keep wondering why everyone that drives by is staring at me. Oh well, no matter…

By this time it is getting dark (great opportunity to try out my new headlights) and my daughter is due to be dropped off at home any minute now from a friend’s house, so I waved my wife on passed me to go home. I could take it alone from here. Observation #3: Burleson is a much larger town at 6mph than it is at 40-50 mph.
Observations 4, 5, and 6: My new headlights don’t work very well, county roads are not wide enough for two vehicles AND a lawnmower to occupy the right of way at the same time, and some of the shoulder drop offs are quite sudden and severe.

About this time, it’s completely dark – my wife had circled back around from my house to bring me some bottled water. Good thing I opted for the lawnmower model with the drink holder!

Observation #7: I really had no idea that wild grapes grew so prevalent here in the countryside. It’s an amazing difference in perspective between 6 mph and 50 mph.

Half mile from my house – and my ten mile trek is nearly finished. It is now 8:30, completely dark, and some kids just drove past me, yelling something at me as they sped by. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I’m sure they were probably complementing me on my new purchase. My daughter’s friends are now arriving at my house to drop her off, but their progress is slowed by some guy driving a red lawnmower down the darkened road. They managed to pull in to my driveway right in front of me, much to the embarrassment of my wife. I parked my new prize and greeted my guests.

Final Observation: Three hours of riding a lawn mower can tend to numb one’s hands and said numbness becomes particularly noticeable when offering them to someone for a firm handshake. But don’t worry, the satisfaction of knowing you have made a purchase that will make all your neighbors jealous will quickly divert your attention from your numb hands.

Regulations

Another day comes and goes and with it more confusion and frustration. Sometimes you have to make a choice which path you're gonna take, but the light is dim and neither seems to lead in the direction that you think you're supposed to go. There are passions, there are talents, and then there is "what's available". I know that there are certain things that I am good at... certain concepts that I grasp that others do not, but I can never really figure out who to "do" those things. I feel like a hamster spinning in a wheel. Today was one of those days. I really have come to understand that human nature is for people to want others to "protect" them from human nature. Our government promises us that this is possible through the imposition of various layers of new laws, agencies, and regulations. In reality, these new regulations do nothing more than entrench the established crooks by placing new barriers of entry in front of the would-be competitors. The crooked stay crooked and those with ideas remain those with ideas.

Sometimes I can be a bit of a perfectionist. You could say I have "issues" trusting other people to actually do what they say that they will do. As a result, I often find myself doing things by myself. I really don't mind doing things by myself, but in reality, I prefer to doing things by myself with someone else. Does that even make sense? It does to me. I do like to work, and I do like to learn - I'm a very hands on learner - but I get lonely if I feel like I'm doing something that no one wants to be a part of, if even as an observing bystander.

One of the things that I have taken up as my hobby over the past few years is gardening. I literally knew nothing about how to grow anything prior to about 2006. Each year I try something different - some things fail and some things succeed. The next year I try to do more of what succeeded and less of what failed. Each year I get a little wiser. This year my garden seemed to get kind of a late start. It was very frustrating - especially given the way I started this blog - when everything is kinda fuzzy and not going the way that you think it should, then you take up a spare time hobby and even it doesn't seem to work right. I had many plants that kept being eaten by bugs or dug up by my dogs each time I would plant them. Learn and go on, I guess. Finally things started to grow and do well, but then recently I have been finding toads digging holes near my plants so that they can stay cool. All well and good, but the toad holes are exposing the roots of my plants, drying them out, and killing them. I suppose I can understand that even a toad needs a cool place to hang out, but I wish they wouldn't kill my plants in the process. Recently, however, my plants have begun growing quite well and look quite beautiful. I'm nearly convinced, for instance, that my zuccini plant most certainly has world domination plans on it's mind. It's spinnin out a new squash plant at the rate of nearly 1 per day and the leaves are about the size of an elephant's ear! Amazing. And even more special to me was to see the root ball that was left from the confederate star (aromatic) jasmine plant that I had given up for dead has recovered and sprouted new leaves. That's one of my most favorite scents in the world and to see it come back to life like a phoenix is really very refreshing.

Well, it's my bedtime. I pray blessings for anyone who is reading this. Truly.