Getting Ready For Spring

Yesterday, Monday, I decided to mow the lawn. So: go and get the lawn tractor out of the garage and start mowing. Right?

Wrong. First, I have to move the Jeep so that I can move the lawn tractor. But I can't. The Jeep's battery is dead. I put the battery charger on it. Then I inspected the lawn tractor.

<< The lawn tractor when it was brand new, April 2015.

The right front tire on the tractor was completely deflated. I have an air pump, but it's not made for completely deflated tires. In that situation, the air leaks out around the rim as fast as it goes into the tire. 

I had to take the tire off the axle, which took maybe two hours. There's a cap to remove, then a cotter pin, then a large washer, then the tire slides off the axle. It sounds simple, and it is, but each step required tools that I did not have handy. So it was: trudge to the house, go down to the cellar where the tools are kept, rummage for a tool, get something that looks like it might do the job, trudge back to the garage, get on my knees, and try and try to use the tool. Then, give up, go to the house, to the basement again, and do it all again with a different or bigger tool. 

After a couple of hours, I got the tire off. Then I took it to Sheetz, because Sheetz has an auto tire air pump. But I couldn't inflate the tire, for the reason I already stated: too little air flow. 

So I drove to another auto service station. A young woman sitting behind a desk told me they couldn't help me because "we don't do tires." How can you operate an auto service business and not be able to inflate a tire?

I drove to a third auto place. I had been to this place before. It's called Tuffy. In fact, I've taken my Jeep to it a number of times. They had a tire air pump and it took three seconds to inflate the lawn tractor's tire. They didn't charge me for it. Then I went home and re-installed the tire onto the tractor's axle. The whole process took about five hours, from discovering the flat tire to removing it from the tractor to fixing it to re-installing it onto the tractor. 

I left the battery charger on the Jeep's battery overnight. When I went out to the garage today at noon, I got into the Jeep and turned the key. The engine didn't do it's usual cranking; it roared to life instantly. As soon as I turned the key, the car was running. I moved the car a few feet so that I could get the lawn tractor out of the garage.

I mowed the yard: front, side, and back. Nuria came out and did her part with the string trimmer and the leaf blower. The yard looks a little splotchy because at this time of year it's partly green and partly brown. It has to do with a mix of grass seed types that have been put down in the yard over the years. But it does look much better than before the mowing. 

I can hardly wait to see what breaks tomorrow.