January 26, 2005

  • I am in the middle of an illness! Rats! My gut really hurt yesterday, to the point where I felt I had been injured. I mean, when your tummy aches, usually it doesn't cause increased pain to press on it! This did! Ouchy! And I have been practicing my cough, and am getting really good at it! Howsome-ever, I had things to do. I didn't post my Wednesday/Thursday/Friday experience with the lawn tractor/snow-blower battery, but suffice it to say, when you buy a new battery, it doesn't necessarily mean you have bought a GOOD battery. With a mechanical aptitude of zero, I got pretty good at removing and installing a battery! Necessity, you know.


    So now, I have a flat tire on the snow-blower, and the tire actually came halfway off the rim. Not a good thing. So, I took my jack and jacked the lawn tractor up and proceeded to try to take off the wheel! Yeah, right! The instruction book says, " Remove the axle cap." It doesn't say how. When I called the Sears line, the guy, who had been honing his attitude of superiority for several hours before I called, let me know that all I had to do was pull and it would come right off. Well, no! Then he told me that it was obviously because I had not removed the axle cap since I bought the lawn tractor in 1998. Silly me! Of course I should have done that, even though I would have had absolutely no reason to do that until now!


    SO, I went out and  bought a bunch of stuff at Home Depot, including a large pair of pliers, hoping to be able to grip the cap and pry it off. I got it to wiggle, but that was it. I also scored the cap quite badly in the process. Remember, this was all happening while I was feeling bad! And there I was, lying on the cold, cold ground!


    It got dark, as it is wont to do every night without fail. SO, back to Home Depot I went to get a halogen worklight, which, once I assembled it, cast a bright light on the site of my failings. I finally gave up and put out a call for help to the folks across the road, who have saved my hide on any number of occasions. Sure enough, one of the sons came over on his ATV and joined me on the ground, using one of his gripping pliers. I would like to report that he pulled the cap right off. The truth is, he had a real struggle, too. But he did it!! ( Of course, I had softened it up for him!) Thank you, Adam! Of course there was grease all over the place, which apparently I have to re-grease when I put the wheel back on. He explained to me, in words of one syllable, how to reassemble the wheel mechanism, and I think I can do it. So now I will take the wheel over to my tire place, who are great people, to see if I need a new tire or what! I just hope the snow holds off until I get the snowblower back in action!


    I guess I should be getting used to the fact that mechanical projects that take most folks 15 minutes take me 6-8 hours. It has happened many times. When I hear people start out with " All you have to do...",  it makes me wish it were proper and Christian-like to throw something heavy at them.On those rare occasions when I have been able to get help, they discover that it is not the piece of cake that they thought it was going to be. I wish I had a nickle for every time somebody said, " Gee, I never saw anything like this before." Yeah, I know.