May 04 2009
Mower Mania
Well it finally happened. I finally purchased a new mower for the family. After hours spent poring over websites, checking deals, looking at reviews, etc., I finally made a purchase almost out of resignation. If you read the last post, you’ll know that I set out shopping for a lawn mower on Saturday, only to be beaten down by an imperious library lady and a modern-day Cooter. From Cooter’s we set out to Home Depot, because we knew they had a mower that Consumer Report’s had rated highly.
Once at Home Depot, my wife promptly switched to a Toro mower because it was shiny red, and looked “gizmoey.” She also eyed a more expensive Toro on the floor which was “on sale” from something like $425 to $375. So we flagged down a friendly HD employee and asked about the mower. Then, since we thought we were going to buy a used mower from Cooter and foolishly placed our old mower in the car, we asked about whether HD would take the old mower and dispose of it. Nope. Sigh. Our helper did suggest that we put a free sign on it and stick it out at the end of the driveway. Great, but then we’d have to trundle all the way back to the house, drop it off, and come back and buy the new one. He then offered up the suggestion that we could just leave it out in the parking lot, but given the fact that every place these days has 8 million cameras surveying you, we thought that wouldn’t probably be prudent. So we drove home. The rest of the family stayed there and I drove back over to the HD.
I am happy to say I did not buy the shiny red Toro, but instead bought the shiny green Lawn Boy. It was a bit cheaper, had rear-wheel drive instead of front-wheel drive and had a two inch smaller deck. After inquiring if I could buy the floor model for less and being looked at as if I were an alien, I got the box (which I had to pull off the top of a stack of three) put on a dolley and checked out. Forgoing the 10% saving I could’ve gotten if I’d signed up for a credit card, I inquired whether I could use a coupon code from online. Nope. Sigh. Then it was out to the car and back home.
Once home we unboxed, put the handle on completely, put some oil in, put some gas in, pulled to cord and the mower started up. The first one to try it out was my wife, and after several passes, knew she has found a replacement for me as the love of her life. She then turned it over to me with the implicit instructions to mow the back yard immediately. And that I did. It took a bit to get used to the self propelled aspect of the lawn mower, but once I got the hang of it, it was awesome. Usually I have to struggle up hill many times while mowing the back yard. With this mower, it practically went up the hill itself. Yeah! I think I’m going to like it.
So, after all is said and done, we have the mower, we spent more than I wanted, but I believe it’s going to be a good one. And we got rid of the old mower. We listed it on craigslist for free, put a sign on it and stuck it out in the driveway, then almost instanteously got about 40 people asking about it with about 5 of those 40 telling us they could fix it or tell us what to do to see if it could be fixed. We had done most of what was suggested previously and decided it really was time for a new mower, so it went out in the driveway. Within about 2-4 hours of putting it out there, I looked out the window and it was gone. I think somebody from the neighborhood must’ve picked it up or else just the random drive-by snagged it. Sweet. Now we don’t have guilt about landfill issues, and we get a better mower for the environment. A good weekend, except in all the flurry over the mower we forgot judo lessons. Oh well, you can’t win them all.
