Saturday in the Garage

I am relaxing right now and I deserve to be. I started working in the garage this morning at 10 am, and aside from my three and a half hour junket to Lansing to help a fellow Corvette enthusiast, I was in the garage until dark.

I overhauled the lawnmower; changing the blade, spark plug, oil, throttle cable and doing a tune up. I put in some fresh gas and voila, it started on the first pull. Grand total spent? $19.54. And I was going to replace it since a new one is "only" $180.00.

Since I did so well with the lawnmower, I started to overhaul my roto-tiller/cultivator. I love this little thing. I bought it for my yard in Jersey, which was essentially moss growing on beach sand when we bought the house. After three years, it looked like Matt Lauer's head inasmuch as grass way vaguely growing, but it wasn't thick. It was a display model and leaked oil from the first. The throttle cable on that seized, too. I am trying to get this one unstuck as I think it will be more than the $13.99 for the lawnmower, since it has a cut-off switch integrated into it.

I did manage to pull the engine apart and figure out the leak. I rebuilt it, but am out of oil and probably need a new spark plug, so I don't know if it will still leak or not.

I bring all this up only because I am on a hot streak of mechanical fortitude as late and I am waiting for the show to drop. I am generally handy, but also generally clutzy, generally impatient and generally inept. These are the ingredients of a dangerous person. One confident enough to dig in and too stupid to know when I am in over my head.

What has been different lately is that I have been really enjoying the work. I realize that I much prefer working on mechanical things than I do working on the house. I get far more frustrated working on the little details and taking it slow when I am doing a window, but I just check out and have a zen experience when I am working on a car or other mechanical widget.

But after a long day I am glad to be able to relax in front of the TV for a minute before I slip off to bed. It has been a very nice day, indeed. Even if it did snow briefly. You already know how I feel about that.