Tuesday, June 24, 2008

A new moan, hey?

So I'm out mowing my lawn tonight, and a middle-aged couple and their daughter are out for a constitutional, and as they pass by, he says to me, "That there's one thing I'd never be able to do. First time out I'd cut the cord."

See, after six seasons or so years of faithful service without even an oil change, the transmission on my 6.5 horsepower Sears Craftsman self-propelled mower seized up, and the mower became as balky as pushing a wheelbarrowful of cinder blocks over a railroad track. So after researching the matter, including some bank balance inspection, I decided to go for a cheaper option: a swingover-handled Black & Decker electric push mower.

Mowing a lawn using a device that has a swath width of "an average commercial string trimmer" (a derisive but probably accurate measure authored by my stepson-in-law), one requiring about 200 feet of grounded power cord, comes down to how well you did in geometry. The front lawn is encumbered by two young maple trees and a slightly older peach tree. So navigating the mower becomes an exercise in devising the most efficient, least annoying layout. The maples are not bad, because at their age they have not branched out wildly. The same cannot be claimed for the peach. Not only is the peach a wide-branching tree, but is also a variety that branches low to the ground. I believe it may have been a lawn-mowing person who invented the limbo.

At any rate, I smiled back at the gentleman and parried, "Sounds like you're speaking from my experience!"

"Not on your life," he shot back. "I know my limits!"

And off they went. I chuckled, and resumed trying to calculate the square on the hypotenuse that would best describe the next half of my lawn cutting pattern. He had triggered a memory of a time in Thunder Bay when I was out trying to use an electric snow thrower as a Zamboni on our backyard rink. Of course, electric cord meets no resistance on ice, and so in one startling instant, twenty feet of fairly new outdoor cable was severed and tightly wrapped around the paddle and axle of the thrower. Ah, the memories.

I console myself by thinking that the carbon footprint from the lawnmower is probably much less than that of its predecessor. This may be fallacious, if, indeed as it seems, it takes three times as long to cut the grass. But the other consolation is that it is not nearly as noisy. I can even hear the barking dogs and the revving Harleys even while scalping my yard.

I sure do miss that gas mower.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Wheeling and dealing

The new wheelchair, indeed, the first one ever, arrived today. Its purpose is to allow J to participate in such events as a birdwatching field trip, or the Oxford, Ohio Relay for Life for breast cancer research, or just shopping at stores that don't have electric carts. It weighs 42 lbs. And it was made in Mexico, not China.

Isn't it amazing how unconscionably high the prices are for assistive devices? Not being an expert in economics, I'd have to put it down to the fact that prices in this field are determined by how much a manufacturer can gouge an insurance company. Otherwise, how can you explain the spread between $197.00 and $560.00 for exactly the same item? And when you're buying something like this without going through insurance, you want to be sure you find exactly what you're looking for, so you won't have a full-blown case of buyer's remorse two days later when you discover the same item on the internet for hundreds less and free shipping.

In any case, we discovered this gem at IKEA, the new monster furniture place in West Chester, when J looked for an electric cart and found a wheelchair that met her weight and dimensional requirements. I have to assume that battery technology just isn't up to propelling the average shopper in a cart around an area that's touted to be the size of six football fields. Or maybe they just don't want amateur jockeys bashing into all that lovely Swedish furniture. In any case, we enjoyed the whole experience, and from her seated vantage point, all she had to do was point in the direction she wanted to go, and I revved up the old Armstrong motor and off we trundled.

Whenever we shop at some food chain outlet, she gets into an electric cart, because they have a basket on the front, and because they make an obnoxious beeping whenever she thrusts it into reverse. The six-year-old in her loves that. But now that sciatica has become a sporadic accompaniment, she needs access to places where no electric cart has ever gone before.

Why not an electric scooter? Well, refer to the points made in the second paragraph above. But even more importantly, we're still paying off a Honda sedan that we bought before we realized that the future might be easier if we had bought a van. And there are other reasons, too. I can't keep up with a scooter. A scooter has power requirements that border on being a nuisance. After all, J does not have to plug me into the wall at night, although I might get a charge out of that.

So what do we know now? One thing we know for certain is that the fully-expanded chair will not go through the doorways of our 70's cape cod home. Another is that I will develop muscles in places where they have been largely absent hitherto. And another is that since I've always walked behind J when she rides around in the stores, I will now be less of a Prince Philip (hands behind back, head slightly deferentially bowed forward, attendant on every word) and more of an interested companion. And if J doesn't like where we're headed, she can apply the brakes or turn the wheel. She's on a roll!