lundi 5 juillet 2010

Derelict

Well designed, quite esthetic and ergonomic...but useless.  Just after the warranty expired it sputtered gave up a a plume of white smoke and went into a deep coma. 
The Canada wide chain store whence it came from referred my daughters to a repair shop with much expertise with these machines.  After a few days, the shop called back, the machine was fixed and a clean bill($$$) of health was given.
Home they came, the grass they began to mow.  After a few laps, a puff of white smoke (now we are not  at the Vatican and no Pope was being elcted) came out and the machine went dead once more.
Now it lies amongst the ferns, a monument to poor workmanship and planned obsolescence, until some ecological way is found to get rid of it.

9 commentaires:

  1. Oh No! The same thing happened to my husband's mower-tractor! It has something to do with the gasoline mix, the ethanol corroding the metal in the gas tank, or something like it. I don't know about your lawn, but here, things are out of control, the grass is a foot tall.

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  2. This was an electric mower. It has been replaced by a gaz mower that works very well. but the last mowing, because of wet grass was done with an old style human powered mower.

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  3. Is your neighborhood zoned for goats or sheep? Just wondering...

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  4. No goats, no sheep, just skunks, raccoons and stray cats not to mention squirrelsand once, the tracks were there in the morning, a deer.

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  5. Ce n'est pas abandoné; c'est ancien, peut-etre.

    Non?

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  6. Deux ans? Ancien? On vieillit vite de nos jours.
    Fixing it once more would cost more than another similar machine.
    Mes filles l'ont vraiment abandonnée.

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  7. I was thinking that if goats are permitted you might be able to stop struggling with mowers altogether. Buy a female goat and you would get the milk too.

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  8. Goats are not permitted. Then again we would need a pregnant goat, when the calf would have been weaned we could have milk for some time but soon she would need another pregnancy. That would require a ram. Now we have 3 goats with more on the way. Soon we are out of grass and land; not to mention money because of the fines.
    I must be a pessimist.

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  9. Before I moved to FL, I cleaned out my shed by calling a local family that fixes and resells old mowers, often cannibalizing parts to make a couple of decent junkers out of many. I gave up a couple of walk behinds, a vintage Toro snowblower (no use down here), and a big walk behind trimmer mower that I used much too heavily back on the farm. The manual push mower I gave to the thrift store. Such a mower can not cut the kind of grass that grows here.

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