April 19, 2009

Saturday Work

I bought a new/old John Deere RX 63 riding mower on Friday.
My Honda Helix was having trouble.
So, I went over to the Uhaul dealer after putting my Honda Metro outside with it's for sale sign, and rented a trailer for transporting my new/old mower from Mountville to "The Pete".
I started taking my Helix apart after returning from the Uhaul place because my mower would not be ready until later in the afternoon.
In order to change the headlight bulb on the Helix, I had to take the whole front end apart. Honda is known for it's reliability, but they sure didn't think things out when it came to design.
The scooter looks like it was designed by 30 different engineers who weren't talking to each other.
There are millions (or so it seems) of screws to remove, in a specific order. The problem comes when I tried to place them so I wouldn't forget where they go when I re-assembled everything. No luck there. I just started piling them up here and there and hoped my memory would allow a reasonable semblance of the past.
I had already replaced the battery, which wasn't holding a charge, and everything worked, except the headlight, so I figured it was a good idea to get that fixed.
Well, the headlight bulb was fine, but I replaced it anyway since I had just done all that work.
Then, I started tracing the electrical lines to see if anything was amiss.
I made it to the fuse box, and took the old fuses out to see if they were burned out. They seemed fine, so I just replaced them anyway, just in case. I pushed the headlight fuse in and it stuck a bit, so I cleaned the socket out, and lo and behold, the headlight worked!
So, then, I spent the next hour or so finding out that my memory wasn't so good anymore. But, most of the screws made it back to one hole or another, and I didn't have any left in the end.
Then, I took the trailer and rode over to pick up the mower. I loaded it without problem, tied it down and transported it. I unloaded it, stored it, and returned the trailer.
When I got home, I took my Helix for a 30 mile ride, hitting speeds of 74mph at times. Mostly cruising around 45 the rest of the time. The top speed was only for short bursts on open highway.
I watched a movie last night and hit the sack around 10:30 for a good night's rest.
Sound boring to you? Well, a year ago, I would never have lived through this boring day. I would have been dead .
Thank God for bariatric surgery.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Sounds like a very eventful day. : ) i just wanted to comment on the u-haul trailer . . . . they are very easy to work with aren't they?? I actually purchased a car trailer that they call an auto transport. I visited the www.uhaul.com/trucksales website and found a location to check one out, it was so affordable that i just had to get it!!! Hopefully the trailer has made life easy for you as it did for me : ) If you find yourself renting often. . . try taking a look at the ones for sale! : ) Happy Hauling!!!!!!!!!

Lee said...

Sadly, the only trailers they sell are the car carriers, and I don't need one of them.
The trailer I used had no shocks, so the riding mower bounced quite a bit on it's ride home.
Thanks for the info.
Lee