Mowing by padiddle, evil ethanol

So last night I wanted to get the grass mowed, it hadn’t been touched in a solid two weeks so it was looking shitty.  A quick walk around the property revealed I need to once again invest in very expensive weed and feed to combat weeds that are overtaking areas of the yard.  This battle is straight uphill.  It seems that no matter how much I spread it is only a matter of time until Creeping Charlie (dollarweed) and various other weeds reestablish a foothold.

So I have a hard time getting the tractor started, a real hard time.  Once I do get it running the motor is reving up and down, almost sounding like it is out of gas.  I quickly drove it over to the other shed to gas it up.  After filling the tank I figured I was ready to roll.  I had to hurry since daylight is a lot more sparse at this time of year than the middle of summer.

I turn the key and the tractor makes no hint of wanting to start, it just turned over and over, regardless of choke position.  It almost seemed like it wasn’t getting any gas.  I looked at the fuel filter, there was gas in it although it didn’t seem like it was as much as there should be.  I disconnected the hose after the filter and gas flowed freely.  Weird.

So the hose ran into some intermediate valve looking thing before another hose connected the valve to the carburetor.  I pulled the hose for them valve end and saw  yellow snot hanging out of it.   I instantly knew what it was, the fcking by product of ethanol being added to gasoline.

This sludge is normally common when gas has been sitting unused in a fuel system for a period of time.  However in this case the tractor had been used within a couple weeks. I couldn’t believe it.  The fact that ethanol is even included in gas is controversial.  It is more of a handout to corn growers than anything else.  Ethanol is actually a pretty terrible fuel when you factor in the energy and dollars required to create it.

So anyway the way I fixed it was to grab my can of carb cleaner/starter fluid, jam the straw up into the valve and blast the shit out of it to dissolve the slime.    After doing so the tractor ran normally.  Unfortunately I had wasted probably a half hour of daylight screwing around.  I hate ethanol gas.

Mowing was slow going because of the high grass, certain areas required multiple passes.  It seems that my relatively new mower blades have already dulled significantly, yet another thing for me to address.  So as I expected I ran out of light as I was finishing the third of the four quadrants I divide the grass into.  Well I wasn’t going to let a little thing like darkness stop me.  After all the tractor does have headlights.

Unfortunately the tractor also has a headlight problem.  The driver side light has some sort of loose connection that makes the light flash on and off depending on how it gets jostled around.  Not only did it make visibility next to impossible if I was turning left it was just plain annoying.  I did the best I could under the limited visibility to knock everything down.  I guess this weekend I will see how many spots I missed.  I pulled the tractor into the shed around 8pm without a speck of light to be seen anywhere beside the full moon in the sky.

Last night I tried to bandage the spot on my back where the cancer was burned off.  It is in a spot where I just can not reach effectively.  Trying to apply a bandage while looking in a mirror proved to be entirely too aggravating so I just smeared some Neosporin on the area and called it good enough.

This weekend I have plenty to fill my plate.  I would like to run at the club run tomorrow but my knee still is feeling side effects from last weeks 7 miler.  I will probably not decide what I am doing until tonight.