All Decked Out
I spent this weekend working on the riding mower. The deck has been badly torn up in the last couple of years, to the point where I couldn’t bang out the dents any more. I’d resorted to cutting out sections with an angle grinder, but in the end, I think that just made things worse. Even the guide wheels were splayed out at odd angles.
Diana and I weighed repairing the deck vs. replacing it, and neither option appealed. The former held the unknowns of finding a shop that could shape the deck properly and replace the metal I’d cut away. The latter looked expensive—the cheapest deck I could find was over $700 US. We limped along for most of the summer, dropping the deck about once a week and taking a 3-pound sledgehammer to the damaged portions.
When we finally decided to replace the deck, the first couple of vendors I looked at no longer had the decks in stock, with messages that the manufacturer had discontinued the item. That was disconcerting, especially because the mower was only about four years old.
Part of my problem may have stemmed from wanting to get just the deck, thinking I’d move the pulleys and such over from the old deck. They all seemed to be in working order, so I didn’t see a need to pay for new stuff. Then again, I suppose I could have bought the complete deck and held onto the old parts as spares. Ah well. Such is hindsight.
At any rate, I found a deck at Turf Depot, ordered it, and waited. And waited. Lack of communication made me nervous that they were just a drop-shipper that didn’t have it in stock and couldn’t get it. They were eventually responsive to emails though, so that was a plus. The CSR I talked to said they’d email me when they had shipping info.
Wednesday I was up at the VA for an endocrinology appointment when I got a text from R+L Freight Services. They had a delivery for me, and would I call them to make arrangements? I texted Diana about something else and let her know that the deck was probably arriving that day.
She replied that it had just been dropped off.
Five minutes later, I got a phone call from R+L. They wanted to make arrangements for delivery. I said, “That’s kind of disconcerting because according to my wife, it just got dropped off.”
Cue silence from the CSR. Then, “Oh, hey. Look at that. I just got delivery confirmation from my driver. I guess you can disregard this call.” We both laughed and hung up.
So I spent Saturday with the two decks set up on sawhorses (to make it easier on my back), taking parts off the old one and reinstalling them on the new. Easier on my memory that way. They sent me a hardware pack with a pair of idler wheels, a couple of mounting brackets, and some assorted bits and bobs. Turns out I didn’t need any of them, which is a good thing. The idler wheels were the wrong size, as was the belt guard they sent. But I think I know why that happened.
MTD makes mowers for several brands, including Cub Cadet, John Deere, and Craftsman (which is what my mower is). Even though the deck might be the same size, Cub Cadet might put things together differently than Craftsman (and I kind of like a couple of things Cub Cadet does on their decks). So I’m assuming the extra parts I got were for the other brands MTD manufactures for.
At any rate, the deck is assembled, and all I have to do tomorrow is remount it to the mower, level it, and we should be back in business.
Cancer Sucks
In the last week, two friends lost family members to melanoma and pancreatic cancer.
Wear sunscreen, folks. Especially if you’re at risk. Pay attention to your body and listen to what it’s telling you.
If you’d like to do something tangible to help fight cancer, consider donating your unused computer power to Folding@Home. F@H is a distributed computing system that allows medical researchers to run powerful simulations across multiple computer systems. Your computer has unused power because even when you’re surfing the web or working on a spreadsheet, you’re probably only using 20-30% of your system’s power. Even if you’re streaming, you still have a lot of power in reserve. Distributed computing uses that power by running in the background, waiting to see when you’re not doing hardcore computing. You’ll never even know it’s there.
You can read more at the F@H website and download the client there. If you’d like to join a team (you don’t have to), my team, the Quiet Professionals, is 234447. I usually “crunch” or use my computer cycles for Alzheimer’s research, but this week, in honor of my friends’ losses, I’m working on cancer research.
Writing
I have a new post up last week for the Wednesday Weekly Blog Challenge, this one about haunted houses. Check out Haunted Houses – The Ultimate Adventure? and join the conversation.
The playlist for this week’s post has been Pirate Folk Music of the Lost Seas by Dream Alliance.
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