Know what happens when...

the bolt holding the blade on the lawn mower breaks? Yes, it stops cutting the grass, I mean what else happens?

In this case it simply fell to the ground instead of coming spinning out the back toward my ankle like a scene from a Stephen King novel. Very relieving, I assure you.

This started like so: Friend is selling house used to live in. Friend has been sick and hasn't been able to mow. I volunteered to go by after work today and run the mower over it. Front yard, ten minutes tops, no problem. Get the gate open and walk into the back and...

To put it in a politically correct manner, into his Rain Forest in the Making(RFM for short). The last time I saw anything that tall someone was using a combine to harvest it. And, due to various circumstances I won't go into, he'd left stuff in the yard here and there. Where you couldn't see it until you ran into it because of the RFM. Ah well, I said I would, so into the breech, etc.

It was about a third of the way through when the mower suddenly became quieter and stopped cutting. Being the observant sort I am this caught my attention and I killed the engine and pulled the mower back. And lying there in the last of the cut grass and matted clippings was the blade and the big washer and the lock washer. In the shaft was a half-empty hole, with the rest of the bolt still in it. Crap. After a couple of minutes of digging I found the broken-off portion, and by putting a socket on it and pushing hard into the shaft was able to get it to engage the rest of the bolt enough to back it out, a bit at a time. Broken-off portion too short to do any good of course.

So off to Ace Hardware, and I walked in the door three minutes before closing. Happily the bolt was a standard 3/8x24 thread so forty-something cents later I walked out with it, drove back, and put the blade back on. Then, on to further adventure.

It took about a half-hour to get the rest of the yard that I could, moving a few things, cutting tight around others and skipping some areas entirely. I kept pushing through the RFM, the grass, the bugs, for all I know the escaped marsupials hiding out from the zookeepers. I finally gave up after the following: the mower hit something and stalled, I backed it up and gave the starter a pull, and I could tell something was hung up on the blade. I tipped it up and found a pewter tankard. Not impaled, no, nothing so mundane. The handle of the bloody thing was looped around the blade. I have no idea how it managed that, as I had to take the damned blade back off to remove it. At which point I decided that was enough enviromental destruction(who needs a friggin' RFM in Oklahoma, for God's sake?) for one day, packed up my mower and tools and went home.

I called my friend this evening and advised him that if he ever let a yard get this bad again, don't call me 'cause I WON'T DO IT. Unless it's as a favor to his widow.