Cycling Through Solutions

Normally I mow our lawn. I do this because my husband doesn’t do a very meticulous job. He also does things like lifting the lawnmower up into my flower beds to mow them, which results in hundreds of dollars of perennials being sucked out of the soil and ground into lifeless shreds.

But, I just had knee replacement surgery a few days ago. I cannot walk without crutches and I am taking narcotics for pain. Therefore, using a machine with sharp blades that can cut off appendages is unwise. Further, right now I am not physically capable of pushing the mower.

Which means my husband, Pat, has to mow the lawn. I got him to mow the grass once before I went to the hospital. He complained like an annoying mouthy attorney the entire time. No grass was mowed during the week that I was in the hospital. No grass was mowed the weekend that I came home from the hospital. No grass was mowed at all during last week. The grass is now up over my ankles and catches my crutches when I try to walk through it to fill my bird feeders and water my flowers. Now, my husband, Pat, has left for a week long bike ride. Therefore the grass continues to grow and he is nowhere to be found.

Of course, there were numerous opportunities to mow the grass. We’ve had lovely rain free weather for days now. Also, like a dutiful and caring spouse, I brought up the subject several thousand times, lest he forget that our grass needed to be mowed.

On each occasion, he conveniently found something else to do, such as add air to his bike tires, pretend to sleep in the recliner, putter around in the garage with bike stuff, go on bike rides and make one or two million phone calls about the weeklong bike ride. I’m betting that other ladies can identify with me as I am sure that I am not the only woman whose spouse puts his time consuming hobby far far above any household husbandly duties.

This bike ride is called RAGBRAI, which stands for the Register’s Annual Bike Ride Across Iowa. The Register is a local newspaper. The ride starts at a city on the western side of the state and riders spend a week pedaling across Iowa through various cities to the eastern part of the state. The launch point ritual is dipping a front bike tire in the Missouri river, which borders the western side of the state. The end point ritual is dipping a rear bike tire in the Mississippi river, which borders the western side of the state.

A minimum of 10,000 people participate in this ride and my husband describes it as “adult spring break.” There are countless stories of beer drinking, wild parties, beer drinking, alcohol consumption, quite a bit of food from various vendors, and beer drinking. Of course, there is pretty scenery in Iowa and lots of hills to pedal as well. However, since he’s Irish through and through, I’m thinking he goes for the parties and the beer drinking.

Personally, I like RAGBRAI. I don’t go. I enjoy it from a distance. It’s a week of peace and quiet for me. No snoring. No stinky bike clothes in the laundry. No daily recounts of every bike ride. No one stealing the TV remote to change the channel to Tour de France. No noise and grumbling in the garage. No one wearing cleated bike shoes across our ceramic tile floor and breaking the tiles. It’s ALL GOOD!

Enormous whining and complaining precipitates RAGBRAI each year. This year’s “sky is falling” catastrophe occurred on Friday when we discovered that my van needs new brakes all the way around, and therefore, would not be available for my husband to take on RAGBRAI. Pat actually rides his bike to the starting point for RAGBRAI. The van, minus all the passenger seats, was needed to haul the gear. That’s gear with a “g” and that rhymes with “b” which stands for beer. Of course, “g” also rhymes with “c” and that stands for a week’s worth of bike clothes. It also rhymes with “t” and that stands for tents. Throw in some sleeping bags, extra tires incase of blow outs, a towel and toiletries, his friend’s tandem bike and other assorted necessities. Of course, the van has a hitch, which is good in case a trailer is needed to haul anything else – like beer.

I’m not driving the van, of course. My husband got one of his friends to get his wife to volunteer to drive it for them. But the word from the mechanic was a set back for them all. Yes, this was avoidable if the van had been taken to the mechanic earlier, but I could not drive until Thursday and my non-lawn mowing husband didn’t take it in. He did, however, borrow it on Thursday to drive to a client appointment 3 hours away. As a result, it was Friday morning before I could take the van in for an oil change and to get the squealing grinding noise checked.

I’m not a “sky is falling” kind of person. I’m more the glass half full, obstacles are only opportunities in disguise kind of optimist – a real Pollyanna. I’m also resourceful. As a result, I offered several suggestions. One of them was to leave the tandem bike behind. This was rejected. Another was to take our Jeep and use the hitch bike carrier plus attach things to the luggage carrier on the roof of the Jeep. This also was rejected. My third brilliant idea was to use someone else’s van or rent one. Rejected. To be fair, Pat did not reject these ideas by himself. He was in constant consultation with his guy pack on this dilemma. It was a group decision.

Of course, you can’t mow the lawn when talking on a cell phone – unthinkable. In the end, I rejected one of their counter ideas – to let the guy’s wife drive my van with the bad brakes. This was so out of the question that I hid all the van keys! The bottom line is that the day was saved when the guy whose wife was going to drive the van decided to drive his truck to RAGBRAI and haul everything in the truck. I think that was actually like one of my ideas, but since it was actually my idea it was acceptable.

All of this, of course, left Pat way too emotionally exhausted to mow our grass. But, since there are no unsolvable problems and every obstacle is simply an opportunity in disguise, I’ve found the silver lining in this. This is an opportunity for an invention and a brilliant invention at that.

What we need is a pedal powered riding lawn mower. It would look like a regular bike and ride like a regular bike, but the wheels would be about 20 inches wide and would have razor sharp grass cutting blades, like the old hand push mowers did. It’s a win/win and a brilliant solution, if I do say so myself. Pedaling the bike would rotate the grass cutting blades. Pat - and other spouses like him, would get a bike ride in. Our grass would be cut whenever I can’t mow. It’s eco friendly and helpful in reducing our carbon footprint and overall in a positive step in saving the planet. Not to mention it would be quiet – far more quiet than our gas powered self propelled mower that I use now.

Of course, the bicycle mower could be decked out with bike ‘stuff’. Pannier bags could be attached to carry necessities like granola bars. A water bottle would still fit on the bike – and the water bottle could be filled with Gatorade, a necessity for any bike ride. Our yard is traffic free so an IPod can be worn and listened to with complete safety. And then there’s beer. A cooler with some beer could be carted out to the yard ahead of time because lawn mowing and drinking beer go hand in hand like RAGBRAI and beer drinking or like little boys and wet cement.

So, now that I have a brilliant ultimate solution to my dilemma, there are a few more things to resolve – like a design, a patient and the actual invention itself. In the meantime, I shall have to locate a starving college student and hire that person to mow our grass this week. In the meantime, I shall sit on our deck, enjoy the nice weather and watch the birdies looking for food in my empty bird feeders.