The saga of the lawn mower

Right now we have a gardener, its pretty inexpensive. Most everyone has one here. He cuts and waters the grass, but he also does things like waters your pile of cardboard boxes... I won't get on my soap box about common sense again. But anyway, we decided that we could water and cut our grass on our own. Larry and I went to ACE hardware yesterday. Its pretty much the only place here to buy a lawnmower. We spent at least an hour maybe more looking at mowers. Most things here are not priced and properly labeled. It's very common to have a box with a price below that doesn't belong to it. We have a small yard so we just need a small electric mower plus most mowers here are electric. Of course that is complicated. Mowers are sold with different types of plugs. You have to buy adapters that don't fit well. Imagine mowing the lawn and the cord keeps falling out. We also needed to look at extension cords. Maybe it's been too long since I've purchased an extension cord in the US, but it was $45 US minimum for a cord.

Finally after asking several questions of store sales people with no knowledge of the products in the store we finally decide upon on a model. We are sure keep the price in mind because it often changes at the cash register. We get there and it ends up 50Dhs less, that's cool. We're happy we have what we need and it cost a little less.

Last night we went to an Iftar dinner (more on that in another post) so we didn't put the mower together. Today Larry goes off to work so I decide to put the mower together. I open the box and take everything out. I see the blades and think that's kinda weird, they don't look like they would actually cut grass. But I keep going thinking it's some cool new way to cut grass. I page thru the manual looking for English (all manuals come in 6-10 languages here). It keeps refering to the scarifer. I wonder what the heck that it is so read more before proceeding. Turns out that we purchased a law aerator. All that... back and forth with sales people, getting prices, checking on cords and adapters... and we bought the wrong damned thing!

So back to the store today. The good news is that a new road just opened up making getting to this store much easier. Hopefully it's still open today.