Murphys Law

We all know the basic tenant known as Murphy's Law which states that anything that can go wrong, will. There are lots of corollaries. For example if something is going to break, it will do so at the most inopportune moment possible. The ABS module in my car has failed twice on me, both times just as the light turned green in the #1 lane of a crowded 55mph parkway during rush hour leaving me with nothing but a fast idle and a lot of irate people behind me.

Likewise after a relatively mild winter, we are now looking at about a foot of snow Global Warming this weekend so my faithful snow blower decides that now is the time to allow the starter rope to break. If this were a lawnmower, repair would be trivially simple. Since it's a blower, the puller is well and truly buried and requires the blower be pretty much reduced to a pile of parts before this part becomes available.

Oh well, it was 15 years old when it was given to me by a fellow who was moving to Florida, and that was about 20 years ago so I guess I'm entitled to a new one. The new one is about 15 years old and features an electric starter. Interestingly someone was thinking when they did this and the starter is 120VAC with a place to insert your extension cord to fire the beast up. Pull the plug and go. Once warmed up it starts on one pull of the rope which should make for an impressively long life on that part. All this and no batteries.

The drawback to this particular arrangement is that it adds to the cost and complexity of the thing. I'm surprised that most gas-powered stuff doesn't come with a port where you insert the rubber-tipped  doohickey on your 3/8" drill and use that to spin up a recalcitrant mower or blower. I suppose it's because someone would stick his finger in there to see if it was still turning after the engine started.