Riff 83 - Mowers, Mishaps, and Choosing Survival Over Heroism

We walk you through the ways we’ve “improved” lawnmowers, power washers, and even our diets—by lowering the standard of success. 

Between the three of us, we’ve collected a highlight reel of poor decisions: mow mishaps, backyard experiments, and deep thoughts about sardines, anchovies, and whatever Grape Nuts are supposed to be. We share the kind of “redneck hacks” that sound helpful right up until you try them—like stuffing a rag into a mower’s air intake to save starter fluid.

We also explore self-defense, which for us mostly means recognizing how quickly we would lose a fight. We’ve studied the irrationality of street fights just enough to conclude the smartest move is to not become a story someone else tells later. 

Along the way, we uncover “truths” like the difference between reel mowers and the real mowers, the correct spelling of 'lapping compound', and why hot sauce might technically qualify as a weapon. We also spend an unreasonable amount of time debating cereal, because nothing reveals our intellectual limits faster than our fascination with the expansion rate of Grape Nuts.

We even get into emergency preparedness, which for us means looking around the house and saying, “What could this be used for instead?” Could Grape Nuts replace kitty litter? Should hot sauce be used as a fire extinguisher? We don’t recommend it, but we’ve clearly thought about it more than responsible people do.

If you’ve ever fixed something the wrong way and felt proud anyway, you’re one of us.