Pop passed on recently and my teenager was taking over doing his lawn duties using his Snapper Mower. I noticed Pop stored his gas in two old plastic Paint Thinner containers using and old funnel. I figured I'd get a nice 5g container for regular gas and 1g for the oil mix stuff....I figured it should be safer and eliminate the accidental 'putting the wrong gas in the wrong piece of equipment' scenario...not that teenagers would ever make that mistake. I bought two Blitz cans at Walmart. These are the ones with the extremely short stubby Nozzle with a button you slide up and the pull this trigger to release gas. Looked simple enough anyway...like our own little private gas station right.... I stopped at the gas staion to fill them up, first the 5g sucker. I added my stabil to the 5g can then oil/stabil to the to the 1g can. I then proceeded to fill the 5 gallon container. I next decided to see how these babies worked so I put the nozzle back on the 5g can and removed the nozzle from the 1g. I proceeded to fill the 1g from the 5g. As soon as I slid the button and pressed the trigger gas burst out everywhere! I then realize this stubby dam little nozzle needed to be well with in the 1g container. That manuever was awkward as hell to pull off and more gas was split. At $4 a gallon I was getting pretty upset. I was waiting for the attendant to comeand yell as well. I realized this situation would only be more cumbersome trying to fill my weedwacker or blower with this darm stubby nozzle....plus I realized there would be no chance of my teenager doing it without loosing a quart of gas everytime. I was about to head to Lowes to look for some tubing to extend the nozzle when I figured I'd try to return these suckers to Walmart. To my surpise they would accept them. Lowes sold the same crap so I ran down to HD. Their design was a bit better so I emptied the gas from the Walmart cans to the HD cans (more spilt gas) and headed back to Walmart for my return. Walmart did refund my money. On the way out what do I see....a special Blitz accessory for gas cans....an extension tube for their stubby cans! I can just hear pop up their laughing at me. I probably splilled more gas with those damn techno cans that day than he splilled in his entire life with his paint thinner container and funnel!

Christian has been mesmerized with law officers since he was little bitty. His favorite show has always been "COPS." I watch it with him because of content and we always talk about what the person did wrong, why the police had to do what they did, that the person arrested is having to accept the consequence of his actions, etc. Actually, the theme from COPS was one of the first songs he learned. LOL!! He LOVES to play COPS with his little nephew and nieces. They played for a couple hours at my son's house the day I was stopped. When they play COPS at my house, Christian is always 'the good guy' and rides his 4-wheeler to capture the 'bad guys.' At my son's home, the good guys and bad guys ride horses. Whenever we are close to an officer, Christian always shakes their hand and asks them about a million questions. He has probably been in the front and back of a police car more times than some of the 'bad guys' in jail. He never misses the opportunity to ask and, so far, he has never been refused. No, I never know what is going to cause a melt-down but I had a pretty good idea when I realized those blue lights were for me that one was coming on. We have always talked about police being our friends, are there to help us, and to keep us safe. (My son-in-law is an ex-policeman so he has shown Christian a lot of 'bad guy' holds that police use.) I feel his reaction was based solely on the police was after HIS Mama. Made a HUGE difference in his reaction. After we pulled away, Christian started verbalizing some resentment towards the officer. I explained to him that the officer was doing what he was supposed to do...making sure people drive safely and follow the laws to keep everyone safe. I explained that I was the one at fault...I was driving over the speed limit and should have been paying better attention to my speed. And, how NICE the officer was because he could have given me a ticket for breaking the driving law but he just asked me to slow down and be careful. For the remainder of my drive home, I could still see the bum-fuzzled look on the officer's face. LOL Not sure if I felt worse for him or for Christian. Jan, Jan, Jan. I'll never live that down, will I? "I've been driving for the same amount of time, and I've never had a moving violation either. It's easy. Don't break traffic laws. Or, get lucky and don't get caught. Either one works." This pretty much sums up why I haven't been stopped in all these years. A lot of luck.

Briggs allows use of E10 in their engines without modification. Has slightly higher octane, which doesn't do anything as these are already low compression engines. E10 has less heat (BTU's) than gasoline, so you'll get poorer fuel economy (maybe 5%-10%). Briggs specifically does not recommend E85 and states usage could be grounds for warranty denial. To run E85 you would need to rejet carburetor (richer) and replace all elastomers (rubbers) and plastics in the fuel system. Ideally, you would also want to raise compression ratio by milling head or replacing piston with some type of pop-up. Also, advancing ignition 3 to 5 degrees would be necessary. If you do all of this correctly, you should be able to run E85 with as much or more horsepower than stock. You will own a highly modified engine which means no warranty. Also, your per gallon fuel economy will be down approximately 35% due to the much lower heat content of ethanol. Actual thermal efficiency should be about same as gasoline engine. Going a step further, I wouldn't even think about running any type of methanol blend. Performance is similar to ethanol, but meth is much more corrosive to aluminum and Zamac components common in small engines. As little as 0.5% meth has been found to be highly reactive with zinc alloy die cast parts.

Happy to see people checking in and okay. Hurricanes are so scary, especially with all of the flooding in your area. I was at a public golf course today, here in Louisville, to videotape a PGA golf clinic. Ike's winds came rushing through, and we stood there watching 100' trees falling over all around us. Needless to say, the clinic was canceled. Fortunately, everyone got out of there unscathed. I can only imagine what it was like in Houston. After hurricanes Francis and Jeane, all of my landscaping was wiped out, along with my fence. The windstorm insurance did not cover any of it. They only covered the "footprint" of the house... Not even the exterior paint! A special rider was required to cover anything else. Hopefully, that will not be the case for the good people of Texas. The most important thing, though, is personal safety. Gardens will recover... especially for people like us, who are sure to make it so! Bob