The last time we needed it was June 6 when we were without power for almost two days. That's enough time for a lot of stuff to go bad in the refrigerator and freezer.
We ended up borrowing a generator from our neighbors, who had one to spare.
But with winter only about six weeks away, Maria is keen to have us prepared for power outages.
The generator is way too heavy for me to lift into the back of one of our SUVs and I'm not even sure it will fit, so I decided to try some starting fluid.
I've never used starting fluid before, but I figured I could puzzle it out. That said, I dragged the generator out into the driveway so as not to burn the house down if things went bad.
I gave it a squirt in the general vicinity of the carburetor and yanked on the cord. To my amazement, the engine fired, ran a couple of seconds and died.
I repeated this sequence about five times before the engine started to run on its own and took off at full speed once I moved the choke lever to the Run position.
I don't know about Maria, but this is a huge relief to me to know that, even if the beast doesn't want to start on the first or the 20th pull of the cord, I can make it go with a $3 can of starting fluid.
I have it humming along in the driveway now, running the tank dry so I can refill it with fresh gas and fuel stabilizer for the next time the lights go out.
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