Man tours on lawn mower to assist charities
Published: March 29, 2007
Louis Ransom is counting on more days like this in the coming months - sleeping beneath the stars, chats over breakfast with friendly waitresses, interviews with curious reporters.
It will be a journey of more than 30,000 miles, as long as his luck and his lawn mower hold out.
Ransom, a 48-year-old Michigan man, is in the third week of a yearlong trip around America at 15 mph atop a mower provided by Dixie Chopper. The company bills it as the “world’s fastest lawn mower,” but speed isn’t as important to Ransom as seeing the country and raising money for Children’s Miracle Network and Shriners Hospitals for Children.
If he happens to break a world record, all the better. He made an overnight stop Tuesday in Poughkeepsie, and he expects to reach all of the lower 48 states by next March.
“It was a dream. Never thought it would become a reality, but it did,” Ransom said Wednesday morning outside the Arlington Diner, where he had just eaten. As he spoke, smoke billowed out of his mouth, a pack of USA Gold cigarettes tucked into the pocket of his tan coveralls. A tobacco-colored mustache accented Ransom’s short salt-and-pepper beard, more salt than pepper.
Ransom is a former long-haul truck driver whose dream was to see the places he never got to see on his old cross-country routes.
“I’ve been within 20 miles of the Grand Canyon, never seen it,” he said.
Ransom started this month in Portland, Maine, and he aims to conclude in Washington, D.C.
Problem in Vermont
He already has New England covered - “rock and roll,” he says to that - but the Vermont leg ended abruptly when authorities told him the mower wasn’t properly registered for state roads. Its rear reflective triangle was supposed to mark it as a slow-moving vehicle, like a farm tractor. He’s confident the other states won’t give him trouble.
His early visions were of a moped, but the moped became a lawn mower when he learned there was a record for such things: 14,594.5 miles.
“I plan on beating the record, but that’s neither here or there. It’s become now (about) raising money for the charities,” he said. The two organizations are featured on his Web site, www.the1bigride.com
It’s a long way from Ransom’s hometown of Fife Lake, Mich., where he worked delivering pizzas. He saved up some money and plans to work for more as needed.
The journey is something of a fresh start for Ransom, who said he did felony prison time years ago stemming from an argument with his ex-wife while they were going through their divorce. Online prison records in Michigan show convictions for a misdemeanor sex crime and, later, on three felony assault and firearms charges, for which Ransom served about four years until 1992.
“I messed up my life early,” Ransom said. “But maybe I can put a dent in the bad by doing a little bit of good now.”
The mower is loaded with a tent, a sleeping bag, extra clothes, a toolbox for minor repairs and a copy of “The Walk West” by Peter Jenkins, one of Ransom’s inspirations. His atlas is marked in pen with his route so far. Mostly back roads. No interstates. The signatures of people he has met fill the loose-leaf pages of his log.
Ransom slept Tuesday night under an American Legion pavilion near the Arlington Diner. Before pointing his lawn mower west Wednesday morning, he walked back to the diner to say a final goodbye to the friendly waitresses.
Minutes later he was gone.
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