August 15, 2024 • 19 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Julie Tynmann is here with her story about the greatest show on turf.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. The Lone Star
Mower Racing Association, and that's LSMRA for you fans, started
in nineteen ninety eight, but the sport of lawnmower racing
goes back the nineteen seventy three, when an irishman named
Jim Gavin and a few of his mates were fed
(00:31):
up with the hefty price tag that came with most
motorsports and wanted to create a sport that was cheap
and accessible to everyone. As the pints flowed, they looked
out the window and there was the groundsman mowing the grass.
It was then that they realized, hey, everyone has a lawnmower.
That's when they decided to have a race. Eighty mowers
(00:53):
showed up for the very first contest. Here's Julie Tinman
with her story about the greatest show on turf.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Well, I think I'm pretty much a unique unicorn. I
don't know anybody in my family who is into lawnmower racing.
I grew up in San Antonio, Texas, on the southwest
side of town. My parents worked, each worked two full
time jobs, so they were hardly at home because they
were always working, you know, trying to provide for us,
(01:22):
and I didn't know it at the time, but we
were poor, which was the best kind of poor, right
You didn't know you were poor when you were a kid.
You only figured it out when you got older and
you're like, oh, yeah, I didn't get to do all
those things, but I kept so active that I didn't
let any of that really bother me very much, you know.
And after high school I did go off to college. Unfortunately,
(01:45):
I found myself in the same position my parents were in.
I had to work two jobs just to take care
of myself and pay for my apartment and where I lived,
food and all that stuff. I think what minimum wage
was four bucks an hour at the time, so I
was working forty to sixty hours a week. So it
took me eight years to graduate, but I did it.
(02:07):
I kept my bachelors in accounting, and after that, instead
of going to Europe with my friends, I decided to
get married and we would go kayaking, we would go
fishing off the piers, and we also started cycling because basically,
(02:27):
you know, I took the stress out of life because
he and I both had full time jobs that were
very demanding and very stressful. So we found great, great
pleasure in doing these these activities together. And it also
you know, created a bond between us. So we were
doing that, we were doing our thing. And then I
was blessed with some children and he and I raised
(02:49):
these two beautiful kids. So the kids are grown at
they're what twelve and fourteen now, and he and I
are watching YouTube and these lawnmower racing uh, you know,
men come up on the on the screen and I'm
(03:10):
looking at that and I am like, wow, Rob, I
think I would do that, and he's like you would,
and I'm like, yeah, I would. I would race the lawnmower.
And my husband, he is all into cars, Like, he
didn't do sports growing up. He built cars. That was
his thing. So I don't know what I unlocked there,
(03:30):
but I definitely unlock a piece of him. He has,
you know, a piece of his Uh. They hadn't been
able to use, you know, the skills that you needed
to build something. So he wanted to make sure that
he and I both knew what we were getting into.
So we looked up lawn mower racing in Texas, came
(03:50):
across Lsmrie and found they were racing at a track
called Camp Sla over Inhia, Texas. It's kind of to
the right of Fort Worth, and we visited the track
and it was just like I imagine everyone going fast
to round a track on a lawnmower. Some of the
faster ones looked like little go karts. So he basically
(04:15):
what he had to do is look up the roles
for the US Lawnmower Racing Association to see, like, what
did he need to do to build this lawnmower so
I could race it. So we bought our property about
twelve years ago. And when we bought our property, we
had to buy a writing lawnmower because it was too
(04:36):
much to do, you know, a push lawnmower. It's been
retired ice it's sitting in our you know, graveyard of
stuff out back, so we decided to resurrect it. A
fun fact about this lawnmower that for me anyways, is
that when we first bought our property, my husband would
have me sit in the little trailer attachment the back
(04:58):
of the Writing lawnmower, and my kids were like one
and three at the time. That he would put the
kids in the trailer with me and would do like
little hay ride around our property with the kid and
that's what we did, entertain them in the evening. So
I just find that it's just cute that we are
now using this lawnmower to, you know, go fast around
(05:22):
a track. So one of the questions that I'm always asked,
the very first question is about the blades. Like everyone's
really worried about the lawnmower blades. And yeah, I'm here
to reassure everybody that the blade of the lawnmower are
the first things that are that it is removed, Like
you don't race with lawnmower blades. I guess he reinforced
(05:44):
the frame, lowered the chassis. He had to put a
new steering system and any braking system system in oh,
a new lawnmower tires, right, he had the darnedest time
trying to put the tires on the wheel with axel.
He'd bought a new seven eight Predator engine that gives
(06:05):
like twenty two horse power. We can go up to
like thirty five miles per hour. It can go pretty fast.
I know it kind of seemed slow, but when you're
not wearing a seat belt, it's still a little scary.
So he had lots of fun doing that. Like I said,
when he was a kid, that's what he did, and
now he gets to use that skill set to build
(06:27):
his wife a lawnmower racing, and we didn't have a trailer,
so we just had our Nissan truck, so he had
to go buy some ramps, and we pushed the lawnmower
up the up the ramps into the trailer, hoping to
Jesus that it wouldn't follow the right or the left
(06:50):
are on top of us. But that didn't happen, you know,
thank goodness. So now that I've been racing for a while,
my husband he's decided to get on in on the
action and he bought himself an FXT lawnmower, and I
actually have another lawnmower in FXS that I'm still learning
how to drive. So I'm really comfortable in driving my
(07:14):
GPT that goes about thirty five miles an hour around
the track, but I haven't become one hundred percent comfortable
in the FXS, which probably goes between forty five to
fifty miles an hour. It's definitely dangerous, but that's my
next goal, is to be one hundred percent comfortable driving
that the first time I ever raced, right, my husband
(07:39):
was taking pictures of me and he's like, Julie, I
can see the fear in your eyes, and I'm like, yep,
it was there. The fear was there. So I you know,
I'm thinking to myself, have I'm about to go out
on the track? Is you know I have to put
what's that word? How do you say? You have to
(08:00):
put your mouth where your foot is or your foot
where your mouth is. So I'm like, this is it?
I am? I am, I'm gonna do this. So basically,
you racing classes, they go from like JP is for
the young kids, but the highest classes AREX S and
(08:20):
FX T And basically when you see a tee at
the end of any of our classes, that just means
you're racing an engine with twin twin cylinders. It's supposed
to go faster than a single cylinder engine. So lawnmower
racing is a co ed sport, right, it doesn't matter
if you're a boy or girl, And basically the person
(08:42):
who wins is the person who brings the best writing
lawnmower and has the best driving skills, because at the
end of the day, you could have the best driving skills,
but if you haven't worked on your lawnmower, it is
going to break, you know, two three laps in and
then you're out of the count. And I see that
happen a lot of times. People drive for hours and
(09:04):
then their lawnmowers aren't working a night. That's always disheartening, right,
But basically, the person with the best equipment and the
best driving skills wins because we're all racing on the
same track and we all should be following the same rules.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
And you've been listening to Julie Tinman tell her story
about the greatest show on turf, and that of course
is lawnmower racing. And when we come back more of
her story and her husband's and millions of American hobbyists
who do all kinds of fun and silly things with
their time here on our American stories. And we continue
(10:10):
here with our American stories and lawnmower eraser Julie Tinman
and her husband who is the let's just say pit boss,
crew engineer, and everything else in between. We continue with
this family story about a family hobby. Here's Julie.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Everybody, for the most part, is really nice and encouraging
you know, we take tips from each other. Mainly the
senior guys are telling us youngins how it should be done.
I have, on occasion been been able to keep out
ahead of ahead of some of the gentlemen I race with,
and afterwards, you know, they talk about cutting the wires
(10:53):
on my engine or letting my gas out, you know,
stuff like that. But they take it easy on me
because I'm a girl, all which I don't know if
I like or don't like, but I'll take it. You know,
we all have to pick out a three digit code
to put on our lawnmower. And like some people race
(11:16):
for Jesus, they race for cancer, they race for a
family name, on my personal one. I we don't have
a theme. We I just chose the code forty five
T because that meant a lot to me. For it
(11:36):
means it means. It's double meaning, right, It's kind of
like it's double meaning. But the first meaning is for
our forty fifth president, and the second meaning is it's
basically basically about my age and T, you know, the
first initial of my last name. You know, you have
(12:03):
the inside track and you have the outside track, and
my first lawn mower race I rode the outside track
the whole way through, and at the time there was
this wonderful lady, Jennifer, and she would just I'm like, oh,
there goes Jennifer. There it goes Jennifer. There goes Jennifer.
(12:24):
I think she lapped me like three times. I'm so embarrassed.
I was so embarrassed that that I wasn't more brave.
I didn't have, you know, additional courage. But everybody was
very complimentary and encouraging. You know. After I did the race,
and every time I went out there, I just got
(12:45):
faster and faster. And now my life's mission is to
never get lapped. That's my life's mission. I really I
want to win, you know, I want to place first, second, third,
But at the end of the day, if I didn't
get lapped, I am doing good. So one of the
(13:05):
things that I always wondered is does it hurt when
I see these you know guys fall over. I kept
wondering that, and finally, you know, God answered my question
because there, I guess it was a couple of months
in I was going too fast and I got caught
on the high side and I flew off my lawnmower.
(13:26):
And ran over my foot, landed on my back, but
I was fine. It was fine. It was a little
like you go in slow motion as you're kind of
flying through the air and has you fill the lawnmower
kind of going over your racing shoes. That's why you
wear racing shoes. So what I go out there in
(13:47):
is a motorcycle racing jacket that has, you know, the
paddings on the elbows and the shoulders and the back,
and you have to wear long blue jeans or any jeans.
It's good if you in the upper classes. If you
wear fire resistant pants because sometimes you were engine does
catch on fire, and you wear a neck brace and
(14:10):
a helmet. One of the things that I find helpful
for me as a racer, you mentally prepare for this
race so that I am competitive, because I can't go
out there like you you know, happy go lucky, right,
(14:32):
Happy go lucky. It's not going to win the race,
so I kind of have to change my thought proceses
a little bit. And Curtis O'Brien, he's one of our
one of our guys actually president of the Camp Chaila
Racing Association. He says, you know, just get angry you know,
just pretend like you're you know, actually I can't really
(14:57):
say what he said, but at the end of the day,
at the end of the day, the thought is just
to just to row yourself up, to get angry, to
pretend like you're you're driving like a bat out of
hell to get get out of a place you don't
want to be. Right. So there I am. That's what
I'm thinking about. I'm angry. I needed, you know, drive
(15:20):
super fast and just do all the things I told
you earlier that you shouldn't do. Right. You think about
the safety of others when you do, but at the
same time you have to make yourself a little bit
angry so that it's a different part of your brain
you use. I guess the number one injury and lawnmower
racing is a broken collar bone. So I always want
(15:44):
to go fast. But at the end of the day.
One of the things that our track Stewart always says
is we all have jobs to go home to on Monday.
All right, we have jobs and we have families. So
you're out there, you'd be safe and if you can't
pass someone safely, then you're not passing them. So we
(16:06):
all try to remember that when we're out there. But
when you're trying to win, sometimes it's hard. But we've
been very fortunate. We have have not had any racing
injuries that you couldn't recuperate from the next day, So
we've been very fortunate. But those things happen. But I
don't let that fear take over me so much. I mean,
(16:29):
it is there, it does exist. I mean, if you're
not afraid when you're out there, at least a little bit,
then there may be something wrong about there. You know,
it's good to be afraid for your life and afraid
for somebody else's life. And we race for trophies. We
don't race for money most of the time. Sometimes they'll
have special events and they'll put up some money, but
(16:51):
at the end of the days for fun, to hang
out with your friends, your family. I keep telling my
husband that my dream is that one day that we're
we're retired, we both can retire and all we do
is drive around the United States racing at the different events.
Because there's events in Louisiana and Alabama and Georgia and
(17:14):
Missouri and Illinois. They're everywhere, and I would love love
to to go out and race race everybody, because normally
you just race with your same group of people who
have lawnmower racing unless they come out of town. So
it's great to race with other guys because you learn,
I don't know, they kind of push you a little bit,
(17:35):
you know, especially if they're faster. You kind of just
want to keep up, so you can you push yourself
even more. Now I have to warn you if you
do startling more racing One leads to two, two leads
to four, four leads to eight. So it is very
(17:55):
addicting because you do have so much fun driving them.
You just want to drive them more, more and more,
and you see all these cool lawn mowers setups and
you just want to try it out. So there is
my word of caution. So in a nutshell, that is
what lawnmower racing is about. Really is giving you adventure
for the weekend and while you're hanging out with your
(18:17):
friends and your family and allowing you to enjoy.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Life and a great job. As always by Greg Hangler
on the storytelling and a special thanks to Julie Tinman
with sharing her story, her passion, her family passion, and
that's racing lawnmowers. My life's mission. She said, never get left.
I want to win, get second, even third, but I
(18:42):
don't want to get left. You gotta love it. We
race for trophy, she said, it's for fun and to
hang out with friends and family. The professionalization of sport
can actually ruin all the fun, and that's what lawnmower
racing brings to these folks who pursue the sport and
so many other hobbies across this great country. Julie Timan's story,
(19:05):
her husband's, and her famili's here on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories. The Lone Star
Mower Racing Association, and that's LSMRA for you fans, started
in nineteen ninety eight, but the sport of lawnmower racing
goes back the nineteen seventy three, when an irishman named
Jim Gavin and a few of his mates were fed
(00:31):
up with the hefty price tag that came with most
motorsports and wanted to create a sport that was cheap
and accessible to everyone. As the pints flowed, they looked
out the window and there was the groundsman mowing the grass.
It was then that they realized, hey, everyone has a lawnmower.
That's when they decided to have a race. Eighty mowers
(00:53):
showed up for the very first contest. Here's Julie Tinman
with her story about the greatest show on turf.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Well, I think I'm pretty much a unique unicorn. I
don't know anybody in my family who is into lawnmower racing.
I grew up in San Antonio, Texas, on the southwest
side of town. My parents worked, each worked two full
time jobs, so they were hardly at home because they
were always working, you know, trying to provide for us,
(01:22):
and I didn't know it at the time, but we
were poor, which was the best kind of poor, right
You didn't know you were poor when you were a kid.
You only figured it out when you got older and
you're like, oh, yeah, I didn't get to do all
those things, but I kept so active that I didn't
let any of that really bother me very much, you know.
And after high school I did go off to college. Unfortunately,
(01:45):
I found myself in the same position my parents were in.
I had to work two jobs just to take care
of myself and pay for my apartment and where I lived,
food and all that stuff. I think what minimum wage
was four bucks an hour at the time, so I
was working forty to sixty hours a week. So it
took me eight years to graduate, but I did it.
(02:07):
I kept my bachelors in accounting, and after that, instead
of going to Europe with my friends, I decided to
get married and we would go kayaking, we would go
fishing off the piers, and we also started cycling because basically,
(02:27):
you know, I took the stress out of life because
he and I both had full time jobs that were
very demanding and very stressful. So we found great, great
pleasure in doing these these activities together. And it also
you know, created a bond between us. So we were
doing that, we were doing our thing. And then I
was blessed with some children and he and I raised
(02:49):
these two beautiful kids. So the kids are grown at
they're what twelve and fourteen now, and he and I
are watching YouTube and these lawnmower racing uh, you know,
men come up on the on the screen and I'm
(03:10):
looking at that and I am like, wow, Rob, I
think I would do that, and he's like you would,
and I'm like, yeah, I would. I would race the lawnmower.
And my husband, he is all into cars, Like, he
didn't do sports growing up. He built cars. That was
his thing. So I don't know what I unlocked there,
(03:30):
but I definitely unlock a piece of him. He has,
you know, a piece of his Uh. They hadn't been
able to use, you know, the skills that you needed
to build something. So he wanted to make sure that
he and I both knew what we were getting into.
So we looked up lawn mower racing in Texas, came
(03:50):
across Lsmrie and found they were racing at a track
called Camp Sla over Inhia, Texas. It's kind of to
the right of Fort Worth, and we visited the track
and it was just like I imagine everyone going fast
to round a track on a lawnmower. Some of the
faster ones looked like little go karts. So he basically
(04:15):
what he had to do is look up the roles
for the US Lawnmower Racing Association to see, like, what
did he need to do to build this lawnmower so
I could race it. So we bought our property about
twelve years ago. And when we bought our property, we
had to buy a writing lawnmower because it was too
(04:36):
much to do, you know, a push lawnmower. It's been
retired ice it's sitting in our you know, graveyard of
stuff out back, so we decided to resurrect it. A
fun fact about this lawnmower that for me anyways, is
that when we first bought our property, my husband would
have me sit in the little trailer attachment the back
(04:58):
of the Writing lawnmower, and my kids were like one
and three at the time. That he would put the
kids in the trailer with me and would do like
little hay ride around our property with the kid and
that's what we did, entertain them in the evening. So
I just find that it's just cute that we are
now using this lawnmower to, you know, go fast around
(05:22):
a track. So one of the questions that I'm always asked,
the very first question is about the blades. Like everyone's
really worried about the lawnmower blades. And yeah, I'm here
to reassure everybody that the blade of the lawnmower are
the first things that are that it is removed, Like
you don't race with lawnmower blades. I guess he reinforced
(05:44):
the frame, lowered the chassis. He had to put a
new steering system and any braking system system in oh,
a new lawnmower tires, right, he had the darnedest time
trying to put the tires on the wheel with axel.
He'd bought a new seven eight Predator engine that gives
(06:05):
like twenty two horse power. We can go up to
like thirty five miles per hour. It can go pretty fast.
I know it kind of seemed slow, but when you're
not wearing a seat belt, it's still a little scary.
So he had lots of fun doing that. Like I said,
when he was a kid, that's what he did, and
now he gets to use that skill set to build
(06:27):
his wife a lawnmower racing, and we didn't have a trailer,
so we just had our Nissan truck, so he had
to go buy some ramps, and we pushed the lawnmower
up the up the ramps into the trailer, hoping to
Jesus that it wouldn't follow the right or the left
(06:50):
are on top of us. But that didn't happen, you know,
thank goodness. So now that I've been racing for a while,
my husband he's decided to get on in on the
action and he bought himself an FXT lawnmower, and I
actually have another lawnmower in FXS that I'm still learning
how to drive. So I'm really comfortable in driving my
(07:14):
GPT that goes about thirty five miles an hour around
the track, but I haven't become one hundred percent comfortable
in the FXS, which probably goes between forty five to
fifty miles an hour. It's definitely dangerous, but that's my
next goal, is to be one hundred percent comfortable driving
that the first time I ever raced, right, my husband
(07:39):
was taking pictures of me and he's like, Julie, I
can see the fear in your eyes, and I'm like, yep,
it was there. The fear was there. So I you know,
I'm thinking to myself, have I'm about to go out
on the track? Is you know I have to put
what's that word? How do you say? You have to
(08:00):
put your mouth where your foot is or your foot
where your mouth is. So I'm like, this is it?
I am? I am, I'm gonna do this. So basically,
you racing classes, they go from like JP is for
the young kids, but the highest classes AREX S and
(08:20):
FX T And basically when you see a tee at
the end of any of our classes, that just means
you're racing an engine with twin twin cylinders. It's supposed
to go faster than a single cylinder engine. So lawnmower
racing is a co ed sport, right, it doesn't matter
if you're a boy or girl, And basically the person
(08:42):
who wins is the person who brings the best writing
lawnmower and has the best driving skills, because at the
end of the day, you could have the best driving skills,
but if you haven't worked on your lawnmower, it is
going to break, you know, two three laps in and
then you're out of the count. And I see that
happen a lot of times. People drive for hours and
(09:04):
then their lawnmowers aren't working a night. That's always disheartening, right,
But basically, the person with the best equipment and the
best driving skills wins because we're all racing on the
same track and we all should be following the same rules.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
And you've been listening to Julie Tinman tell her story
about the greatest show on turf, and that of course
is lawnmower racing. And when we come back more of
her story and her husband's and millions of American hobbyists
who do all kinds of fun and silly things with
their time here on our American stories. And we continue
(10:10):
here with our American stories and lawnmower eraser Julie Tinman
and her husband who is the let's just say pit boss,
crew engineer, and everything else in between. We continue with
this family story about a family hobby. Here's Julie.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Everybody, for the most part, is really nice and encouraging
you know, we take tips from each other. Mainly the
senior guys are telling us youngins how it should be done.
I have, on occasion been been able to keep out
ahead of ahead of some of the gentlemen I race with,
and afterwards, you know, they talk about cutting the wires
(10:53):
on my engine or letting my gas out, you know,
stuff like that. But they take it easy on me
because I'm a girl, all which I don't know if
I like or don't like, but I'll take it. You know,
we all have to pick out a three digit code
to put on our lawnmower. And like some people race
(11:16):
for Jesus, they race for cancer, they race for a
family name, on my personal one. I we don't have
a theme. We I just chose the code forty five
T because that meant a lot to me. For it
(11:36):
means it means. It's double meaning, right, It's kind of
like it's double meaning. But the first meaning is for
our forty fifth president, and the second meaning is it's
basically basically about my age and T, you know, the
first initial of my last name. You know, you have
(12:03):
the inside track and you have the outside track, and
my first lawn mower race I rode the outside track
the whole way through, and at the time there was
this wonderful lady, Jennifer, and she would just I'm like, oh,
there goes Jennifer. There it goes Jennifer. There goes Jennifer.
(12:24):
I think she lapped me like three times. I'm so embarrassed.
I was so embarrassed that that I wasn't more brave.
I didn't have, you know, additional courage. But everybody was
very complimentary and encouraging. You know. After I did the race,
and every time I went out there, I just got
(12:45):
faster and faster. And now my life's mission is to
never get lapped. That's my life's mission. I really I
want to win, you know, I want to place first, second, third,
But at the end of the day, if I didn't
get lapped, I am doing good. So one of the
(13:05):
things that I always wondered is does it hurt when
I see these you know guys fall over. I kept
wondering that, and finally, you know, God answered my question
because there, I guess it was a couple of months
in I was going too fast and I got caught
on the high side and I flew off my lawnmower.
(13:26):
And ran over my foot, landed on my back, but
I was fine. It was fine. It was a little
like you go in slow motion as you're kind of
flying through the air and has you fill the lawnmower
kind of going over your racing shoes. That's why you
wear racing shoes. So what I go out there in
(13:47):
is a motorcycle racing jacket that has, you know, the
paddings on the elbows and the shoulders and the back,
and you have to wear long blue jeans or any jeans.
It's good if you in the upper classes. If you
wear fire resistant pants because sometimes you were engine does
catch on fire, and you wear a neck brace and
(14:10):
a helmet. One of the things that I find helpful
for me as a racer, you mentally prepare for this
race so that I am competitive, because I can't go
out there like you you know, happy go lucky, right,
(14:32):
Happy go lucky. It's not going to win the race,
so I kind of have to change my thought proceses
a little bit. And Curtis O'Brien, he's one of our
one of our guys actually president of the Camp Chaila
Racing Association. He says, you know, just get angry you know,
just pretend like you're you know, actually I can't really
(14:57):
say what he said, but at the end of the day,
at the end of the day, the thought is just
to just to row yourself up, to get angry, to
pretend like you're you're driving like a bat out of
hell to get get out of a place you don't
want to be. Right. So there I am. That's what
I'm thinking about. I'm angry. I needed, you know, drive
(15:20):
super fast and just do all the things I told
you earlier that you shouldn't do. Right. You think about
the safety of others when you do, but at the
same time you have to make yourself a little bit
angry so that it's a different part of your brain
you use. I guess the number one injury and lawnmower
racing is a broken collar bone. So I always want
(15:44):
to go fast. But at the end of the day.
One of the things that our track Stewart always says
is we all have jobs to go home to on Monday.
All right, we have jobs and we have families. So
you're out there, you'd be safe and if you can't
pass someone safely, then you're not passing them. So we
(16:06):
all try to remember that when we're out there. But
when you're trying to win, sometimes it's hard. But we've
been very fortunate. We have have not had any racing
injuries that you couldn't recuperate from the next day, So
we've been very fortunate. But those things happen. But I
don't let that fear take over me so much. I mean,
(16:29):
it is there, it does exist. I mean, if you're
not afraid when you're out there, at least a little bit,
then there may be something wrong about there. You know,
it's good to be afraid for your life and afraid
for somebody else's life. And we race for trophies. We
don't race for money most of the time. Sometimes they'll
have special events and they'll put up some money, but
(16:51):
at the end of the days for fun, to hang
out with your friends, your family. I keep telling my
husband that my dream is that one day that we're
we're retired, we both can retire and all we do
is drive around the United States racing at the different events.
Because there's events in Louisiana and Alabama and Georgia and
(17:14):
Missouri and Illinois. They're everywhere, and I would love love
to to go out and race race everybody, because normally
you just race with your same group of people who
have lawnmower racing unless they come out of town. So
it's great to race with other guys because you learn,
I don't know, they kind of push you a little bit,
(17:35):
you know, especially if they're faster. You kind of just
want to keep up, so you can you push yourself
even more. Now I have to warn you if you
do startling more racing One leads to two, two leads
to four, four leads to eight. So it is very
(17:55):
addicting because you do have so much fun driving them.
You just want to drive them more, more and more,
and you see all these cool lawn mowers setups and
you just want to try it out. So there is
my word of caution. So in a nutshell, that is
what lawnmower racing is about. Really is giving you adventure
for the weekend and while you're hanging out with your
(18:17):
friends and your family and allowing you to enjoy.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Life and a great job. As always by Greg Hangler
on the storytelling and a special thanks to Julie Tinman
with sharing her story, her passion, her family passion, and
that's racing lawnmowers. My life's mission. She said, never get left.
I want to win, get second, even third, but I
(18:42):
don't want to get left. You gotta love it. We
race for trophy, she said, it's for fun and to
hang out with friends and family. The professionalization of sport
can actually ruin all the fun, and that's what lawnmower
racing brings to these folks who pursue the sport and
so many other hobbies across this great country. Julie Timan's story,
(19:05):
her husband's, and her famili's here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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