The Grass and the Furious: Ladies, Start Your Lawnmower Engines!

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See AT&T.com slash Samsung for details. And we continue with our American stories. The Lone Star Mower Racing Association, and that's LSMRA for you fans, started in 1998. But the sport of lawnmower racing goes back to 1973 when an Irishman named Jim Gavin and a few of his mates were fed 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. 80 mowers showed up for the very first contest. Here's Julie Tinman with her story about the greatest show on turf.

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. 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, 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 and food and all that stuff.

I think what minimum wage was four bucks an hour at the time. I was working 40 to 60 hours a week. So it took me eight years to graduate.

But I did it. I got my bachelor's 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, you know, it 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 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 these two beautiful kids. So the kids are grown.

They're, what, 12 and 14 now. And he and I are watching YouTube. And these lawnmower racing, you know, men come up on the on the screen and I'm looking at that and I'm 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 a lawnmower. And my husband, he's all into cars. He didn't do sports growing up. He built cars. That was his thing. So I don't know what I unlocked there, but I definitely unlock a piece of him.

He has, you know, a piece of his that he hasn't been able to use, you know, the skills that you need to build something. So he wanted to make sure that he and I both knew what we were getting into. So we looked up lawnmower racing in Texas, came across LSMRA and found they were racing at a track called Camp Shayla over in Mejia, 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 around a track on a lawnmower. Some of the faster ones look like little go karts. So he basically what he had to do is look up the rules for the U.S. Lawnmower Racing Association to see what did he need to do to build this lawnmower so I could race it. So we bought our property about 12 years ago. And when we bought our property, we had to buy a riding lawnmower because it was too much to do, you know, a push lawnmower. It's been retired. It's sitting in our, you know, graveyard of stuff out back.

So we decided to 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 to the back of the riding lawnmower. And my kids were like one and three at the time that he would put the kids in the trailer with me and do like little hayride around our property with the kids.

And that's what we did to entertain him in the evening. So I just find that it's just cute that we are now using this lawnmower to go fast around 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 yes, I'm here to reassure everybody that the blade of the lawnmower are the first thing that are that it is removed.

Like you don't race with lawnmower blades. I guess he reinforced the frame, lowered the chassis. He had to put a new steering system and a new braking system in. Oh, a new lawnmower tires, right?

He had the darndest time trying to put the tires on the wheel with axle. He bought a new 708 Predator engine that gives like 22 horsepower. We can go up to like 35 miles per hour. It can go pretty fast.

I know it kind of seems 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 his wife a lawnmower racing. 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 ramps into the trailer, hoping to Jesus that it wouldn't fall to the right or the left or 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 in on the action. And he bought himself an FXT lawnmower. And I actually have another lawnmower, an FXS that I'm still learning how to drive. So I'm really comfortable in driving my GPT that goes about 35 miles an hour around the track. But I haven't become 100 percent comfortable in the FXS, which probably goes between 45 to 50 miles an hour.

It's definitely dangerous. But that's my next goal is to be 100 percent comfortable driving that. The first time I ever raced, right, my husband 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 how I'm about to go out on the track is that, you know, I have to put what it what's that word?

How do you say you have to 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 going to do this. So basically you race in classes. They go from like JP is for the young kids. But the highest classes are FXS and FXT. And basically when you see a T 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 is a coed sport, right?

It doesn't matter if you're boy or girl. And basically the person who wins is a person who brings the best riding lawnmower and has the best driving skills. Because at the end of the day, you can have the best driving skills. But if you haven't worked on your lawnmower, it's 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 then their lawnmowers aren't working.

And 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 the same rules. 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.

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NetSuite dot com slash stereo. And we continue here with our American stories and lawnmower racer 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. Everybody, for the most part, is really nice and encouraging. You know, we take tips from each other, mainly the senior 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 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, 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 for Jesus, they race for cancer, they race for a family name on my personal one.

I we don't have the theme. We I just chose the code 45 t. That meant a lot to me. It means it means it's double meaning, right? It's kind of like double meaning. But the first meaning is for our 45th 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 the inside track and you have the outside track. In my first lawnmower 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 goes Jennifer.

There goes Jennifer. I think she lapped me like three times. I'm so embarrassed. I was so embarrassed 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 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 play first, second, third. But at the end of the day, if I didn't get lapped, I am doing good. So what are the things that I always wondered is does it hurt when I see these 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 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 have you feel the lawnmower kind of going over your racing shoes. That's why you wear racing shoes. So what I go out there in is a motorcycle racing jacket that has, you know, the padding 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 your engine does catch on fire and you wear a neck brace and a helmet. One of the things that I find helpful for me as a racer to mentally prepare for this race so that I am competitive because I can't go out there like, you know, happy go lucky. Right. Happy go lucky is not going to win the race. So I kind of have to change my thought process a little bit.

And Curtis O'Brien, he's one of our one of our guys, actually president of the Camp Shayla Racing Association. He says, you know, just get angry, you know, just pretend like you're you're, you know, actually, I can't really say what he said. But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, the thought is just to just to rile 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 super fast and 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 in lawn mower racing is a broken collarbone. So I always want to go fast. But at the end of the day, one of the things that our track steward 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 be safe. And if you can't pass someone safely, then you're not having them. So we 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 any racing injuries that you couldn't recuperate from the next day.

So we've been very fortunate. But but those things happen. But I don't let that fear take over me so much. I mean, 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 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 the time. Sometimes I'll have special events and I'll put up some money. But at the end of the day, it's 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 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 are lawnmower racing once they come out of town. So it's great to race with other guys because you learn. I know they kind of push you a little bit, 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 start lawnmower racing, one leads to two, two leads to four, four leads to eight. So it is very 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 lawnmower 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 friends and your family and allowing you to enjoy life. And a great job, as always, by Greg Hengler on the storytelling and a special thanks to Julie Teneman 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 that second, even third, but I don't want to get left.

You got to love it. We race for trophies, 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 Teneman's story, her husband's and her family's here on Our American Stories. With all the biggest sports channels, a sports zone with all available games in one place and apps like iHeartRadio, sports podcasts such as The Herd with Colin Cowherd. Cheering on your favorite team has never been easier. A big screen TCL Roku TV offers premium picture and sound quality. So you'll feel like you're right in the action. Find the perfect TCL Roku TV for you today at go dot TCL dot com slash TCL Roku TV.

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