Ubiquitous in most places would not be used in conjunction with golf carts. However, The Villages is a different as usual in this case. Golf carts are everywhere. Sometimes they even remind me of bumper cars. I used to love bumper carts especially those at Conneaut Lake Park in good old Pennsylvania. My friends and I used to have a ball ramming into each other. Golf carts are not especially good for ramming into each other, but it does seem to happen on occasion around here. As I said, the Villages is different!
The first golf cart The Blonde in the House and I had was an electric one. When we came to The Villages in 2000, we weren’t certain whether we wanted an electric or gas cart. We also didn’t know whether we would be mowing the lawn ourselves or not. We found out that having someone else mow was vey reasonable, so we decided that we wouldn’t need a gas can for the mower so we would go electric – we were ahead of the climate change ideology system. However, I soon found out that my electric cart was the slowest cart in The Villages. I would have to pull over into the grass to let the line behind me pass. Then, there was the fact that the first night we had it, it was plugged into an outlet in the garage when out our carbon monoxide alarm went off.
It was fairly late at night when the alarm went off, but we called the gas company. They sent a gentleman out who had to come down from Ocala in an unhappy mood as he felt it was a false alarm. He turned on his equipment and immediately commented that we were correct in calling. He went all over the house and could not find the source. Finally, he went out into the garage and discovered it was caused by charging the electric golf cart. From then on, we charged during the daylight with the garage door open. However, there were still problems with Mr. Electric. We lived in an area where you had to go through a tunnel to return home. The tunnel had a grade at the end. Every once in a while, when we had been playing at a course some distance away, we would have to push it up the grade.
We weren’t the only ones. Once when a friend and I were coming home, we found two ladies who couldn’t get up the grade. We told then that we would push them up. They indicated that would be great and sat there while we got ready to push. They were not the lightest ladies in The Villages, so we had to shoo them out so we could get the cart up the grade. What with all of the above, we decided to buy a gas cart. We have had one ever since. Now I read about new electric carts that have lithium batteries which apparently will go for ever. You don’t even have to clean the posts, and obviously don’t have to make certain that you pass a gas station every once in a while. I am not certain what they are going to do with the batteries when they are tired out. I guess that some genius will figure out a plan!
I wonder how bumper cars would have done with lithium batteries?
Barry Evans is a columnist for Villages-News.com
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