On Tue, 15 Jan 2008 22:57:51 +0000, with neither quill nor qualm,
Christopher Tidy quickly quoth:

steamer wrote:
--Here's the thing: I've been thinking of getting one of those silly
gasoline powered blenders. Trouble is, they've all got one of those
pull-cords to start the little engine (the tend to be cantankerous too..).
Well, since trying to start a crummy genny a while back I'm now nursing a
torn rotator cuff so pull-starters are a no-no. Has anyone seen plans for a
kick-starter floating around? I'm guessing there's gearing inside to
accelerate a footpedal output to a rotation rate needed to start a small
engine; i.e. it's not a 1-to-1 gearing..

Reminds me of the guys who get paid for feeding birds into jet engines
and making videos of it :-).

You reminded me of a joke here, Chris.
--snip--
Those Clever Americans!

The FAA has a device for testing the strength of windshields
on airplanes. They point this thing at the windshield of the
aircraft and shoot a dead chicken at about the speed the air-
craft normally flies at it. If the windshield doesn't break,
it's likely to survive a real collision with a bird during
flight.

The British had recently built a new locomotive that could
pull a train faster than any before it. They were not sure
that its windshield was strong enough so they borrowed the
testing device from the FAA, reset it to approximate the
maximum speed of the locomotive, loaded in the dead chicken,
and fired. The bird went through the windshield, broke the
engineer's chair, and made a major dent in the back wall of
the engine cab.

They were quite surprised with this result, so they asked the
FAA to check the test to see if everything was done correctly.
The FAA checked everything and suggested that they might want
to repeat the test using a thawed chicken.
--snip--

---
Chaos, panic, and disorder--my work here is done.