Good Morning All,
I wanted to say thank you to everyone that provided input. I had no idea about using the parking break and it worked like a charm.
To answer the last question from Diggin It "How can you own and operate a machine without knowing the basics like setting the brake and disengaging the deck?"
I know to disengage the blade when not in use. I have seen people put a bungee cord on the seat to keep the motor running when they get out of the seat and put that in the "box of very bad ideas".
To be honest I thought that the way things we supposed to work is that the mower would stop when you were not in the seat. I figured this was a simple way of not having a run away mower. My first mower had gears for going forward and reverse. I assumed (with all that implies) that if you had the mower in gear and got off the mower stopped. I never thought past that to think about putting the mower's parking break on.
In any event I wanted to say a VERY big thanks to every one here.
Ernest