25 Minutes

I finally broke down and bought a lawn mower yesterday. It was the most important thing on my agenda. I didn't want to spend a whole lot of time shopping as I have looked around plenty. I knew basically what I wanted and now it was up to the stores to sell it to me. I went with a small local shop that services their own products as opposed to Lowes or Home Depot. There wasn't much price difference plus this guy was nice enough to help me learn to drive the thing (hah!) and even filled it up with gas and delivered for me.

Once I got home, I was nervous. I tried to wait until there were no neighbors visible so I could go play on it. I started off badly. The damn thing was impossible to steer and I was scared to death I was going to send it over the mountain. After my first test drive in my own yard (with the blade up so I could just drive around), I came to the conclusion that this was how I was going to die...chewed up and spit out by a lawn mower. It's a mean looking sucker.

After I figured out a little bit of turning maneuvers and handling of the mower, I was ready to give it a try for real. Unfortunately, mother nature was not cooperative and started dumping rain on me. I gave up and went back inside, worried to death that I made a bad decision. What good is this $3000 piece of equipment if I can't control it?

This morning, I woke up to try the mowing thing again. Unfortunately, it had been raining during the night too, so the ground was wet. The dude at the store told me that I should do my first mow on completely dry grass because it will just look like a cleaner cut. I waited a bit and had almost written off today as a day to work on the yard. Then around 11:00, I said "Fuck it". No test drives without the blades down. Get out there and use the damn thing.

I started out slow. It took about 10 minutes of mowing and then I got the hang of it. After 15 minutes, maneuvering the machine was almost 2nd nature.... as long as I was going forward. It's hard to make your brain learn how to stop one of the machines. When you spend 15 years hitting a brake pedal to stop something, you're not used to just letting go. After all was said and done, I had my back yard mowed in under 25 minutes. I was pleased with my purchase after that.

I started out worried to death someone would be watching my dumb ass trying to maneuver the machine, but after a few minutes I was like "Yeah! Look at me!".