Man Card Punched

Last Sunday when we visited the Panchos buffet we talked about having our man cards and getting them punched at the buffet. Well, tonight I feel like I once again got my man card punched. A friend of mine has asked for my help in hauling some lawn trash to the dump and it has been a month or so. Early this week my friend pleaded for a little urgency in my help when she saw a rodent milling about the trash pile. That lasted about 2 days until the Wednesday night storms blew thru shredding the 2 main branches of her front maple tree.

Today she rented a chainsaw and after school we planned on attacking the tree. I showed up with NO game plan and was defeated early when I could not get the chainsaw started. We worked on multiple branches with a branch cutter and hand clippers. One blister later, not on me, we were rescued when her neighbor and his friend came down with their chainsaw. They cut the main branch AND got our chainsaw started.

About an hour and a half later we demolished the tree. We being myself, my friend, my wife and my son. The neighbor cut the whole tree down so we had our work cut out.

We started about 4:30 and after cutting and finally mowing all told the job took 2 1/2 hours. I was soaked since the sun finally made an appearance and it was extremely humid. We had great teamwork and I wonder how sore I may be 24 hours from now.

So, I feel like I got my man card punched tonight. I hope that cutting the tree up into little pieces will be my toughest task of the weekend.