Boys and Their Toys

Sometimes, you just have to play! Well, really, I had quite a bit of earth to move around behind our new sunporch. I had to excavate the area in which I am preparing to build the deck to the east of the new sunporch, and I wanted to generally grade the area that had been damaged during last year's construction so that I could reseed it. This seemed like just too much to do by hand or with my little tractor, and being a cheapskate and not wanting to hire anyone, I decided to do it myself. Besides, I've always wanted to operate some heavy equipment. OK, this isn't a bulldozer or anything really serious, but you have to start somewhere.

So, after a trip to my friendly rental store, I pulled this home behind my pickup.

Here I am driving the skid loader off the trailer. So far, so good.

I was safely encased in the cab, surrounded by a cage, a roof, a seatbelt, and two other padded restraints that had to be in place or the thing wouldn't even budge. You might be able to tell that each of my hands is on a little lever. The two together made the unit move forward or backward (push or pull). The left one also operated the lift on the bucket–up to raise, down to lower. The right one operated the tip of the bucket–up to tip up and empty, down to return to its normal position. By the way, how do you like my sporty new suspenders? A gift from meine frau.

Before attempting any serious digging, I worked at leveling some of the earth to the south. Part of the plan here was to get some quick experience and make sure I didn't end up bashing our shiny new sunporch or siding.

I managed to catch on pretty quickly, although operating those levers instead of using a steering wheel can be a little counter-intuitive, especially if you try doing two things at once, like raising the bucket while beginning to empty it.

I'll report more later when I post something about the construction of the deck. Then you can see the area I've excavated for the footings and deck support. In the meantime, I have a drainage problem to solve for the area which will be under the new deck. That might mean renting a trencher in order to install some drainage tubing. Then there is the grading and seeding to do. That might require a tractor with a gill attachment. You can never have too much fun. A friend of mine has a good retirement motto, to which I have now also subscribed–"Have fun and then die."