Couldn't quite make it.

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I almost made it to 21:00 then crashed like a sea gull on Alka-Seltzer (hint: they can't burp, urhm... or fart). Anyway. I woke at about 2:00 and tried to stay down a bit longer. Forty five minutes later I was up without any choice. I had the windows open and furnace off and it was about 62 F in here. I was still quite warm, at least while under a couple of blankets. Even so, I shut things up and turned up the heat a bit. No need to possibly suffer through the chills while waking. Now to stay up today like I did yesterday.

That chainsaw is exciting. It is also a bit frightening, even now. The work I have done with it has been minor and easy. There were no tricks, no odd spring, no serious amounts of mass coming to points along my cut. What I am hoping to do with the saw will bring me into serious contention with the laws of physics, great masses, all centered around a rather serious saw. I still haven't figured out how to make more use of the chainsaw, I just know that it might be a way for me to do more than what I am doing. Something physical. I can't really help others with home tree issues, I'm simply not good enough yet. And that will always involve risk, probably nearly requiring an "education paperwork trail" and insurance. But felling trees, limbing them, then cutting them down to travel size before finishing them for firewood or even lumber is possible.

The truth on that though is people in this valley, because of the burgeoning population and worsening air quality from autos (mostly) are starting to shy away from woodburning anything, save when they go camping and most can either afford a few small bundles or have wood from their own cuttings. There is no way a private cutter could compete with lumber companies, in any fashion, either. I am just not sure how make it work. Still, part time, if I can find a minor trailer, I might begin doing a bit here and there. Perhaps summer wood for summer cabins? Though I think competition is rather steep, with $120 to $150 a cord, sometimes delivered. That's a lot of cutting, chopping, transporting, and stacking for very little money. I'm not sure how they can really do it. Never mind, the saw seems to have excited something in me. If nothing else perhaps I could help others take wood they need, just to do it. I just feel called to work. Not sure how much I really can end up doing. But again, never mind.

If you have never used a chainsaw I am suggesting you are missing out. There are risks. But guiding a chain through what experience has shown you to be solid matter, cutting limbs down to size, feeling the heft, the noise, all of it, it just does something... something good. I have been eyeing those trees out back with a new belief that I can handle them, or at least pare them down and let a pro handle the biggest trunk (between four and a half and five feet in girth). Technically, even with a 25" bar, I could not take that big trunk. Stretching the chainsaw beyond recommendations for an already highly dangerous (even within the world of chainsaw usage) cutting technique is for other men. But if I could trim the trunk to a fifteen foot knob, I think I could conscientiously allow the rest of the work to be outsourced. The other trees will be quite tricky, too. I have two 30 to 40 foot pines five feet apart and ten feet from the house. Another similar sized pine is ten feet from the garage. The two big trees sit right between the house, one of the sheds, and the fence, no more than 20 feet from any of those and well tall enough to hit any and possibly all, depending on if they broke up during the cutting and with a little extra special bad luck. All of them, even some of the branches alone, could do serious harm to my home. Should be interesting. Now I really have to get practicing on some rope work, I have the tools, reason, purpose, and a little pep in my step. The upside? If I die, problem solved! All of them. Ha-yeah! Bleh, I'm never that lucky.

Oh, and while I might have a penchant for exaggeration, from rare occasion to rare moment... this isn't one of them. If I get done even the bits I propose I will have done a manly man's job. If, as usual, it will take me months, not days, to do. Not that I am a sixtieth of a man, only like Wesley from Prince's Bride, I am... mostly dead. *grins*

Well, on to... something or other, while I more fully wake. But, yeah, the saw has me coming to a new kind of wakefulness. *Va-room!*