Almost Manly

Two or three years ago I bought a little electric chainsaw off the clearance rack.  I used it a few times, but was never impressed with it - seemed to take forever to cut anything, and the chain was always slipping off the gears.  So it's mostly been relegated to the basement, alongside all the other tools I hardly ever use.

This year I found myself having to trim back the bushes out front before the little costumed people came begging for books and candy.  Just like every other year, because I'm too lazy to keep these things maintained all summer.  And, also just like every other year, I expressed a deep desire to just cut the whole thing down.

At which point, Robin urged me to do exactly that.  "Why don't you just get your chainsaw and do it?"

I call my shoulder sprites "Short Term Lazy" and "Long Term Lazy".  At this point STL was crying, "But it's wor-hur-hur-hurk!"  But LTL countered with the argument that we're working anyway, and by doing it this way it might mean less work later.  STL conceded.

So down to the basement I go to fetch my nearly-useless chainsaw.

This went about how I expected.  There were about eight main trunks to this bush. and the first one took at least ten minutes to sever.  However, it made a big difference in the amount of foliage present, so continue we did.  Halfway through the next branch the chain slipped off.  I'm used to this, I had the tools nearly at hand (just a socket wrench to loosen the nuts) and carefully put it back on just the way it originally was - as I have done since I bought the thing.

Let's just pretend that I repeated this part of the story in some original way two more times.  In truth, it was not original at all, and getting a little tedious.  But the third time, I noticed something wrong.

See, all the tiny metal teeth on this kind of chain point in the same direction.  The sharp side moves away from the motor at the top, and toward the motor at the bottom.  I've made note of this because of how often the chain slips, so I know it works that way.

But when replacing the chain, it's necessary to turn the saw upside down.  And by now you're all way ahead of me.

The chain on this damned thing has been backwards since the day I bought it.

After an appropriate amount of cursing and face-palming, I reversed the chain.  The rest of the job took less time than the first two trunks, and was almost fun.

I'm almost looking forward to clearing the shrubbery from the fence now.