The power of professionals

The house I now live in in Roseville is on a quarter-acre lot (0.26 acres, according to the flyer).  The house itself has a footprint of about 1300 square feet, and there's no garden, so there's an awful lot of grass.  I tend to allergies and hayfever, so the thought of mowing that just sent shivers up my spine.  I contracted it out to a company called "Worry Free", who helped me last year with shoveling the snow at my previous house (another task I'm not thrilled about, but in this case really couldn't do since I was gone 3 out of 4 weeks).

The other houses in the neighborhood have similar sized lots, and I see the poor bastards out there on the weekends.  The renter to the east, toiling away.  The husband to the west, same.  Both pushing their nice gas-powered mowers with about an 18" swath, back and forth, forth and back, for the better part of an hour.  Imagine doing this thirty years ago with a manual rotary mower.  Life these days is better, but still: No.

My guys?  Nine minutes.  Timed it.  Pickup pulls up with the trailer.  Guy 1 gets out, grabs the weed whacker, and takes off toward the fence and the shrubbery, trimming.  Guy 2 pulls down the back gate, disappears inside, there's a roaring noise, and out he shoots on a self-propelled mower with a good 4-foot diameter swath, him standing on a little two-wheeled platform that drags behind.  Thing's gotta do ten miles an hour on the straightaways.  Turns on a dime; reverses same.  Three minutes in the front; just under five in the back.  Back and forth, forth and back, out the side gate to the street and up the ramp.  Pull down the trailer door and off they go.

Nine minutes.

Awesome.