Driving the Excavator

I got to drive the excavator. It is not something I ever thought I would do in my life.  I honestly never gave thought to driving big machinery.  But once I saw it on our property and thought about knocking down trees with it I decided I wanted to give it a go.  

I made sure Bob saved a few trees for me to knock down.  It was harder than I thought to drive.  These things were not made for someone my size (strange because I am average size).  I could not reach the pedals and the back of the seat at all so I was bending forward the entire time.  There were also several different controls that I never really got the hang of, I just tried different things until what I wanted to move started moving.  Another difficult aspect is that not only do both tracks turn independently and go different directions you can turn the car around while keeping the tracks in the same spot.  Kind of cool, but it completely reverses the direction of the joystick and pedals that I still didn't' really have down.