This must be my lucky sweater. It’s the same bright pink sweater that I was wearing the day at the beach when I fell into the amazingly fun opportunity to operate the crane, excavator, and the bull dozer. Today it got me a lesson on the backhoe and front end loader.

I pulled up for a day’s work at the office. It is gorgeous outside, so I was planning to work on my laptop at the picnic table behind the office. I was gathering my laptop back pack and things to carry in when I noticed that Rick, the concrete guy was coming my way on the backhoe. He and I have met a few times at different jobsites. On one memorable occasion I saw him throw his cell phone like he was throwing a baseball from third base to first, only in this case first base was a mud puddle. In our last conversation, when I saw him using the backhoe to extract a pretty significant tree stump, I asked if he had lost his cell phone again.

So this morning he sped the backhoe over by my soccer-mom minivan. I had parked far from the office and he offered me a lift. So I hopped on. As we traveled back to the building at the break neck speed of 5 miles per hour or so, I talked him into a lesson.
It was cool! First I had to put the legs down to anchor the machine. Then I got to use the two levers to make the bucket move. I didn’t actually dig a hole, but tried to get a smooth motion going. My movements were still petty jerky, but I began to see that I could get the hang of it. The jerkiness of it reminded me of the bigger machines on the beach. It was similar to the excavator. The levers didn’t move in ways that felt natural to the movement of the equipment. It was like trying to draw a curved line on an Etch-a-Sketch, only on a huge scale.
Then I got to operate the front end loader. First, I had to lift the legs, then flip the seat into reverse position and climb over. I drove the machine at top speed over to Rick’s truck where he tossed a big coil of wire fencing into the bull dozer-like loader. When I backed up to return to the office, I made that lovely reverse beeping sound.

What a great morning! I have had some other non-construction related good luck in this same pink hoodie sweater. I’m going to have to wear this more often!