Henry David Thoreau With Lawn Tools (not!)

It's been a long time since I've done any major yard work. My teaching duties just took up too much of my time and energy to allow for taking care of the 2 acres we live on. Therefore it was with some excitement and a little trepidation that I signed for the implements of destruction commonly called lawn tools that we ordered recently. The lawn tractor did not want to start at first but with a little coaxing and swearing the engine finally kicked over with a huge belch of white smoke. Once the initial theatrics were over it ran great. I drove it up into the shed and then unpacked the weed eater and chain saw. Yesterday afternoon was spent mostly going over all of the booklets. We have a medium sized tree that fell a month ago so I decided to slice it into manageable pieces that could be tossed onto the brush pile in back. I ran through the startup procedures with the chain saw and cranked it. And cranked it. And cranked it. I cranked until my shoulder was sore. It finally started up and I proudly took it over to the fallen tree. Unfortunately I forgot about the safety switch on it and when I released the throttle momentarily it died. I proceeded to flood it and pulled on the starting handle for about 30 minutes until I was gasping for breath. By this time the mosquitoes had found me so I called it a day and put the chainsaw away. Last night I went back to the manual and discovered a couple of things I was doing wrong. This morning I tried to start it again and after about 20 pulls it started up. This time I did not let it stall and cut the tree up in about 15 minutes. Though covered with wood chips I did keep my body parts intact. This outdoors stuff isn't as easy as the guy on the PBS home show makes it look! I'm sure that with experience I will get better at it.