Day: July 28, 2020

Last week before I was feeling poorly, I went on a shopping expedition. That was the first time I’d been out for anything except food or necessities in 4 months.

It was strange.

Everyone running around in masks people trying to be “normal” but they were obviously tense. I picked up a couple of things for the car. Then I stopped by BassPro.

On the one hand it was nice to be shopping, on the other hand it was weird.

I bought myself a pretty nice knife. The one I’d been carrying for years has seen better days. I’d decided that I wanted something a bit bigger and settled on a BUCK model that has a good feel.

I was going to ask some questions about guns and ammunition purchases under the most recent California laws but thought better of it when I saw the line.

BassPro’s stock of pistols and rifles, was almost completely depleted. The line had a 7 hour wait and they were out of ammo in a wide variety of calibers. I thought to myself, “Even if you were there to pick up a gun you’d purchased, it would just be a hunk of expensive metal because you couldn’t get ammunition.“

Usually, you can walk up and ask questions but now everything is cordoned off with chairs to sit in, and wristbands being issued to “Better serve you”.

My stop at HomeDepot wasn’t much more productive. They were out of the RYOBI attachment and the Chain saw that I was interested in. 

By the way, RYOBI makes some nice tools. I got tired of Black & Decker stuff breaking yearly. I started looking for better tools and found that unlike a lot of manufacturers RYOBI still provides parts lists and maintenance manuals. In other words, they’re not building throw away tools.

After a little more research I found that for the price point their tools seemed to be pretty highly rated.

With that knowledge, about a month or so ago I purchased one of their 40V weed whackers. It’s from their “ExtendIt” tools line.

This thing is awesome and unlike the Black & Deckers that I’ve owned, this one runs the entire time I need it to run. 

I was so impressed, I purchased the hedge trimmer attachment and now, with the same power pack and drive unit I can trim the bigger plants. Much to my surprise, I was able to do both and still only depleted the battery by 50%. That’s a big difference from the Black & Deckers where I had to swap between 4 different batteries to get the job done.

RYOBI makes a pole mounted chainsaw that I can attach to the motor. That should allow me to reach high enough to prune some of the trees and a really tall hedge between my property and the neighbors.

I also noticed that they make an electric chainsaw that is powered from the same battery and thought that might be useful around here in the winter time so I was interested in the price. 

HomeDepot was completely out of both. I’m guessing that I’m not the only guy to be working on the yard this year.