There was an old episode of CHEERS that has been replaying in my mind this last week. 

In it, the bar has burned down and Sam is trying to figure out what to do.  Sam had bought insurance with a huge deductible, so he didn't have enough money to rebuild.  His friends are asking him why had he set the deductible so high and his response was...where were you when the insurance agent was talking 100 miles an hour?

You see most normal people don't think about insurance or insurance companies on a daily basis.  You don't spend time pondering if a meteorite or a missile or Santa's sled or even something as mundane as a tree, falls on your house if you are covered. 

But I have spent the last week or so worry about insurance, thinking about insurance and dealing with insurance.

Because (as you might remember) one of my trees had fallen.

Now if this was a commercial for insurance, some semi-famous actor would come appear on screen and tell you that you don't need to worry about insurance because...you are in good hands.  But I am sad to say, if my insurance company was doing the commercial their slogan would be...sorry our hands were too busy stuffing our pockets with cash and we didn't even notice you.

So when we last left our hero, he was dealing with a tree that had fallen, had hit his neighbor's house and had done some minor damage to his house.  We now continue our story...

The good news (I thought) was the tree had not hit my house at all.  It had fallen across the power line, ripping it out of the side of my house.  In the process it had taken off a board and bent a length of gutter.  The worst part of the damage was the dangling power wires on my house, but all in all not TOO much damage.

The neighbor's house was smashed to bits.  The tree had crushed their roof and destroyed one bedroom.

We called our insurance companies.  Mine told me it would be three days before anyone would even look at it.  I presume theirs took at different approach to handling clients, because lumberjacks were cutting the tree down the next day.

How do I know this?  Because their tree cutters called me.  They wanted to know if they should take care of the tree on my side of the property line.  They said it would cost about $700 to cut it up and haul it away.  As I had not talked to my adjuster yet, I reluctantly had to say no.  They said they would cut the tree at the property line and leave the log.

So the next day there was a 24 foot long, two and a half foot wide log resting in my yard.  If I had wanted to hollow it out, it would have made a lovely canoe.  But instead it sat there for another two days until the adjuster appeared.

And appear he did.

Promptly on Wednesday morning he surveyed the scene.  He took dozens of photos, took measurements, filled out forms…maybe he painted some watercolors…I’m really not sure.  He spoke to the neighbor.  He interviewed me. Though oddly, he didn't want to know about my goals or strengths, he just wanted to talk about the tree.

He walked back to his truck, where he spent the next 45 minutes typing in to his laptop and printing off documents.  After which, he presented me with a check for ... drum roll please...$77.46.

No, that is not a misprinted, $77.46.

You see if the tree doesn't hit the house, the insurance company does not pay for the tree to be removed.  Lucky, lucky, lucky me.

$77 just about covers all the gas I used driving back and forth to the house...so the $0.46 is pure profit ... excluding the actual repairs, of course.  But I prefer to look at things from the positive side, so $0.46 cash in my pocket.  Oh the treasures I can buy now....

While I toyed with whether to purchase a small island or a large yacht, I was still faced with the daunting task of how to get rid of 3 tons of fallen tree.

The first and most obvious option was to pay the $700 and have a professional remove it.  For the mere pittance of $700, they will send several large, hairy, tobacco stained, toothless men wielding chainsaws over to my house to quickly make work of the tree.  If that doesn't paint a pretty picture in your head, nothing will.   In addition, they will come with powerful hydraulic equipment that could lift tons of wood, as easily as I lift the second plate of food at the all you can eat buffet.  They would be properly trained, insured and bonded.  This clearly is the best, if not only, choice to remove this gigantic piece of wood from you yard.

So screw that noise.

It will be a long, cold day in hell before I pay some redneck and his pack of half-ape men $700 of MY money to cut up a tree. 

SURELY, I can do the same job myself and save $700.  I mean how hard can it be...the damn thing is on the ground already…most of the job is already done.

I was sure all I needed to do was to buy a chainsaw and helmet, or something, and off to the races I will go...

So I jumped in to the world of chainsaws.  There are dozens and dozens of different options on chainsaws.  Bar length, engine displacement, number of teeth, tooth angle, RPM and the list goes on.  A huge amount of information to digest and consider it order to properly select the chainsaw needed to complete the task. 

I decided to buy a blue one.  I think that is a very professional color and would do the trick.

My next surprise was my new chainsaw was not long enough to cut the tree across its full diameter.  I would have to cut one side and then cut the other side to make a cut that was a full 30 inches across.  That just doubled all my cutting.  But the more time you can spend with a machine that whirls razor sharp little knives at 150 miles an hour, inches from your arms, legs and head is quality time, so I think I was really the winner here.

So after two cuts, a pile of wood chips 8 inches high and ten minutes of my life, I had successfully cut my 24 foot log in to two 12 foot logs.  Yes!!!  Yeah me!!!

Shockingly, cutting 3 tons of wood in to two equal pieces does not produce a piece that I can lift.  Apparently, I had not thought this all the way through.

But then I made an interesting discovery, while I could not lift the logs...I could roll them.  You see, a log is round...I had discovered the wheel!!

Oh the joy...dancing like a drunken sailor, I merrily pushed the log around the yard.  Five feet in that direction and then five feet the in other direction.  I was really making progress now.  Five feet and then five feet back.  After half an hour, a small crowd had gathered to watch by endeavors, but I came to the realization that the log was not getting any lighter by pushing it around the yard. 

I was crestfallen.

Back to cutting. 

4 cuts later, I had several 3 foot long logs.  Now we are talking. 

First, you can really roll a three foot log.  Excellent, I will now push the log...oh wait, I forgot that doesn't help.  But SURELY, I can lift a 3 foot log.  After 30 seconds of straining (I want to lie and tell you it was 5 minutes), I realized that log was still too heavy.  My quick math skills deduced this 3 foot log only weighed... 700 pounds.  Ugh.

At a minimum, I would have to divide it in to seven sections to be able to do anything with it.

Maybe hiring those rednecks would have been a good idea...

Luckily for me, my phone rang.  My wife had called another lumberjack.  He would cut down another problem tree on the property and take care of this log (now logs) as part of the deal.

All and all that seemed like a really good deal...

I packed away my pretty blue chainsaw.

But what to do with those dangling power lines...and electrician is going to want a lot of money to fix those.  SURELY, I can do that job.

I mean, how hard can it be...