Canoing vs. lawn mowing

Yesterday, the Complete and Total Loser stood at the same spot on a river bank he'd stood at in 1978 with his college friend and roommate, Mark. It might have even been the same date.
This time, the Loser stood with a 23-year-old ex-coworker named Elizabeth. He told her what he and Mark saw, all those years ago. 
A man passed them in a rented canoe. As he passed, he looked at the Loser and Mark, who were no more than twenty feet away, and said, "Sure beats mowing the lawn!"
The Loser, always insufferable, was even more so then. With a year of college under his cheap belt, he knew that his life was destined to be a fascinating one in which paddling downstream in a rented canoe would not be a highlight. No, the Loser saw his future work as so compelling and absorbing that days of the week would be meaningless to him. 
As he told Elizabeth this, he noted that now he was unemployed and had a lawn to mow.