Thanks for the replies and.....
the big brown truck arrived today with my razor and other supplies. I changed my mind and went with a new pre-honed Boker carbon steel razor instead of the Dovo from SRD. I'm going to give the first straight razor shave a go this weekend with it so if you never hear back from me again I've apparently lost more blood than my body will allow in this endeavor. My plan is simple enough which is to go very sloooow with next to no pressure and let the razor do the work. I'm not sure, if that's a good plan but for now it's the plan. Hope it works out well, I'm really beginning to question my sanity about this whole thing. Oh well, I'm going to give it try anyway.