Making Progress with Weights

I've made some great progress on my weight training lately.  I feel stronger and I'm moving down the weight plates on quite a few machines.  Last night I tried the Elliptical Machine for the first time.  I gotta say, I've never even tried it because frankly, I think people look silly using them.  I'm not kidding at all.  I see somebody on an elliptical machine and I think to myself "I don't want to look like that person".  I'm talking about everyone here.  I've never seen a human being using an elliptical machine who didn't look like a fool doing it.  They just seem so awkward... now running on a treadmill or riding a bike?  You probably look awesome... no awkwardness there at all... all you joggers and bikers: you just keep being awesome.
 
Fast forward to last evening (that makes no sense) and you'd see me on the darn thing just to try it.  I have to say, after eveything I've said about elliptical's, I'm 100% correct, I probably looked as stupid or perhaps even more stupid than anybody I've ever seen using one.  Yet it was a fantastic, yet brief workout,.  I thought it was really easy at first so I cranked it up to level 16 and ended up exhausted after 2 minutes.  I did 7 minutes and quit out of sheer boredom.