30 minutes of mise prep and the new guy still beat them? Sounds like some of your guys are just slow on the line.

Bet he'd have a heart attack seeing that 130 yards an hour on his old numbers. Guess 30 degrees isn't some magic number after all.

Had a guy miss a cracked pipe that flooded my basement a week later, sucks when you pay good money for nothing.

and that right there is why I tell everyone to stop buying those cheap aluminum portawraps from the big box stores. I had a similar thing happen with a lowering device on a big sugar maple about two years back. The whole thing just gave out when I was taking the tension off a heavy limb, and that sucker dropped like a rock. I was lucky it was only about 8 feet up but still. You gotta check for those tiny stress cracks with a magnifying glass or even a good flashlight, especially around the pin holes and where the metal bends. And don't trust the "new" feeling of gear either, I've seen brand new stuff fail because of bad casting or machining from the factory.

Ha, that's brutal! Horses are such drama queens sometimes, aren't they? I once put sport boots on my mare and she forgot how to trot properly, just stared at her legs like they were alien appendages. I guess it's easy to forget how sensitive they are to every little change. Your story is way funnier though - imagining a horse jumping at his own footsteps is gold.