Man thats rough. But honestly $400 sounds pretty steep even for a fancy cutterhead. I think you might have overpaid by a bit unless it was some top of the line brand. The sandy jobs down in Mobile are brutal on equipment no matter how new the tech is. A resharpened old head would have probably done just as good for half that price. Live and learn I guess.

That aluminum egg bar dropped my mare's heels a good bit but her stride opened right up after a few weeks.

You sure that $40 covered all the caps for a 1972 Pioneer? I mean, some of those old units have like 30 or 40 caps in there, and decent audio grade ones run a few bucks each. Just saying, nice work if you pulled it off for that cheap lol.

I really agree with you there, @uma_mitchell83. That line about "guess like the rest of us" hits home. I had a phone a few years back that would shut down at 30 percent battery and I just kept using it anyway, never even looked up how to check the health of it. Finally got a new one and realized I'd been putting up with that nonsense for way too long. Guessing worked out okay for me in the end, but it sure wasn't the smart way to go about things.

A buddy of mine went there last fall. He said just standing on that big mound, looking out at where the city was, made his brain go quiet. He kept picturing people walking up that same slope a thousand years ago to watch the sunrise. It wasn't like reading about it in a book at all. He said it felt heavy, in a good way, like the ground remembered.