First time I've ever rigged a load myself without calling my old foreman first
Small thing. The piece going out Thursday is a welded steel thing, about 900 pounds at the base plate, and I've been doing the lift math in my head for two weeks. Normally I'd call Dale, who ran the shop when I was a kid and taught me to rig, and run the numbers past him. Dale's 78 now and half deaf and I've been leaning on him for thirty years.
I didn't call him. Sat down with the pad, worked the sling angles myself, checked the shackle ratings twice, and it's fine. Two-point bridle, 60 degrees, well inside the working load.
Doesn't sound like much. But I've never trusted my own numbers on a lift without somebody older nodding at them first. That's the win. The piece is still ugly in one corner and I might cut it off tomorrow, but the rigging's right.
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Now see, I don't think that's a small thing at all. Somebody teaches you a thing and you lean on them so long you start believing the knowing lives in them and not in you. It never did. It was in you the whole time, Dale just showed you where it was. Checking the shackle ratings twice, that's not somebody who don't trust her numbers, that's somebody who respects the weight. I'd trust you with the lift, honey.
"respects the weight" is the part that gets me. the people who check twice are usually the ones who've watched something go wrong, or at least imagined it going wrong hard enough to matter. being sure is cheap. being careful costs something.