I have been trolling the legit-arborist topic, and I am not sure why it has endured in a thread entitled "whadja do today"? If Legit does not wish to tell us what he did today, then he should find another thread.
I have an opinion, and then I'll tell you what I did today.
A facilities manager is often asked to be an expert in many fields. Legit sounds like he has pumped up his credentials in this area, and has probably done the necessary study to get the job. That being said, as most of us know, an arborist, especially as certified by ISA or TCIA, is not exempted from knowing the working aspects of the job. All you need do is look up the study and test material, and it is quickly apparent that the certification is intended to help the public identify those individuals that had met certain minimum standard of knowledge.
For Legit_A to claim to be a participant in "policing the industry" is a farce. You don't get to police an industry that you do not participate. I sincerely doubt that he would have any respect among his peers if he did, since even ISA, TCIA, ANSI, and OSHA all have committees and boards that are heavily infested with well established and widely experience members. You don't get to add comments to any discussion of the rules when you cannot certify that you understand all the implications of any rule. If you are not, nor ever have been a
working arborist, you are unqualified to police the industry. General snitch and busy-body pest seems much more likely, given the disdain shown for us poor illiterate working dogs.
Research by Legit A? Seems unlikely. Number generator, field trial participant, tree checker/counter/ lab rat? Seems likely, especially working for a research facility. Sadly, the high incidence of typo's, recursive logic, and generally proletariat responses suggest that he is not capable of conducting primary research.
So guys, here is what should be done. I don't pay too much attention to blowhards and troublemakers, unless I happen to be in a mood to beat them up. Usually, they don't know they are losing the battle, so it mostly works out to be a waste of time. I suggest that we ignore off-topic comments, and we shouldn't get too excited by one more guy here with an inflated ego. God knows that there is no shortage of that kind of person around here!
What I did today was go remove a 70' tall, 28" DBH oak tree that was leaning heavily over the customers house. It was perfectly healthy, and would have been a fine specimen had it been standing straight.
Sadly, my climber did not come to work, so my tired, old, out of condition, and "got too big to fit in my saddle anymore" body had to buck up and try out the new Geckos. I was riddled with difficulties, all generated by my unqualified and poorly trained employees, so I got to do LOTS of training, and a fair bit of yelling.
I had a blast! It was rather technical rigging, and I had fun for once. I need to get out of the office a bit more. I was
way too slow, and I kept waiting forever to get the lowering rope back up to me from the slow groundies. After about 4 hours in the tree, I was totally beat, and my feet hurt pretty badly. All the branches were off, I had reduced the top lower than all the adjacent branches (about 35'), and I ran out of gas (both in my poor physique and in the 200T). I couldn't get any groundmen to look up so that I could get more gas, and I decided to drop it between the trees.
Pounding wedges was only an evil tease, this had an ugly side lean as well as a prominent back lean (given the direction I had to send it). I had lifted it almost over with the wedges, while pulling a little bit with a truck, too. I heard some ripping sounds from the hinge, and I told the boys to step on the gas! The leaning spar had no options: I had tied it off to my 3/8th amsteel blue rope, and that stuff is as strong as a steel cable.
Tree was down beautifully, we will finish cleanup tomorrow. (LATE start, due to waiting on climber no-show and other problems.) Groundies were all whining about how tired they were from loading the other trees that had been left from yesterday.
Got back to the shop, my mechanic had left at 2:00 pm without calling me, and the alarm went off at 4:00 pm. Lawn crew was still on-site, waiting for me to unlock.
Now I need to do payroll, then go home and spray for ants. But hey!
I have a license for that!
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness..." Charles ####ens. [edit: dang it! D i c kens is NOT a cuss word]
