My 2017 in Spokane had the same blind spot. I definitely clipped a porta-john door once because of it. That little beep would have saved me a very awkward conversation.

My first year as an apprentice, I spent probably 20 hours total fighting with wire loom tubing. I was trying to thread whole harnesses through it, getting so frustrated. My journeyman finally walked over, sliced the loom open lengthwise with a razor, wrapped it around the wires, and taped it shut. I felt like the biggest idiot on the planet. It’s crazy how you can stare right at the simple method and never see it. That Anchorage guy did you a solid.

Those old live oaks are beasts, and a good cable job is basically permanent if it was done right. You could look for any rust streaks running down the bark from the lag hooks, that's a sure sign water is getting in and things are moving. The cable itself might look fine but the real wear happens where it wraps around the branch. If the tree has put on a lot of new growth since it was cabled, that extra weight might be pushing the old hardware to its limit.

Tried 8 hours once, still came out strong.

Seriously? Why does everything have to be such a huge project. It's just moving your body.