Tag: bear spray

What would you take?

/ Matt Talley / 3 Comments

You don’t really own anything you can’t carry on your back at a dead run
~Daniel Keys Moran

I have a work acquaintance who sends me (and about 50 other co-workers) all sorts of right-wing, end of times, liberal government=evil sort of crap a couple times a week.  Last week, we all received a forward telling us how to prepare (lists and such) for “the coming breakdown of society.”  Really, she sends this sort of ranting dribble all the time.  I haven’t done anything about it because it makes me laugh AND I pick apart her forwarded ramblings and use their lunacy, lack of factual basis, and flawed rhetoric to verbally beat the proverbial sense into her on breaks.  I haven’t figured out if she just likes the debate and that is why I am included or if she has a humiliation fetish and waits with glee after sending me Sarah Palin quotes or a comic declaring that the Health-care Bill is the same as a 1930’s National Socialist agenda come to pass.

Her “run while you can” e-mail  got me thinking about what we would do if the wife and I had to escape a Tea-party  horde.  If you had to leave your house RIGHT NOW, what would you take? I mean now and you were never coming back.  Where would we go?  Why are you going? Are you running from the Feds?  Has the zombie apocalypse come? Is there a crazy red-headed woman at the door with a chainsaw? What if the house was on fire?  Natural disaster? Mafia hit? Terrorist attack?  Plague?  Famine?  War?

Could you walk/run 100 miles with all that stuff?
Where would you go?
How would you get there?
What would you do for food, money, shelter?
Why this stuff and is there anything I would cull?

In most of this cases I would like to stay at home, dig in and wait for a sunny day, FEMA, a Presidential pardon, the 82nd Airborne, etc…. But sometimes one has to run like a chimp whose balls are ablaze.  If given a few minutes to gather and run what I would take?  All the technical clothes I can fit in my bag (down jacket, rain gear, synthetic shirts and pants, hat, trail running shoes, hiking and running socks) my S³ kit, mess kit, external hard drive, laptop, couple of t-shirts, a pair of jeans, my dad’s favorite pipe, wallet/purse, passports, birth certificates, every bit of cash and coins we had, the 12ga, every 12ga shell I can lay my hands on, pocket knife, sleeping bag, all the coffee in the freezer, I would wear hiking boots out the door, carry a charged phone, assorted cables, lots of extra batteries, five or six yard waste garbage bags, lighters, and I would throw the bike in the car – I could ride my bike till the wheels fell off  once the gas is all gone {throw in the spare tubes and maintenance kit that I always ride with}. Lastly, I would take with me a plan of where we are going and have an alternate destination – just in case.

The wife would be toting similar, but I would load her down with camping and non-perishable food, a couple rolls of duct tape, and all the meds and bandages in the house. We’d throw her bike as well. The Mrs. would take the dog. Yes, there are reasons to leave him, but she would not listen to a single one.  Mentioning the words BBQ/starving/alternate plan/him or us/tastes like chicken and looking over at the dog, within 24hours of said words, would get me shot and castrated in reverse order so we won’t be going there…

The sleeping bag and tech gear will get us where we need to go in the best shape possible no matter the weather. The bikes will get us there faster than our own feet. Cars run out of gas – bikes don’t. The trash bags would keep us and our gear dry. The coffee is included as possible currency and because I have an addiction. The shotgvn and shells are to keep us safe or fed and Daddy’s pipe because one must not forget the past. The hard drive and computer are so that we have records (personal and financial) once we arrive where we are going. Could I cull any of the above… Nope.  Can I carry it all across 5-6 states?   Yep.

This was just off the top of my head and I figure I could gather all this stuff into a pack in less than 4 minutes for a really quick departure and we could get just about anywhere with it. Give me some time to plan and it may look a little different.  Also, if our place was going up in flames the list would be a lot different.  First I would make sure Laurel was safe (she would already have the puppy) and then I would just grab papers, computers, photo albums, keepsakes and run out into the street and wait for our bad-ass Seattle fire department to douse the flames and prey that some of the rest of our crap was salvageable.

So what about you?  What does your list look like?  Why are you running?

Commuting with Bear Spray…

/ Matt Talley

Man, Some days my bike commute (1200+ miles so far this year) is the SHIT!… Warm sunshine, crisp air, blue sky, mountains in the background, little traffic, all the lights are green, etc… Then there are days like today that I get home ragged, twitching, in a foul mood, and in need of quite time. I got off a little late so the sun was setting as I started the 40-minute ride home. Traffic was tight, exhaust fumes hung thick in the air, some asshole swerved at me to be funny – I hope, two douche-bags laid into their horns as they sped past me while I was climbing a hill, a lady in a Honda almost hit me in the cross walk, and finally this dick screamed at me with his head hanging out the passenger window of a truck as I was coming to yet another red-light. I got up out of the saddle and mashed the peddles for all I was worth, getting mentally ready for the beat-down I was going to give the ass-hat. Just as I got within reach of the bumper, the guy driving ran the light. I hate assholes!

I was hit 5 times in 3 years of living in California and I learned that you have to watch drivers like a hawk. After a while you become intuitive of their no-signal right turns and you can feel when that lady on her cell phone is going to look right through you and pull out, so you hit the brakes and avoid a crash that she was never aware of. The Burbs and industrial district south of Seattle is a whole other hot mess indeed. Unlike in the city proper, there aren’t too many of us bike commuters, lots of busy mid-level managers talking into the mobile phones, and it is a battle every time I get on my bike. There is a guy in a dark blue Chevy Malibu van that has the same schedule as me who will squeeze his van against the curb if he sees me coming so that I can’t pass him at red lights – no cutting in line! I get honked at daily, had a Burger King bag tossed at me back in June, and once had a semi-homeless (living in his car) dude (there are a bunch in S. King County, WA) try to chase me down and steal my bike – really!

Now, if I had caught the guy at the light I would have hit him at least three times before he got his door open. Then it would have been two good-sized fellers on a skinny guy in spandex and funny shoes. I would have given pretty good, but I would have bleed some and I don’t know if that would have taught them the proper lesson. Ruminating on that and the possibility of assault by one of our local street people, I have decided to not fuck around with my safety. I have a wife and kids and it is my job to come home safe every night (and contribute heavily to two college funds), so I sat down at my bride’s sewing machine and made (with her patient help) a snazzy black nylon pouch to hold my bike-commute insurance policy: bear spray. Yep, a big ol’ canister of Ursine-Off. If it can stop a charging grizzly, then some asshole that takes a swipe at me because I am on a bike and look like an easy target is going to have a very spice-filled evening. I see it this way: If you’re a prick and you try to touch me or run me over, you get a nice even coating of Oleoresin Capsicum, I call the cops, you learn a valuable lesson, I go home safely, have a yummy dinner, you may get to post bail, I have a beer, you spend the rest of your evening itchy and red. Everyone wins!