Tragic Sandwich

Tag: backpack

  • What’s In Your Wallet–Er, Earthquake Kits?

    For why we have them, take a look at the first post in this series.

    A little while ago Mrs. Sandwich posted about things she found in the closet, and the earthquake kits came up (along with a bunch of other jumbled stuff). She asked if I wanted to do a guest post describing the kits, and here we are, although in truth this is gonna take more than one post, but here goes:

    Stashed under the bed I have a canvas tote bag, handed out free by some conference that took place on campus. In that, there are:

    • One pair running shoes
    • One pair socks
    • One pair underwear
    • One pair shorts
    • One T-shirt
    • Gloves
    • Flashlight

    I figured that in the event of another dead-of-night earthquake I can grab that bag and at the very least have clothes and shoes to get me outside the house after the shaking has stopped.

    The earthquake kits in the closet were put together starting at a point in my life when I was doing some regular backpacking. Since back-country backpacking involved carrying with you all the stuff you need to survive in the wild for a while, a loaded backpack in the closet seemed like the most reasonable vehicle to have all the necessities of life packed and ready to go post-temblor. I picked up a Lowe-Alpine Australis on clearance sale at REI, and it is stuffed with the following:

    • 1 Flashlight
    • 8 glow sticks (no batteries needed)
    • 1 pair Converse All-stars plus socks.
    • 2 soft arm slings (I got them when I hurt my hand a couple of years ago and they seemed like a good first aid thing to have on hand)
    • 2 flexible water bags. You know, those mylar canteen thingies with spouts on them
    • 4 candles
    • 1 Quart of water
    • 1 WW 2 Cattaraugus Commando Knife…why? Because I’m Brock Sampson, that’s why.
    • 1 bag of Lexan camping utensils
    • 1 CB radio
    • 1 transistor radio
    • 1 MSR water filter
    • Batteries
    • 1 mess kit
    • 1 bottle insect repellent
    • 1 bottle camp soap
    • 2 pair underwear
    • 1 pair black cargo pants
    • 1 fleece jacket
    • 1 trash bag
    • 1 rain poncho
    • 1 fast-drying camp towel
    • 1 pair coveralls…again, why? ‘Cuz I figured I may need to do some crawling around and mucking out of trashed spaces and the Post-Tectonic Wasteland is probably filled with nails and splinters and broken glass and God’s gift to Tetanus, so perhaps some coveralls would be in order.
    • 1 package of static nylon rope (It always seemed to come in handy when we were playing Dungeons and Dragons)
    • 1 Sierra Cup (also known as ‘Tiny Mess Kit.’ C’mon. Sing it with me now, “Hold me close I’m Tiny Mess Kiiiiiit!”)
    • 1 wrist brace
    • 1 BMX bike helmet (Again, the post-tectonic wasteland will probably have falling/toppling hazards for quite a while so a BMX hard shell helmet not only gives you post-earthquake cycling protection, but also serves as a decent hardhat)
    • 2 Military Grade MRE’s
    • 1 Gas Mask

    I know, I know, most of you read that last item and were like “WTF? Gas Mask?” Please bear in mind that some of the items in this Earthquake/Emergency kit were included in the dizzy paranoia that was in the air immediately post 9/11. I was glued to the TV and Rumsfeld or somebody was on there talking about Anthrax and Bio-terror and getting duct tape and trashbags to seal ourselves in from dirty bomb fallout or Rycin or Mustard Gas or some damn thing and I was like “Screw this noise! I’m getting a gas mask! eBay here I come!” I was newly dating Mrs. Sandwich at the time, and we were at that point where she was asking me if it was too forward of her to leave a hair dryer with me rather than have to travel across the country with one in her luggage and my response was “I’m hope I’m not being too forward, but I bought you a gas mask.” I figured when Al-Qaida attacked we could don our gas masks and stare longingly through the little glass eyepieces at each other in my trash bagged and duct-taped apartment while we made Darth-Vader breath sounds at each other. If you close your eyes you can just feel the romance…

    Anyway, so that’s why there’s a gas mask in the earthquake kit. And in Mrs. Sandwich’s too. Speaking of which…

    When we were first married we lived in a crappy apartment in Palms (one of the less affluent neighborhoods in West L.A.) and I would go jogging in a 5 mile loop that circled some of the adjacent, more affluent places in West L.A. I basically went up Overland, across Pico, down Motor and back across Palms Blvd. Anyway, while jogging one day I ran past a house and saw that someone had crammed into their trash can a Lowe Alpine 70×15 Women’s internal-framed backpack along with a 4 man tent, and I was like “Score!!” Side note: some of the neighborhoods in West Los Angeles have a definition of ‘trash’ that most people on this planet would not even come close to recognizing. I mean, one time I was running down Motor and I saw someone had tossed out on the curb two fully functional looms. Looms! With thread and those little shuttle thingies and bobbins and whatnot and my first impulse was to call my sister who does costuming and Comic-Con and asked “Hey, do you or your fiends want to make your own cloth for Renn-Faire, because there’s two looms sitting out on the curb on Overland!” She didn’t. But still, two whole looms, just sitting there . . . looming.

    Anyway, so I grab the backpack and tent, dragged those home, and after running them through the wash to get a rather insignificant amount of dog hair off it Mrs. Sandwich has her own earthquake kit. Its contents consist of:

    • 2 transistor radios
    • 1 signal mirror
    • Batteries
    • Water purification pills
    • Nail file (she’s got nail files all over the place, from the seat cushions of the couch to the top of the living-room bookshelf. In the Post-tectonic wasteland her nails will still be well looked after)
    • Spare pair of prescription glasses
    • Sewing Kit
    • Space blanket
    • 2 Nalgene bottles
    • 1 glow stick
    • 3 quarts of water
    • Wool socks
    • Wool gloves
    • Leather boots
    • 1 pair socks
    • 1 pair underwear
    • A list of emergency kit items (Note: Mrs.Sandwich is WAY more well-ordered and by-the-book about this whole thing than I am)
    • 2 shirts
    • 1 pair jeans
    • 1 sports bra
    • 1 BMX bike helmet (same as above)
    • Fleece blanket
    • Mess kit
    • Gas mask (Aaaawwwwwww! Wuv! Twu Wuv!)
    • Rain Poncho

    Ok so that’s it. Theoretically if we make it through the initial P, S and T waves we will have enough supplies to get us up out of bed, outside onto the front lawn and away from power lines and safely hunkered down until the shaking stops. But see, that’s not all, because remember that Rubbermaid tub that was the first earthquake kit? That’s still around, and if we make it out of the house and I have enough time to swing by the spare bedroom, in THAT closet there’s the Rubbermaid tub which has a whole OTHER set of emergency supplies for me, Mrs. Sandwich and Baguette to…Oh Holy Poop! I forgot about our daughter! I gotta go!

    …OK, I’m back. So now I went through Oma’s box of clothes she found at the thrift shops but are too big for Baguette and I have added them to Mrs. Sandwich’s earthquake kit. They are:
    One oversized fleece sleeper. I figure I can cut the feet off it if need be and she has little baby fleecy overalls.

    • 3 pairs pants
    • 2 shirts
    • 1 Minnie Mouse fleece blanket
    • Pull-ups
    • Wipes

    There. Now at least our daughter won’t have to wander the Post-Tectonic Wasteland in her Monkey Ballerina Jammy Jams. Oh damnit! I forgot about her shoes! I gotta go! More later!

  • Dr. Strangekit – Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying (a little) and Love the Big One (a little)

    For those of you who asked about our earthquake kits, here is the first in a series of guest posts by Mr. Sandwich, our family’s Emergency Management Coordinator.

    What I remember about that morning of January 17th was the sound of the cats running into the bedroom and fighting each other to get under the futon. I can’t specifically remember if the shaking came first, I just remember the rumble of not-so-gentle cats’ feet tear-assing into the bedroom from their living room perches, but by the time they were safely ensconced, the shaking was really going.

    I remember the shutters slapping open and shut and I remember the water in the swimming pool sloshing over the edges and making little waves against the wall of my apartment. But what I remember most about that morning, even more than the pre-dawn darkness or how you could see the stars in the L.A. sky when all the power to the streetlights went out, was groping around for clothes in the dark. L.A. had just experienced its biggest earthquake in a generation and I couldn’t find my underwear.

    As it turned out, I weathered the Northridge Quake with essentially no damage. There was the typical open-cupboards-kitchen disaster and some toppled bookshelves, but for the most part I didn’t suffer at all, certainly not like so many did. We had enough water to last through the ‘boil your tap water’ warning period, (hell, we had water pressure period) my apartment building wasn’t red or even yellow-tagged and like most buildings in Westwood, you could hardly tell anything had happened. Now, the Santa Monica Freeway had collapsed and Royce Hall at UCLA weebled and wobbled but didn’t QUITE fall down, but none of that touched me in any serious way.

    Except that it scared the living bejeesus out of me.

    Once the shaking settled down, I became focused on having an honest- to-God earthquake kit at the ready so I wouldn’t be caught with my pants down again, literally or figuratively. The kit began as a Rubbermaid tub with various items in it and has evolved over the years into a fairly extensive emergency kit ‘system’ with different levels of accessibility, extensiveness and portability. But no matter which form it takes, the ‘kit’ really serves as a security blanket, a threadbare attempt to soothe my ever-present anxiety.

    For those of you who are not Southlandians, a little Earth Science background: The Pacific Tectonic Plate is sliding past the North American Plate at roughly the same speed that fingernails grow. They putter and hop and skip constantly in the form of relatively small earthquakes but every once in a while those two little geologic bosom buddies do a Texas two-step that shakes the snot right out of everything for a hundred mile radius in a little periodic temblor Angelenos like to refer to as ‘The Big One.’ The Big One is coming–not if, but when–everyone agrees on that.

    Yet we all pretty much blithely go about our lives, the same way I guess Appalachian miners dig for coal with the impending threat of collapse and cave-in, or ancient sailors sailed the seas with the knowledge that a storm could appear without warning with enough force to erase any evidence they ever existed, and yet still they sailed on.

    When the Big One comes it has the potential to be bigger than Northridge, Katrina, Superstorm Sandy and God knows what else combined and unlike hurricanes, there’s basically no forewarning. You’re just gonna hear cats fighting to get under your futon.

    So, faced with the ever-present threat of ground shaki-ness I have adopted an attitude of somewhat obsessive preparedness to alleviate my fears. I do this with the same fervor of a sports fan who wears his lucky shirt while watching from the couch during playoffs, or has other bizarre ritual to guarantee local sports team success, all in the hopes that my diligence will forestall or somehow mitigate the movement of the earth’s crust. I guess the two behaviors have about an equal chance of success.

    Wondering how those kits developed and what’s in them now? Tune in tomorrow, same Bat-time (well, maybe not), same Bat-channel.