A Better Trip!

Traveling, I’ve been in countries hit by monsoons, floods, and political unrest. What I’ve found is that you can’t always count on things to keep running. Taking that lesson home, I’ve got a few weeks of food and water in case of disaster. Where I live, that is most likely going to come in the form of an earthquake… the proverbial “Big One”.

One key element to survival is water. In my case, I have a 55 gallon water storage unit. The Shelf Reliance® BPA Free 55-gallon Barrel Water Storage System. It comes with water preserving chemicals and a pump and wrench. It’s handy, and reasonably priced, but it can be hard to move in an emergency so it’s really just “bug-in” protection.

Today I saw an even nicer implementation that allows more flexible storage layout, and easy portability. In case you have to pack up and leave, you can easily load water into your vehicle. In case you need to share some water, you have handy 3.5 gallon units. Best of all they are reusable so every few years (5 years shelf life is what my shelf reliance system suggests) you can change out the water without wasting the containers. Check out the WaterBrick Water Container 3.5 Gallon BPA Free Portable and Stackable

For travellers, don’t forget: a few bottles of water and a couple granola bars can mean the difference between life and death in an emergency.

If you’re really tight on space, you can even get creative with it.  The important thing is to have food and water. Whether you’re at home in your own country, an ex-pat, or a traveler, be prepared.

New boots! I picked up a new pair of Merrells today. That makes somewhere around a half dozen pairs now. I probably wrote about this before, but I really like the brand. Different makes are sized a little different, especially in terms of width. Merrell shoes fit me really well. A few of them have been across the world and back again and there and back yet again! They’ve been used, abused, and yet still wear great. If they are a good fit for your foot shape, I highly recommend them.

It’s been a couple months of holidays, cooking, eating and sharing time with the family.

On our cooking blog, wildchopsticks, our food reflects our travels. Here’s a few quick links to recent posts.

Pork Lau Lau
Thai Pork Shanks
Bacon Wrapped Shrimp with Pasta
Korean Dinner
Bacon Explosion (Superbowl food)

I remember when I was totally gung ho for SCUBA diving. I get like that. I find something I like and then I go all out on it. I bought myself gear, including among everything else, flippers. For some reason I always hated the flippers. I just couldn’t get them to be comfortable and they would cut into the top of my feet.

They were uncomfortable, they felt too hard, and I couldn’t imagine why they kept cutting into my feet. Eventually, I used them less and less. Then after returning from my last SCUBA trip in Thailand, I was going through and cleaning my gear and I noticed something… I reached around inside the flipper and had an “Well, I’ll be darned!” moment. I pulled, and out popped a piece of plastic. Yep, the plastic they use to keep the flippers in shape so they look nice when you buy them.

What the heck? All those years and somehow I never thought to check for that. Boy, I’m an idiot!

I’m pretty fond of PacSafe gear, and use the bag protector and their wallet when I travel. Right now, there’s a great sale on the urban PacSafe bag, loaded with all the safety features that PacSafe has built it’s reputation on . Check it out by clicking on the photo!

I have to confess, I have quite a number of trip reports to catch up on and lots of videos and photos to process, but I’ve been quite distracted with the beginning of crab season this year. I’ve never gone crabbing before, but a friend of mine introduced me to it a week ago and I’ve been going great guns on it ever since.

I have been trying to be observant and learn as much as I can from the experienced guys on the pier. Going out at around 4AM when the pier opens I have a chance to talk to many crabbers before the pier is busy. One thing I noticed was that many people had carts in some form or another to keep organized. I was thinking that I would want to put something together like that when I ran across a heavy duty cart at Costco. It was marked down, from what an employee said from $40, to $30, and finally to $20.  Great deal!

It started looking like this:

Scrounging around the house, I found a cooler, my Maxpedition drop pouch, my trusty camp chair and some other things to pimp out cart. Then I picked up some 2″ and 1.5″ black ABS pipe and other fittings and put together the cart. Each item carefully considered for optimum useability. Last week, I had a chance to try out the car just dropping a few items in there and certain things I knew were good fits. The camp chair is as close a fit as you can get. Everything else I put just sat in the open bucket. Having had a trial run, I had a very good idea of where things needed to be. Now, this is an exercise in fishing geekdom, but I love gadgets, systems, and thinking or planning things through to make tasks efficient and more “fun”.

Here’s what I came up with: The Crabinator!

I’ll list what’s on the cart and then explain in further detail.

Continue reading "Winter Crabbing in California." »

One of the things that impressed me most on this last trip was not the flood itself, but the outpouring of care and assistance that the Thai people poured out to those in need. Many small shops were closed with simply written notes in Thai “gone to fight flood”. One sign said in English, “We cannot stand by and do nothing, we have closed to go help with flood relief.” Donation centers were everywhere. The news, for better or worse, was focused on the flood 24/7. In many of the shots, you could see volunteers from small business, from large corporations, the government, various parties, shirts of all colors, and the military.

What would it take for us to break the “I’ve got to work” way of thinking and drop everything to help our fellow countrymen?

If you felt a “hey dummy, I’ve got bills to pay” come to mind, then that’s exactly the button I was pushing. To be honest, I’m not sure what it would take for me to drop everything, but it’s a good question to wrestle with.