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Saturday, April 9, 2011

Preparedness Challenge #4

This post was delayed today due to an unforeseen crisis. Well, not exactly a crisis, but let's just call it a minor mishap that reminded me just how unprepared we are when traveling.

We went to the big city yesterday to celebrate the birthday of our youngest daughter. Before we left, I printed up some information to study on 72 hour emergency kits, otherwise known as Bug-Out-Bags (BOB). Between that and my husband's iPad, I spent the time going down the mountain (he was driving), comparing lists of supplies one might want to put in a kit. 

As I came across the item "jumper cables", I thought about this for a few minutes ... "Should I buy another set, or should the set we have remain in the garage?" And then I moved on.

Later that day...

We needed to run some errands before "playing" because you do that when you live in a rural area since there's always errands to run when you don't have access on a daily or even weekly basis. Upon returning to the car after the last errand, we quickly realized we had a flat tire. First time in 15 years. Thankfully, we had a spare ready to go and the tire was changed.

My husband gets back in the car and believe it or not, the car would not start. This is too comical at this point to the adults who can NOT believe this is happening, but the kids are devastated, sure that their plans for the evening are doomed. And can you believe it? Not one soul in that city parking lot nor the shops around us had a set of jumper cables? 

God was very gracious to allow this all to happen within walking distance of a Sears Auto Repair shop and my husband was able to walk over and purchase a pair of cables, come back, find a willing store employee who would give us a jump, and get the car going. I won't tell you how long this all took, but let me just stay, we had to start amending our plans for the evening. My husband dropped us off to have some fun while he took the car to get a new battery, cable, and tire. And instead of having family time together, he missed out to take care of us (our hero!) and we got home closer to midnight rather than 8 or 9 like we had planned. (Thus this was late because I went straight to bed and slept in!)

The irony of this all is not lost on me. I now know that I want jumper cables for ALL of our vehicles! Of course, I had heard that this is a good idea before yesterday, but it's funny how we're always sure it won't happen to us and that someone else will have what we need. And thankfully this wasn't a life or death situation, but it wasn't pleasant either. 

So, after I have a cup of coffee, I'm going to work on a post for putting together a BOB and I'll link up just like you can do, with the Linky below. And then I'm going to spend some time getting it in order.  I'd love to hear what you did this week. Every time I read your comments I get ideas for myself! So let me know either in the comments or by linking up with your blog post, what you did to prepare this week.

How I Prepared This Week

This week, for the Preparedness Challenge, I researched BOB kits, purchased a book on growing your own grains, learned to make milk kefir, met with our HOA Rules Committee about increasing the number of chickens allowed per acre on our properties, switched my bee order from Italians to Carnolians (due to our colder climate here ), and made a final decision as to where the hive would go. And bought an extra set of jumper cables. 

Now it's your turn!







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