Can't Stop Now

Maybe I won't quit yet, not while I have one little ax left to grind.

On Sunday morning, I encountered this monster in a 2-hour parking zone on Main Street, obstructing the bike lane very neatly to within two inches of the white line. At 6pm on Tuesday, when I took these photos, it was still there and attracting enough attention that by Wednesday morning it had been moved to a city parking lot behind the old police station. I'm not even sure what it is - a construction or farm tractor?



This treasure has been tempting me from a shop window downtown - a Peugeot. And if it works, it would be useful to have, too.

Several years ago I attended some community meetings about emergency preparedness, where fire department officials presented information about how to prepare for disaster scenarios like floods, earthquakes, severe rain, wind or snow storms, even volcanic emergencies - all possible in this area. They advised having a survival kit, including first aid supplies, flash lights, emergency food and water stores, blankets, etc.

Somewhere I read that in cases of severe storms that caused electrical outages, after 24-36 hours without power, people would begin calling or visiting emergency rooms complaining of severe headaches, fatigue, drowsiness and fuzzy thinking. After ruling out gas or toxic fumes, or maybe hypothermia, the cause usually turned out to be: caffeine withdrawal.

So my disaster survival kit has to include an emergency supply of coffee, and the means to brew it. I went out and bought a small gas camp stove; I already had an old stove top percolator, a pour-through drip coffee filter, and a stove top espresso pot. But I buy whole bean coffee, and wouldn't be able to use my electric coffee grinder in an emergency. I would be reduced to crouching on the back step, crushing coffee beans with a brick. So I pre-ground some beans to stash in the freezer, and now I will only have to squat outside over my camp stove to brew coffee. But that much of civilization will survive.

Actually, I think that's about all that's left of my survival supplies. I probably should fix that.