Due to events unfolding around us(the earthquake /tsunami in Japan, our narrowly averted Budget Disaster, the still increasing price of metals/commodities, and a general feeling we have that some pretty drastic inflation is right around the corner) my wife and I decided it was finally time to address a glaring weakness in our preparation for unpleasant events.
It pains me to admit this publically, but as I sit here writing this…we do not have Bug-Out-Bags ready to go. We were pretty good early on at ensuring that my wife had a decent kit for her car: Water, Flares, Food, Blankets, a few lighters…all the things you might need if you drifted off the road into a snow bank on some mountain road and had to wait a week for someone to find you. Likewise, we are decently prepared to hole up at the apartment for a few months…it’s simply our ability to quickly vacate the premises under less than ideal circumstances in a smooth, stress free manner that is not currently satisfactory.
Having recently taken advantage of the increase in the price of silver to do some liquidating, it seems that the best thing to do with that cash is to finally get some really nice B.O.B’s organized. The first step was my wife buying us a nice set of Kelty back-packs for our anniversary gift. Then, my favorite part…research about what to put in the back-packs.
Youtube is full of videos of people showing off their B.O.B’s, Get Out Of Dodge bags, 72-Hour kits…whatever you want to call them. A large percentage of them are survival minded individuals, and they look like they are heading out to reenact Red Dawn. My wife and I decided that for us and our two girls that is not a realistic outlook. More realistic would be having to hit the road unexpectedly and end up in a nasty motel, or pulling onto some back roads up into the hills, and using the car as a base camp.
With this in mind, we have started picking things up, and my goal is to spend the money for quality merchandise…not to pick on certain brands, but I don’t want a back-pack full of Coughlans stuff I’m relying on when I really need it.
The first major purchase for us was the GSI Bugaboo Camper cook set.
From a view point of weight and size, I’m not going to say it represents the ultimate in outdoor technology, but for something that is about 10 inches in diameter and 8 inches deep…I’m impressed.
You get a lot of stuff in that small package. An non-stick 8-inch frying pan, a 2 liter AND a 3 liter pot, 4 plates, 4 cup/bowl combo’s and the carrying sack is supposed to be sealed so you can use it as a wash-basin!
With the disclaimer being that I haven’t actually used this set yet…I like it. I think I might invest in a 2nd handle…it comes with one handle that unfolds and can be used on any of the cooking pans…it might be nice to have a 2nd. Also, the cup bowl combo is neat, but you would run into problems if you were having a hot beverage and a hot bowl of soup…only one piece of each set is insulated with a neoprene sleeve, so only one hot thing at a time, per person.
The one other problem is that this item, while a marvel of space saving, is not tiny, once you start putting stuff in back-packs..and it is all of our eggs in one basket. They had a smaller set, just the two liter pot and 2 cups, and I thought about buying two of them…one for my back pack and one for my wife’s, so if we lost one of our bags were would at least have SOMETHING…but truthfully, if we misplace my bag, we are really screwed. I might put some kind of smaller, secondary cook gear in my wife’s bag just so were are not entirely up a creek if one bag gets lost/stolen, but, it won’t be as nice as this one.
Sometime I will use this…we plan to try to take things out of our B.O.B’s for camping trips and such…make sure things work like they are advertised before it’s too late to fix it if they don’t.
The important thing is getting these items back into the B.O.B’s as soon as possible upon our return home.
And finally, because everything fits together so nicely, there is no spare storage area to put our sporks! I bought some nice looking sporks for the family, and there is no way to store them with the cook set. I can’t really blame this on the cook set…it’s just a little frustrating.
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