It's now been well over a year since I last sat in a cubicle earning good money to adjust my fantasy football roster and send my friends links about how the end of the world was nigh. I suppose it sounds stupid to care so much about "fantasy" football when I believed the real world was ending, but like Whitman said, "I contain multitudes." Anyways, the point being that after only a few years working in the financial world I had become convinced that the whole freaking deal was a giant ponzi scheme bound to come tumbling down at any moment. Since I had no idea when or how exactly, I did my best to study up on other people's ideas and opinions of how it would go down. This period of reading the rantings of bloggers and other internet nutjobs slowly but surely transformed my mind from that of a recently graduated liberal optimist into that of the dreaded doomer/survivalist.
It wasn't long before I was having freeze dried food, bullets and body armor delivered to the office. Word of these deliveries spread quickly, causing some good natured ribbing, a few nervous stares and a meeting with my boss about the reasons why I should wait until I get home before trying on a bullet proof vest for fit.
I became convinced that having a "bug out" plan was a necessity in case we had to leave San Francisco by foot in the event of a huge earthquake or declaration of martial law. We started having bug-out drills walking to Ocean Beach and back on the weekends. I stuffed heavy rolls of coins inside Otto's dog backpack to simulate the enormous loads of canned goods and spare ammo I envisioned him carrying. His performance was less than satisfactory and I ended up with 40 rolls of quarters in my already heavy pack most days. After realizing we weren't going to make it too far on foot, I got bicycles for April and I along with a tow behind cargo trailer. Not for supplies but for Otto to ride on since he wasn't able to keep up with us on the bikes. Otto did not enjoy my attempts to get him to ride on the cargo trailer despite the additions of a pop up fabric dog crate and cushy pillow for him to lie on. I was beginning to worry that our dog would end up as zombie hors d'œuvres due to his lack of effort in our apocalypse preparations.
I bought enough firearms to overthrow a small island nation. Soon April and I were taking field trips up to the Circle S shooting range in Sonoma where we familiarized ourselves with Messrs. Glock & Mossberg. We learned a little bit about long range riflery from a Korean War veteran with gnarled hands named Kim. I was trying to get myself into survival shape as well and took up mountain climbing with my buddy Stu. We made the long drive through Yosemite to the eastern side of the Sierras to summit Mt. Whitney & Mt. Langley and took a class on the basics of winter mountaineering and survival. I grew a unabomber style beard and kept my head shaved which looked like the lovechild of ZZ Top & Kojack. This also proved to be a great way to avoid having people sit next to you on the Muni bus.
I decided surviving the apocalypse only to never again enjoy the musical stylings of Hawkwind, Mott the Hoople and Iron Maiden would be a fate worse than death so I researched solar panels for the ol Ipod and speaker setup. I ended up taking over an entire closet in the apartment and most of the cabinet space in the kitchen with camping equipment, bags of rice and beans and whatever canned goods Safeway had on weekly special.
April was somewhat less enthusiastic about the end of the world than I was, but managed to nod and uh-huh in the right places whenever I launched into my latest plans to escape San Francisco or listed all of stuff we needed to procure immediately. Bless her heart. I started reading books on how to live self sufficiently off the land and looked into small scale farming becoming an admirer of Joel Salatin. And then one day in July, after getting passed over a second time for a promotion I thought was long overdue, I got called into the sales director's office again...
to be continued
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