How much pre-planning do you do for your commute? It's more than we are lead to believe in my opinion.

  We are back into winter, the false spring ended and the temperature went back down to about 30 F as a low and 60 F high. The wind is blowing making it feel much colder, especially for an old man who is cold all the time anyway. I have to keep a fairly close eye on the worm farm when it cools off, they do best between 40-80 degrees F. (the beds reflect the temperature of 3 days ago.) I am almost to zero garbage, organic waste is all I feed them, no meat, bones, fat, oil, or feces of any kind. The chance of creating pathogens is increased, the reason I'm concerned with pathogens is that I make "worm tea" and spray it on the plants and in the soil. If I used it only on plants that are not for food I would not care as much about what they are fed, pathogens on vegetables is not the desired outcome. Another goal is to use all of the incoming cardboard, newspapers, and the boxes of business papers we have, I'm a long way from using all of it up. It takes minimal time to take care of my colony's, I have four in the garage, one large outdoor bin 4'x4'x4', (1.2 m square), and 9 raised beds I have unobservable worms in. I don't know how many "head" I have, (worm farmers have a sense of humor too), I estimate it must be in the 100,000 worm area. I tend to them twice a week, once to feed them and once to make sure everything is going well, bedding moisture, making sure they are not attempting the "great escape", and the colony's have not been compromised by varmints, (mice love worms.)

Yep, like this lovable little guy. 

I spend a few hours a week making sure they will make it through the next few days, and I study them, I am trying to figure out what level of conscienceness they possess. (don't worry I won't go there.) My diligence with them is a real part of my self-reliance activities, and one I gladly share with others, it's funny how attached I have become to them. They are my wards and they are totally dependent on me, I want them to be healthy, and happy. I follow the same pattern in most of my life, in fact, I believe most of us do.
  When I was a working person I was in a real deep routine, some people call it a rut, but after years of getting up early and getting ready for work, I enjoyed the structure. I write a lot about unexpected natural disasters, not so much civil unrest, or heading for the hills at the first sign of a problem. I'm here to stay no matter what takes place unless I have to evacuate. Getting out of bed at 4 am every morning for 40 years is hard to break, I still wake up at that time, but I stay in the "no zone" for two more hours. I have names for a lot of stuff in life, the "no zone" is the time of the morning when I don't want to stay in bed and I don't want to get out of bed, so I stay there. Old Skunk Puppy comes next to my side, she thinks she's waking me up, still in the no zone.
  When I worked I would look out the window to check the weather, and dress for it. I made oatmeal, and coffee, yes every morning, then I walked out to the road to get the paper and water the dog. (That's my catchphrase for taking old Skunk Puppy out to go.) I would prepare for the day, my wife made lunch for me, which I set out and got ready. I would eat, drink coffee, and read the newspaper. If the weather forecast was for rain, I would make sure I had my rain gear, if it was predicted to be hot I would add more water to my lunch box. I would prepare for the day using the best information I had, I believe most people do that, we learn after a few years of working every day. I drove old cars, I'm more mechanical than anything else, and I thought I was saving money by driving them. (I have discovered I probably didn't save very much). I always had almost a complete set of tools in my truck, I drove old Chevrolet Suburbans, the last one was a 1972 3 door, I drove it all over California. I broke down all over California as well, many an hour on the shoulder of a road fixing something, sometimes it caught on fire for various reasons. (Yep, I was that guy.) I had all the stuff in it, fire extinguishers, tools, jack, and spare parts, when I got into the truck I knew all of that stuff was in it. I am sure I'm not the only person that did that, or still does that. Part of my routine prior to backing out of the driveway was to check all the fluid levels, oil, radiator, and brake fluid, I'd look at the tires, then get in and drive off. (Link to more information on road trips)
  I tried to be as prepared for the day with as much information that was available to me, I have been stuck away from home. One April it rained hard every day of the month, I was working 12 hour days, we got flooded, going the 15 miles or so to home took me 3 hours. Everything was shut down, stores, gas stations, and most of the traffic lights were out. I probably don't need to tell you no one knows how to drive with no traffic lights, so accidents were everywhere. The freeway was deep in flood water, every intersection was jammed up, I listened to music, ate granola bars, and drank water. That was the supplies I had in my truck all of the time, and when I got off of work normally I was very hungry.
  There was another time that a house burned down near where I lived, I was on my way home at that time as well. I was not able to get to the house for 6 hours, again I relied on the supplies in my truck, all of the stores in our small town were open. The few restaurants in town were as well, and they were crowded, so I stayed away and waited at the local golf course. For a lot of reasons normally when one house burns down here, one or most of the time two more suffer the same disastrous result.

This looks amazingly like the road I live on, but I know it isn't
there are not enough potholes in the asphalt, it must be a High
Rollers area.

  I brought all of that up because during the no zone period this morning I began to think about the 33% of people who have no planning or preparations for a natural disaster at all. I began to think maybe that percentage is not accurate in all situations, if I believe most people do much the same as I did, preparing for the day with the best information available, then I must believe they are indeed prepared. I have been thinking about the level of preparation a person should do, a blog I wrote a few days ago I mentioned different levels depending on where a person lives. (Link) In the instance of getting ready (isn't that the same as preparing?) for work in the morning we are actually making a plan for unknown events. Maybe preparing for our day is much the same as determining the level of readiness we need for our drive to work. If a person drives 3 hours one way, (yes I knew people that did that), then they must have some sort of preparation in their vehicles. Many times we stop on the way home from work to get a soda, water, or maybe eat dinner, but how much do we, or can we depend on those stores to be open? I know of very few people that have nothing with them during their commute, most I assume have at least some water.

This is a typical 2 person kit.

  I don't think I was an anomaly, I believe most people in their morning routines give a lot of thought to the weather, traffic report, and any calamities they may encounter on the way to their place of employment. My readiness now mimics my work-life efforts in a way, I have a commercially packaged Vehicle roadside safety kit, and a two person 72 hour kit right by the sliding door upstairs, ready to go. Ideally, I want to have another two-person kit, I am an advocate of having enough supplies on hand to get me through one full week. It may be due to being conditioned to expect something to happen. In fact, I would sometimes tell the guy's in my crew after we finished a job to not celebrate yet, there is still time for something to go terribly wrong, and sometimes it did, leaving us at work for sometimes as long as 24 hours or rarely, more. Preparing for that is a horse of another color because then we were dealing with frustration, fatigue, and hunger, there are no words that can describe that.

They look confident, they must have something in the car for backup.

  Thank you for reading and sharing, do you agree with me? How much thought do you put into getting ready for work? I'd like to know if it's the same amount that I did, or if you do more or less. It's interesting, I bet you make preparations without thinking they really are preparing for natural disasters. 33%, I'm not so sure, I think it's much more like 66% prepare for the commute. 33% is most likely accurate for those who are prepared for the first critical 72 hours, but maybe not, I will check it out. Follow the link below if you would like to look at a roadside emergency kit, on my website, thanks.
jacquesandkate  emergencykitsplus.com