I just bought 2 new toys to make me feel a little safer when I venture out by myself, especially for the longgggg days I'm planning for the summer. The first is my mate SPOT who will be coming with me on all my jaunts. The good thing about SPOT is that if the chips are down and I'm need of an emergency evacuation, then I can call for help regardless of where I am. This will be good whether I'm alone or in a group as we tend to get fairly remote on some of our runs and there is usually no cell phone coverage. The other great thing about this is that I can send an "okay" message so if I'm gone for a few days running, then folks at home can receive a message from me, saying I'm okay. I can also send a "help" message too. It's a very cool gadget to have. The second new toy is a small pen-sized bear banger kit. I bought this for peace of mind as bear spray (which I always carry) is pretty much last resort and hopefully the sound of a bear banger going off will be enough to scare away anything large with big teeth that wants a piece of me! It's not that we're falling over bears and cougars here but they're definitely out there sharing the same landscape as us. Most bears don't want anything to do with humans and vice versa but you never know when there's a bad-ass bear in the area.
To say nothing of the hot pink gloves. The bears will turn and run long before you get to deploy the banger :)
ReplyDeleteThe Spot is a really cool invention. They use them quite a bit up here.
ReplyDeleteI hear you with the bears. Of course where I live they are everywhere.