memes

First off, those Dexters are a seriously underestimated brand. A lot of bang for the buck for sure. Same with the Kershaws.

My favorite survival story is fairly simple and it wasn't horrible, though it could have been.

We're nestled right up against the Appalachians. Very rural, lots of sketchy roads. I used to be a nurse's assistant, doing home health, so those sketchy roads were something I couldn't just avoid.

One winter, I got delayed before an obnoxiously heavy freezing rain storm and got caught in it. I tried to make it back onto paved roads, with no luck at all. Slid off the road up against some trees. Wasn't going fast enough to get hurt, but there was no way I was getting my little hatchback car back out. Not without help.

So I'm there with maybe enough gas to last a few hours, and at that point didn't carry the kind of gear I do now, because of this incidence. All I had was my work bag with ppe and supplies, and the usual assortment of lug wrench and not much else in the way of tools. But I had my knife, a decent flashlight, and a lighter (was a smoker back then).

I figured that in the car, I could likely stay warm enough to get through the night and be better able to get myself out, or walk to the nearest house. Not something I wanted to do in the dark, that walk. But I was also under some trees with some already heavy branches. Wasn't sure if they'd come down or not.

I decided that I'd rather set up a shelter and a fire with the light I had left than risk having to do it in the dark if a branch messed up the car.

So that's what I did. Cut enough smaller branches to give me cover and a screen, scrounged up some wood big enough for a decent fire, and settled in. It turned out to be not necessary, as the only branch that fell just dented the hood.

But that little shelter rocked. It was essentially a lean-to, just a little modified to fit against the niche I had. It wasn't comfortable, but once I was under it and the fire was going, I got dry fairly quick. As the ice kept building up, it got warmer since it was blocking wind and drips.

But I did all the cutting and tinder making with the 710 and hands. Took maybe an hour amd a half? Normally, that kind of shelter is maybe twenty minutes of work, but this wasn't a great spot, and it takes a while to whittle through the kind of branches needed to support the lean-to. I'd have been fucked without the lighter and paper though. No way could I have managed a friction fire. As it was, it took some doing to get the first bit of wood dry enough to keep going so I could drag a bigger piece to it.

That event actually started me doing primitive camping and such. It was a bit of a rush to realize that even though I was barely remembering shit I'd been taught, that I managed to stay uninjured, and in good shape. Growing up, my grandfather had taught us a good bit of outdoors basics, plus some survival skills. But by the point that happened, it had been years since I'd practiced any of it other than what's useful for hiking off trails.

Didn't sleep much that night, what with worries about the fire, hoping the wind didn't fuck up the shelter in some way, etc. But I managed to get the car out on my own using the stuff from the shelter for traction after making sure it would run. The dent was not a small one lol.

What started out a little terrifying ended up being a good memory. Not the cold and the annoyances and the expense, but the fact of it. That I'd done something pretty damn difficult and made it through, despite some mistakes.

That's an insane amount

(Disregard if you have other reasons, but if it's just financial...)

Have you tried moderation, because that's...a lot lol

I'm a daily user, but for me I don't vape it (prevents use from being too easy, too accessible) just concentrates out of an e-nail and I generally stick to night time usage because kids and also I gave up driving high many years ago.

My tracking spreadsheet has my average use of 1 gram every ~2 weeks and an annual spend of a couple hundred

This. Especially if you go partying weed is way cheaper, as long as you don't have an absurdly high tolerance. You can smoke like 0.3g and be high for the whole evening and only spent like 3€ on getting high. If you want to achieve the same with alcohol you would have to spend way more.

oh that's actually insane