Posted on 02/24/2006 6:40:07 PM PST by george76
Edited on 02/24/2006 6:43:51 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
You can tell a lot about a person by what he or she carries around in the back of the pickup truck during the eight months it's not summer in Alaska.
The battered bed of my 1995 Ford 150 contains essential survival gear, in addition to the usual assortment of Alaskan accouterments.
The first thing every Alaskan should have in the back of their pickup truck is a large pile of firewood.
Firewood has several important uses. For one thing, it serves as a weight in the back of the truck to improve traction in slippery driving conditions. Some people put sandbags in the back of their pickup trucks for weight but I prefer firewood because I've never had much luck burning sand.
That brings me to the second use for firewood. You can burn it, assuming you have an ax to split it, which you should because if you're like me and you put the greenest, heaviest birch logs you can find in the back of your pickup truck, it will definitely need to be split to burn.
Even then, you'll probably need some help getting the fire started, which is why I always carry a red plastic jug of gasoline and a case of HEET in the back of my pickup truck.
While the jug of gasoline also comes in handy in the event I run out of gas and the HEET can be used to eliminate water in your gas line, their primary function is to start fires.
You'll never know when you'll need to build a fire in Alaska so it's always a good idea to have a good supply of wood and firestarter on hand.
While firewood is important, a good shovel may be the single most important piece of equipment you can have in the back of your pickup truck. Not only can you use the shovel to dig yourself--or somebody else--out of a snowbank in the unfortunate event you find yourself--or somebody else--buried in one, you can also use the shovel to find the rest of the stuff in the back of your pickup truck, most of which is buried under snow or is frozen in the glacier that has formed in the bed of your pickup truck as a result of hauling around leaky water jugs.
This is where you will invariably find important items like the jack, tire iron, jumper cables, tow rope and extension cord, all of which are considered mandatory gear in the back of any Alaskan's pickup truck, even though you hope you never have to use them because they are imbedded in 2 feet of ice.
In the unfortunate event you do need to chip something out of the ice, the ax that you use to split your firewood will come in handy for this purpose, too. A word of caution, though. Be careful not to hack through your extension cord or jumper cables.
There's a good chance your spare tire will also be imbedded in ice because, if you're like me, you neglected to put it under the truck where it's supposed to go back when winter started. Caution should also be used in the event you need to chip your spare tire out of the ice; a flat spare tire is about as useful as a pair of jumper cables that have been cut in half.
There is also a bag of kitty litter in the back of my pickup truck. Lots of people keep bags of kitty litter in the back of their trucks in the event they get stuck. The kitty litter serves as traction on ice, as well as weight in the back of the truck.
That's not necessarily the case in my situation. The kitty litter sitting in the back of my truck was in a garbage bag waiting to be dropped off at the Dumpster when my neighbor's dog jumped in the back of the truck, tore through the garbage and left a pile of used kitty litter on the glacier in the bottom of my truck. It now resembles glacial moraine.
Most people, me included, have a couple of bags of garbage tossed in the back of their trucks. The only real purpose the garbage bags serve is to attract ravens, but any real Alaskan will tell you you're not a real Alaskan if you don't have ravens tearing apart garbage bags in the back of your pickup truck while it sits in a parking lot.
Another thing everyone should have in the back of their truck is survival food. I usually keep a couple of frozen Tony's pizzas in the back of my truck, along with a few whole frozen chickens, but that's mostly because I don't have room in the freezer.
In the unfortunate event you get stuck somewhere and need to cook them, you can either douse them with gasoline or HEET and light them until they've thawed enough to eat or cook them over an open fire you build with the firewood in the back of your truck.
The last, and perhaps most important, item I carry in the back of my pickup truck is a pair of cross-country skis.
The skis serve a couple of purposes. First, they make me look like the jock I'm not. Driving around town with a pair of skis in the back of your pickup truck gives people the impression you actually ski even if you don't.
More importantly, though, the skis serve as a last resort in the unfortunate event I get a flat tire and pop my spare tire trying to chip it out of the ice with my ax or I leave my lights on and run down my battery before chopping through my jumper cables trying to chip them out of the ice.
If that happens, I can just click on my skis and ski home.
Of course, to do that I'd have to find my ski boots, which is where a good shovel comes in.
Beer cans?
Hockey gear!
The skis serve as a last resort in the unfortunate event I get a flat tire and pop my spare tire trying to chip it out of the ice with my ax or I leave my lights on and run down my battery before chopping through my jumper cables trying to chip them out of the ice.
If that happens, I can just click on my skis and ski home.
Of course, to do that I'd have to find my ski boots, which is where a good shovel comes in.
You really butchered the excerpting.
I have two 70 lb sand bags and a 90 lb chunk of alloy steel (rejected part) from work. A rear wheel drive Ranger is a pain in Fargo's six month winter.
One or two girlfriends?
at one point, a pickup I owned (and used regularly) actually had grass growing in the back of it.
It's winter in Idaho...I have five 60lb bags of sand in the back of my 4X4.
Sorry, I was trying to stay within the 300 words.
the wife. Dog rides in the cab
Fixed.
No worries. Nice find.
My old radiator hose. I put it there when I replaced it.
You never know.
Thanks.
I don't see this site on the excerpt list, so I reposted the entire article.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1111944/posts
My pickup truck in Miami has:
a couple good size lengths of 3/4 inch rope.
some wood, incl a piece of 4x4 and 2x4
jumper cables
tools (wrenches and things)
a 5 gallon bucket of stuff I forget what most of is.
Maj. T.J. "King" Kong:
Survival kit contents check.
In them you'll find: one .45 caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing: antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair a nylon stockings.
Shoot, a fellah could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.
Half bag of rained-on horse feed, gas can and jumper cables. Stereotypical Texas truck.
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