101; or, three days

In that there hasn't been anything particularly Voxtastic going on lately (unless y'all want to hear about how I scored tickets to go see Air, or that I'm psyched that Hot Fuzz comes out this weekend, or that I heart SF for the fact that there's a 4:20 showing of The Big Lebowski at the Red Vic on April 20th, or that I'm thrilled that Heroes picks up again next Monday... see? Told you ain't a whole lot going on here...), I'll give you another post from another blog from a year ago today. At least this one has a little more context, as a year ago was the 100th anniversary of the 1906 earthquake. Thus making today the 101st anniversary. And I'm done rambling.

Three Days (April 18, 2006)
The incessant droning of my alarm clock blurred with the sound of helicopters somewhere in the close vicinity of my apartment. Through half-opened eyes I made out that I'd slept later than planned - it was 4:15am, which meant that my intentions of heading down to watch the centennial celebration and memorial of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake at Lotta's Fountain weren't going to pan out. Considering I hadn't slept at all the night before, I closed my eyes and opened them again at 5:15am.

Over the past year San Francisco's emergency services' office has been pushing the whole idea of "72 hours", that all good San Franciscans should have earthquake preparedness kits at the ready, that the kit should keep you for three days with water and food and batteries and crowbars. "Three days" seems like a somewhat arbitrary number, and "72 hours" sounds more like a marketing pitch than solid "being ready" advice. Hell, three days after Katrina the only people really helping out in New Orleans were a couple of CNN reporters and Sean Penn, and he got crucified for it. Just because it took three days to get the fires to die down in 1906 doesn't mean that the next big one will stick to a schedule.

After a couple cups of coffee and a hundred arm curls I strolled down the hill past where a hundred years ago Dennis Sullivan fell two stories when the quake struck, and the hotel next door fell into his firehouse. He died three days later. I meandered down to Market, which was closed to non-pedestrian traffic up to 4th Street. Turning down 4th I was somewhat relieved that I'd opted for an extra hour of sleep - half the people looked like they'd stepped out of a Renaissance fair.

As I crossed under bridge construction and neared Bryant I took mental note of my apartment, and realized with the exception of the two working batteries in the Maglite that I always carry with me, my apartment is the poster child for what they don't want you to do in terms of being ready. The doorframes in my studio apartment are capped with antique carpenter's tools (nail set, chisel, wrench), and currently my "preparedness kit" consists of half a bottle of Tanqueray, an unopened bottle of Veuve Clicquot, two PowerBars, and five stale Lucky Strikes someone left behind a few months back; it's unlikely that I could make the champagne and gin stretch for two days, nevermind three.

As the 324 headed towards 22nd, I finished reading the front part of today's Chronicle, which was a reprint of Thursday, April 19, 1906's paper, carefully folded it back up, and put it in my bag to send to my grandfather. A woman in her mid-40s sat down across from me, good looking in the kind of way that would get husbands into trouble with their wives at the weekly PTA meetings, and likely encouraged it. Black shoes, black dress trousers, black blazer covering a pink "Eat your heart out - I'm taken" tshirt, small diamond earrings, wedding band. We exchanged a few smiles as the train jostled us towards San Jose. I scanned the rest of the paper, and as the train pulled out of Palo Alto, decided that a large part of me really wants the next big one to happen now. Maybe put things into perspective.

Getting off the train in Mountain View I realized that for my lack of an earthquake kit, I was probably a hell of a lot more prepared than most of the other people around me.