Why Are You Here?

Why Are You Here?

The question is simple enough – but it is an important one to keep you grounded. I remember why I started studying martial arts very clearly. I was doing some lobbying in Washington, DC, and decided to take a lunch time walk around the hotel. Turns out the hotel was one block from an ugly section of DC. I was already in the midst of it when I realized it and just kept moving forward. I was scared. A few months later I was in San Francisco on some business. Had my family with me taking a walk around town. Again, we found ourselves one block further than we probably should have been. I held the boys’ hands tightly as we circled back around the block to a better area. I knew I had to learn how to protect my family. That touch point drove me forward through many years of training.

Survival training was a little different. I got a taste of it with the martial arts. But the real inspiration was a man named James Kin. My story begins when his life tragically ended in December 2006. Take a minute to read about him at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kim to understand the rest of my story.

So James dies in early December 2006, leaving his family stranded in a snowstorm. By total coincidence, a video my wife had in her queue on NetFlix showed up a few weeks later. It was Survival Basics by Ron Hood. We had not talked about survival, but she thought I might be interested in it. We put it in the player and kicked back for the evening. About halfway through the video my wife proclaimed, “If that family had seen this video, that man would be alive today!” Wow. That statement has been burned into my mind.

Christmas was two weeks later. Our immediate family members all received good vehicle emergency kits for the cars that year. We have given them something survival related every year since.

A quick side note: I had the honor of spending a week with Ron Hood at Dirt Time 2009. I think he appreciated hearing that story. He was a wonderful, unassuming individual who was truly inspirational. We lost him last year, but his wife continues to publish and make his educational videos available at www.survival.com. I highly recommend these to anyone concerned about being prepared for their family’s future.

At that Dirt Time event in 2009, there were several Ham Radio operators preaching the gospel of emergency communication skills. I remember Alan Halcon talking about carrying a small portable radio under his jacket with just an earphone plugged in. People around him would think he was just listening to an iPod when he was actually tracking emergency response and escape routes during a local disaster.

I decided to share this story with you today because I passed the FCC Exam last night to receive my Technician Class Amateur Radio License. On the first night of the FCC Exam training, our instructor related the story of James Kin. There are three repeater stations within range of the spot where James and his family got stranded. If he had a simple handheld amateur radio with him, his family could have been saved in a matter of hours (thank you Bill Burbridge for the excellent class).

Strange how everything ends up connected.