The Bug-Out Practice

Yesterday afternoon I had to leave for an out of town assignment that started today and ends Thursday evening.  This assignment is interesting enough that I decided to pull the grandkids out of school to tag along with me.  Instead of making the hour drive from the project to the "local" hotel, I decided to make this a practice bug-out with the trailer. 

Justifying using the work vehicle to pull my personal trailer took some clever verbiage, but I got the ok...sort of...well, they didn't say no...  Anyway, other than packing the needed supplies for this project, which I wouldn't normally include in my truck or trailer, I didn't pack or load anything into the truck or trailer: no extra clothes, we just used what was stored in the trailer and in my work truck.  When I stopped at my office I filled the two ice chests up with ice.  With my job I have access to big ice machines, so if there is some sort of emergency I can expect to fill at least one ice chest.  I did pack food although the trailer has a good supply of food in it and my work truck has several cases of MREs.  Because we aren't going to be home until after dinner on Thursday I emptied out the refrigerator of meat and vegetable leftovers from our big family gatherings over the weekend.  We also picked two buckets of oranges and I gathered the eggs and brought them along.  From the time I started "packing" the trailer until the time we were ready to go was less than 30 minutes.  Except the trailer hitch.

Army daughter borrowed my family truck because they were doing some yard work and needed a truck to haul stuff.  Not a problem since I wasn't going to be using that truck.  What I didn't think about was my hitch was in my truck.  I have a heavy duty hitch in the trailer and I usually use that compared to the lighter hitch I keep in my truck.  That shouldn't have been a problem.  Each hitch has a hitch pin...right?  Of course, except I couldn't find the one that is supposed to be stored in my trailer.  This meant I had to wait for Army daughter to come back to my house to bring my hitch pin to me.  That was a really stupid mistake on my part.  Why?  Because after Army daughter used my truck I was lending the truck to Bug-out renters so they could go to their grandson's memorial service.  What if I had leant the truck to them and they had already left town?  It wasn't like I'd be able to rush to the store and buy another hitch pin.  It was Easter Sunday, after all. 

I would have ended up borrowing one from my next door neighbor but that's not the point.  While I was so focused on everything being packed and being able to escape quickly I forgot about having a spare $10 piece of equipment.  Lesson learned.