Keyboards and natural disasters

[MAJUSCULE]

Currently kickin' back in Cali with the family. I've seen several warning signs for tsunamis and earthquakes. Coming from land-locked Edmonton where the last real disaster was a tornado in 1987, it's kind of strange. So I'm wondering, those of you in vulnerable areas, what kind of risk do you feel? What kind of preparation is needed? (Any horror stories? )

[Joe Muscara]

Yeah, don't ship FedEx.

[MAJUSCULE]

[sakari lindhen]

are you saying that such behaviour is natural for FedEx delivery men?

[Joe Muscara]

Here's my FudEx horror story

[FatMarathoner]

On topic, I gotta assume you guys have seen this by now, although that package was a computer monitor and not a keyboard.

[Josh Paxton]

Perception of risk is a funny thing...

 

When you live in a hurricane-prone area like New Orleans, over time you can become jaded about evacuating. You probably do it about once a year on average, and the more times you go through it, the less you tend to take with you each time. By the summer of 2005, I had done it enough times that I was pretty well over it. Additionally, when I had evacuated the previous summer, I left at the same time as everyone else and got caught in the mother of all traffic nightmares, and the normally-2.5-hour drive to Lafayette took me 19 hours (not a typo). After that ordeal I decided that I was never going through that again, and that from then on, as soon as it looked likely that an evacuation was in the works, I would be on the road as soon as I possibly could.

 

The upshot of all of this is that when I evacuated from Katrina, all I took with me was my laptop, my Electro 2, and three changes of clothes -- because I thought that like every other time, I'd be back in three days. In other words, I took the absolute bare minimum I would need to start my life over in the unfathomable event that I lost everything else. Of the stuff I left behind, I made some effort to move the more valuable things up to high shelves and whatnot, but I didn't make a big production of it. And as I walked out of my (ground floor) apartment for the last time, I took one last look inside and said to myself, "Would I be okay if I never saw any of this stuff again? Yes. It would suck, but I'd be okay." Then I locked the door and hit the road.

 

I didn't expect the universe to call my bluff.

 

In short, I lost damn near everything I owned. Gear-wise that included a couple DPs, some assorted rack synths, processors, amps, etc. In the grand scheme of things I lost, those were among the absolute least of my concerns. What sucked a lot more was losing all my printed music, including stuff I had written myself before I started doing it on computer, and stuff that was otherwise irreplaceable (like charts for some Kenny Kirkland tunes in his own hand). But what sucked more than anything was losing the piano I had learned to play on. It was a Wurlitzer console upright, certainly not a fine instrument by pro standards. But the first time I saw what was left of it, I sobbed like a child.

 

Before I left the remains of it behind, I pried the face plate off the front and the serial number plaque off the back. They are now framed on my wall, hanging above the Yamaha U-series Disklavier I got as a replacement.

 

One of numerous lessons learned: When it comes to natural disasters, by all means take prudent steps to protect your keyboards. But understand that if such a disaster actually strikes, they will be the last thing you'll care about.

[Joe Muscara]

Man FKS, I don't know what to say. I didn't realize these storms had you guys evacuating that much. Lori and I have never evacuated, though we wondered if we should have for Ike. We are lucky we're not low-lying.

 

It sucks to lose stuff, but in the end, it's just stuff.

[drawback]

Currently kickin' back in Cali with the family. I've seen several warning signs for tsunamis and earthquakes. Coming from land-locked Edmonton where the last real disaster was a tornado in 1987, it's kind of strange. So I'm wondering, those of you in vulnerable areas, what kind of risk do you feel? What kind of preparation is needed? (Any horror stories? )

 

To some folks in Cali (or Bali, for that matter), the mere risk of being outside in extreme winter cold is one of their biggest fears. I met a guy in Okla who, in a conversation about weather extremes in Canada, when I said "sometimes it can get to be 'fifty below,'" he asked, "...below what?"

 

Joyeux noel et bonne année!