100% SNARK FREE

Here’s hoping you’ll never need this service:

If you’re like me, you take every opportunity to enjoy the best that our region has to offer in outdoor recreation. There are countless beautiful views that can be accessed only by running or hiking through the woods and up and down some mountains.

While every precaution is taken for a safe adventure, we all know of someone — even if it’s just reading about it in the paper — who needed to be taken out on horseback or by a helicopter to get much needed medical attention, whether it’s from a bad fall, allergic reaction, heart attack, or a variety of other reasons.

Helicopter evacuations are extremely expensive, but I just learned that members of the general public can purchase annual memberships with CALSTAR for $40-45, thereby avoiding the $10K-15K bill that usually comes after such a helicopter ride.

CALSTAR has a reciprocal relationship with other med-evac helicopter services, so you’d be covered regardless.

You don’t even need to be an outdoor enthusiast for this to be an issue, as med-evacs are needed for many purposes (following car accidents, transportation between medical facilities when needed, etc.) Group discounts are available to qualifying groups — I doubt if the SacRag qualifies as a group, but I’m checking to see if my running club does.

So, if you’re an obsessively over-insured person like me, this CALSTAR membership is a very small price to pay in the off chance that you might need it someday.

7 thoughts on “100% SNARK FREE”

  1. Does this include being evacuated from my roof when the levees break?

    This would be cool if it’s anything like those emergency services they peddle on TV (“Help! I’m falling down a crevice and I can’t get up!”). If you tumble down a canyon, you press the button on the device attached to a lanyard around your neck and a helicopter swoops in and plucks you out.

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  3. Can I use this instead of that free DD program? I would pay 45 to get medivaced out of the Zebra Club ’round 1:43am sat morn!

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  6. Usually I’d make a smartass comment, but everyone else beat me to the good stuff, so I’ll just say that this is really good advice for those of us who hike. Thanks.

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  7. Here’s how I interpret the appropriate usage:

    Yes to being stuck down a cliff

    Yes for the levees breaking IF you’re having a medical emergency

    No to the corndog, even if you’re having the one that has the extra cornmeal breading on it

    No to the Zebra Club, maybe the 2Me (since that’s usually the last stop anyway)

    To “sticking it in your eye” I prefer the snark too, but we need a good PSA once in a while, even if it applies only to 0.01% of our readership.

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