Well, not always… but for the last two LA “big ones” – today’s Chino Hills quake ^[1] and the much bigger 1994 Northridge quake – I was far from home.  I am still on Kauai and was hiking the Kalalau ^[2] Trail ^[2]when the shaker hit today.  I didn’t know about it until hours later.  In ‘94, I was at the Sundance Institute, pretending to teach people how to write screenplays.  I learned about that one over breakfast.  Neither quake did any damage to my house.

What this all means, I’m not sure.  But maybe I could extort some money from the LA City Council by promising to stay out of town.  (I won’t tell them I was home for the 1971 Sylmar quake, living in an old house in Echo Park where the internal chimney came down three feet from my head and almost buried me alive.)