LED,

It does sound weird, but I just think of it as another cloth bag. The one i used to have didn't really look like a body bag, but very much like an Olive drab bivy sack.

As far as hiking, I used to hike in Griffith park a lot, on the weekly night hikes put on by the Sierra club. I doubt you could get lost there for a long time even if you tried, there are so many people wandering around and you're never more than a mile away from some road or parking lot or freeway. I'll be hiking Baldy this weekend, and probalby San Jacinto and San Gorgonio in the coming months in preparation for Whitney. Those are pretty rugged mountains, but I won't be carrying my bivy. In case of emergency, I'm hoping to stumble across the campsite of a missing hiker and use his stuff <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> j/k. I'm actually trying to convince my friends to carry more stuff, usually on a day hike the only thing they carry is a water bottle <img src="/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />