Great to have the ability, even if not the need. I know some of us get excited about impending total darkness during a storm and some of us even have enough lights to share with neighbors.
Night before last, 4:40AM, power went out. My sonās room was dark as a cave, apparently my Mom and Dadās room was as wellā¦ Dad woke up in the pitch black having to go to the bathroom. Heās almost 88 and can have some issue moving around, no fear, he grabbed a light I gave him and made his way with no issue.
My room was a rainbow of tritium vials. Iāve even retrofitted trit vials into the hands of the grandmother clock my uncle made the year I was born. Clock keeps excellent time, Iāve been hearing it tick-tock and Bong Bong Bong all my life. Now the 12 OāClock position glows brightly with a 3x9mm flat trit and the hands glow with 2 trits on each hand, 1 1.5x6 and 1 2x8 (small yellow on the tip, with a purple or blue behind it). Iāve got 10 trits in my ReyLight Ti X6 and 9 more in my Sinner Mokume Gane EDC 18350 as well ast trits in 2 Courui D01ās and a big blue one in my favorite BTU Shocker. Never pitch black in the bedroom. Even my Ti Quad has a trit in the boot and the new ReyLight brass AA has a green trit in the tail button slot. Looking around the room I believe thatās 32 trits in lights and on the clock. Might have gotten a bit carried away huh? lol (Keychain has a Ti lantern with a 3mm x 25mm blue, gorgeous thing!)
Lights came back on at about 7:20AM. No storms, no rain, no wind, no obvious reason the lights were out. Happens like that here quite often, even in the middle of a blue sky day. Chalking it up to country living.
So I donāt feel bad when, like yesterday, weāre out shopping at Wal Mart for groceries and I have 6 or 7 lights on my person. Who knows? The lights could go out in big bad Wallyās Worldā¦
We had an unusually mild summer here, it only got up into the 100s (~38C) a few times, typically temps have been around the 35C to 37C (mid/upper 90F) for us, and itās been great. A few years ago, we had a drought/heat-wave and had some miserable temps during that time. We had over a month with every day over 100F/38C, and high temps around 45C during that period. :weary:
Hah, and here comes Dale with the most entertaining stories Youāre gonna owe us some pictures of all this tritium madness, brother!
Over where I live we are long overdue a good nighttime power outage. Now that I have a T10 with a diffuser, Iām itching to read Close and Present Danger with it as the single light source in the entire block :smiling_imp:
Out of curiosity, how dry does it get during those times? In my slice of the world, weād have air humidity at 10 to 5% at most under such temps. Humidifiers to the rescue!
This happened when I worked at Wal-Mart while in college. Someone hit a transformer up the street and killed power to the store. They actually had to close the Supercenter and told customers to just leave their shopping carts and merchandise where they were and to leave the store. One mother couldnāt find her kid, so the store handed out the cheapest/junk plastic 2x D-cell flashlights in the world (you know the ones Iām talking about; with the cheap slide-switches that flicker, even when new) and we had to sweep the store looking for the child. After that, we had to take all of the surplus cardboard we could get and cover all of the open food coolers to try to keep the temps in the safe range. IIRC, power was out for about 3 hours that evening. It was the summer of ā04, so at that time, there was no BLF, and I didnāt have an Insane-O-Brite ā¢ EDC flashlightā¦
I work at a power facility with a lake, and the lake levels were 12-13ft low during the worst of the drought. I have photos, and a panorama from the center of the lake, where the water would have been about 6ft over the top of my head.
Something like that happened, I think it was last February(?), with me. Except it wasnāt someone (it was a bird), it wasnāt a store (it was the university that I work at, in the block where I study), and most regretfully, it was in the afternoon. The only end result was that we were left without AC. :rage:
So, this is the Piney Woods region of Northeast Texas. Summer lasts about six months. It starts heating up in April/May timeframe. April Showers bring May flowers? Nope, not here. Itās more like March Showers bring April flowers. It generally starts cooling in September, but is usually October before it starts getting pleasant outside during the daytime. Even in October, we still see temps above 80F/26C during the daytime. Although, if itās an unusually cold autumn, we may get our first frost the same day as we hit those high temps. And yes, itās ALWAYS high humidity here.
Hereās a snapshot of our current conditions:
ā¦forecast calls for temps near or exceeding 90 degrees for the next week and a halfā¦
Interestingly, in the northern states, AC is actually an option for vehicles. Here, itās standard equipment.
After reading this threadā¦.being entertained and educatedā¦ā¦.I fell I must take this time to confessā¦ā¦ā¦
Earlier this spring I was in a movie theater to watch Captain America: Civil War (sans my wife and children). It was a mid-day matinee. As I looked around, it was just me and about 5 or 6 other guys (we were all in our 30ās to 40āsā¦.which made me smile a bit). I sat, as usual, as close to the āmiddleā of the theater as I could get (I had worked for Bose retail for years and I gotta have that surround sound effectā¦ā¦although I am quite disappointed with the lack of quality sound in many theatersā¦.but thatās another thread for another day). We were all relaxing and enjoying the previewsā¦.I was partaking of the nachos I had splurged on, since I hadnāt had to pay for the ticket (a gift from Christmas), so my hands were kinda full.
The movie startsā¦ā¦weāre digging some pretty cool action in the first few minutes and BAMā¦ā¦the power goes out. I looked around and was amazed that I couldnāt see any āsafetyā or emergency back-up lights coming on. I sat there for a momentā¦thinking it was just a fluke and was going to come right back on. It was pretty much PITCH BLACK in there. I sat for another momentā¦.thinkingā¦should I whip it out? (Now, if youāll forgive my poor memoryā¦I am getting olderā¦.I canāt remember whether I had my Astrolux S1 or Nitecore EA11 at the timeā¦but either way, IMHO, fine performers in both sizes) Should I whip out the pocket rocket? I hesitatedā¦donāt want these guys to think Iām some kind of weirdo. āWhatās he doing with a flashlight in a movie theater?ā I thought for another momentā¦.surely the lights are going to come back on. Then it happened. Some dude a couple of rows back pulls out HIS CELLPHONE and shines the flash towards the screen. I still just sat thereā¦ā¦āwell, i guess thereās no point nowā.
I HAD THE PERFECT MOMENT to let my pocket powerhouse shine IN ALL ITāS GLORYā¦ā¦to impress and blow away the masses (okā¦.only a handful of other sub-middle-aged guys) AND I FROZE! I knowā¦I should have been likeā¦ I GOT THIS GUYS. But I didnāt.
:weary: :cry: :person_facepalming: :person_facepalming:
BLFāersā¦ā¦I am so sorryā¦ā¦Can I be forgiven? Is there mercy to be had?
I am having a really hard time after reading this thread of letting my egregious mistake go.
Wellā¦.WE donāt have above mentioned triplesā¦I am not that far along in my addiction. I am still kind of a BLF newb.
Minimal collection:
Several SK68 clones (many gifted for AA useā¦.most of mine 14500)
Zoomie XM-L T6 with what Iām sure is an LB from reading on here (my sweet wife bought it for me after Iād decided against itā¦now been gifted to my dad)
Some random 2x18650 3 LED (no clue if itās CREE or not) light thatās actually pretty brightā¦probably slightly brighter than my other lights
Astrolux S1 (rotating b/t 18650 and 18350)
Nitecore EA11 (still love the UI on that)
Zebralight SC62w (my got to EDC nowā¦told me wife thatād be it for a while)
5 Nitecore TIPs (justified by group buy from Calvin and getting some Christmas gifts early)
But yesā¦.would like some kind of triple or quad beyond my cheapie one dayā¦.kinda thinking an SRK styled oneā¦love the idea of 1,2,3 or 4 cellsā¦ā¦.maaaaayyyyyyy look into the Q8ā¦ā¦but I have to admitā¦.there are more moments I walk around and thinkā¦.āFor my daily and even possible emergency usesā¦.I have more than enough lightsā (I knowā¦.30 lashes for that too).
My son, your biggest sin was to not have whipped out your torch at any moment. Before or after the infamous phone flash, your light would have been most impressive and highly appreciated.
Trust me, when darkness holds dominion, only a blockhead will question your possession of a flashlight before taking a liking to the one guy who has a source of electromagnetic energy in the visible spectrum.
Your punishment is to purchase a Convoy S2+ with the tint of your choice, and promise to use it without shame at the very first opportunity!
Summer 2011, the summer Keltex is referring to with over 100 days of 100+ degrees, we had a wedding to shoot in New Mexico. I loaded the gear in the car to leave here at 3AM and it was still 86Āŗ, so muggy I was soaked in sweat in the couple of minutes it took to put the camera equipment in the car. (luggage was already packed) [flashback, we got about 10 miles from home and had to turn around and find a long alternate course which took us way out of the way and cost over an hour and a half of time, a trucker had flipped a fuel tanker and it was burning, blocking the highway. What a start to what turned out to be a very nice working vacation for us.]
New Mexico was a dream, 80Āŗ and a breeze, they were complaining about the heat but we felt like the AC was on everywhere we were. I almost got cold hiking up in the mountains at nearly 10,000 feet elevation. Coming home, everything looked like some kind of war zone, not only creeks were dried up but rivers too! It was a brutal summer, for sure.
My cousin, the decathlete, was in a track meet in Kansas with temps of 108Āŗ, doing his 10 events over 2 days of blistering heat. Can you imagine running the 1500M at the end of 2 days, in that kind of temps? My cousin had his pole vault pole break on day 2, about a 14ā piece snapped up out of the pit and hit him in the crotch. He got second in the pole vault after about 20 minutes of vomiting. Then did the javelin and finished out with that 1500M with his testicles swelling up. Heās iron though, closest competitor was 200M back when he finished the 1500M. I kid you not. The boy was 16.
5 years ago I didnāt have any major powerhouse lights either. I thought I had a neat little AAA light that seemed bright at the time, but inside Carlsbad Caverns it was swallowed up like deep space. I was humbled. And on the search for MOAH POWAH!
I will have to beg forgiveness againā¦but with my Astro S1 (3D), Nitecore EA11 and Zebralight SC62w, I THINKā¦ā¦I say I THINK (emphasis because Iām sure something will change my mind soonā¦ā¦like maybe an S2+ triple or something) Iāve got my tint preferences coveredā¦.and I PROMISE to never hesitate again.
LET THERE BE LIGHT!
PS. Love the eloquence of your replyā¦ā¦especially ā source of electromagnetic energy in the visible spectrumā. :+1:
Iāve even retrofitted trit vials into the hands of the grandmother clock my uncle made the year I was born. Clock keeps excellent time, Iāve been hearing it tick-tock and Bong Bong Bong all my life. Now the 12 OāClock position glows brightly with a 3x9mm flat trit and the hands glow with 2 trits on each hand, 1 1.5x6 and 1 2x8 (small yellow on the tip, with a purple or blue behind it). Iāve got 10 trits in my ReyLight Ti X6 and 9 more in my Sinner Mokume Gane EDC 18350 as well ast trits in 2 Courui D01ās and a big blue one in my favorite BTU Shocker. Never pitch black in the bedroom. Even my Ti Quad has a trit in the boot and the new ReyLight brass AA has a green trit in the tail button slot. Looking around the room I believe thatās 32 trits in lights and on the clock. Might have gotten a bit carried away huh? lol (Keychain has a Ti lantern with a 3mm x 25mm blue, gorgeous thing!)
