Today is the greatest day of my life!

So, like most of you I’m sure, my wife always makes fun of my obsession with flashlights…UNTIL TONIGHT!!! We’re just having a normal night at home, kids are getting ready to go to bed when…….darkness. Complete power outage. Everyone’s confused, kids are scared, so I spring into action. I grab a 502b and a M1 (which thanks to the GITD switch covers were a snap to find) and, along with a little Luxpro single AA, start handing out lights. Keeping the smallest for myself, I head to the garage for reinforcements. Back in a flash :slight_smile: I set up a Luxpro 2D and a Defiant 3D on the mantle…tail standing of course. I set up the LED Coleman lantern in my daughter’s room and one of the, pretty much useless for anything else, Kobalt snake lights in lantern mode in the boys’ room. Rushing back to the family room, I proceed to tail stand 2 M1’s and a Zeusray (which zoomed all the way out makes great emergency lighting). And the family is safe, secure, and happy.

So I’m looking up and down the street at complete darkness, and then there’s my house, shining like Clark Griswald’s house in Christmas Vacation. And what’s my wife doing to celebrate her amazing husband’s galliant victory over darkness via DC lumens…taking video and pictures with her phone to send to all of her little friends so they can see just how ‘crazy’ her hubby is. Men, we never win…

You should charge a ‘tax’ to all your non supportive family members :smiley:
Sometimes i handle things a bit differently, instead if springing into action, i would get one light for myself, and one for each kid, beyond that you wait to be asked for more light or offer, if she wants more light, hence you are the boss, not the nice one. You would think being the hero gets more respect, but its hard to argue with experience.

Lol, crap that was fun to read. Good on you.

My wife has always mercilessly made fun of me for the stuff I collect. But now that we are splitting up after 18 years together, she asked me the other night if she could see a pile of flashlights to pick a couple she likes before I hauled them away for good. She chose a V20C since her e-ciggy already takes 18650s, and also the S15 Ti since it can take 1x or 2x AA with the extender as well as 14500s. She got to keep the batteries that were already in the two she selected. Of course she went straight to the titanium one lol.

So she didn’t have much of an interest in them until they were going to leave the building. I always figured we would have a big power outage or something but the swanky area we lived was all underground wiring which never seemed to fail like Anaheim, where we had people crashing into the power poles once a week.

Great read Lite! Have fun bro!

That really sucks, I’m sorry to hear that :frowning:

I can completely relate to the crazy :) On the other hand it was funny to hear that when my coworkers took their Xmas gifts home that the majority of the wives confiscated the lights LOL. It was even funnier when some of the guys said "oh, hell no!" Those girls will end up with some from left over parts :)

Its obvious, the wives knew the husbands would become flashaholics and spend their life savings so they had to preemptively confiscate the lights before the cycle began :smiley:

Post up a picture here, make sure to include some dark houses.

when there was a power outage at my place everyone says hell no,but for me hell yes…its my time to shine :smiley:

Your wife has acquired a good taste in flashlights over the years :bigsmile:

I should have…don’t know why I didn’t. I’ll get the pictures that the wife took.

Congrats! You probably made a new flashaholic, now go hide the really nice lights or they will disappear into her purse… :smiley:

‘Today is the greatest day of my life!’ I am so sorry to hear that. Because it means things can never get better and its all downhill from now on. :smiley:

Nice to know you’re making the most of it though…… :wink:

hahaha perfect, nice story man! :bigsmile:

Love it. Thanks for sharing. This type of stuff just doesn't happen enough for us.

I like the story... For similar events, I've bought a few empty single-cell power packs and installed laptop pull 18650s in them. These and a handful of the mini USB lights make nice emergency lighting for power outages. Extremely low draw, so hours of runtime.

About three years ago, we were having a New Year's Eve party at my church. It was about 11:30 pm and we were all playing games when someone hit a transformer up the road leaving us in the dark. I happened to have my brand-new Manafont (RIP) UltraFire three-mode XM-L drop-in installed in a 502b in my pocket (My first XM-L light).

[Dark] "Click" -> ~5,000 Chinese lumens blasting into the ceiling and lighting up the entire room! Cool Nobody was laughing at my Flashlight fetish that night...

We just kept on playing games until midnight with my light running on medium and lighting up the entire room. That event sold me on having a light with tailstand capability though...

A+ read! I'm just waiting on a similar scenario! Last winter we had bad outages across half of Ohio and half of WV that lasted 3days-3weeks in some areas.

I enjoyed reading this because that happened to me once before :smiley: and in that day i was the star 8)

To get your 501Bs to tail stand, go over to the dollar store and buy a packet of those 1” plastic chair leg protectors - the kind they use on those cheap plywood / tubing stacking chairs. Drill a 3/4” hole through the bottom and chamfer it with a sharp knife. They press on good and tight and the flashlight tail stands like a champ. Also, the switch cover gets a lot more protection.