Uncle Joel praises a flashlight

Well. There’s a day I’ll never get back, and never ask for. I just spent six hours being very annoyed with everything and everyone involved with J&H’s house sale.

In fact, I don’t even want to talk about it. Instead, I’ll tell you a short story about something I did last night.

What I did last night, was get lost. Less than a quarter mile from home. On a trail I’ve walked thousands of times.

There’s a beaten path between the Lair and Landlady’s place, of course. I’ve been walking it a couple times a day for several years now. And you’d think I could do it blindfolded by now, and of course you’d be wrong. This path, like all such paths, follows the course of least resistance – its curves and detours make perfect sense in daylight, but at night it can meander right away from you.

I’m not a night person. Once the sun goes down I want a book or a movie, possibly an adult beverage, all enjoyed comfortably indoors. So I haven’t walked this path, or any path, very often at night. Last night, anticipating the coming cold, it occurred to me there was something at Landlady’s that needed double checking. On a whim I took this feeble little headlamp I inherited from Former Neighbor J. This turned out to be a mistake.

Until I got past the wash, everything was fine. The path between the Lair and the wash is well-defined, and it would be difficult for one of the Three Stooges to get lost in that part of the wash. Just keep walking through the big sandy thing till you come to some massive old timbers holding up the end of a fence, then turn left.

But after you’ve turned left and climbed the bank, you’re in the juniper scrub. The thing about juniper scrub? Every bush looks exactly like every other bush. If there’s a particular reason to turn left or right, you won’t see it in the dark. Nor can you see the beaten path very clearly. And that feeble little headlamp wasn’t getting it.

I hadn’t gotten very far along before I realized that I really didn’t know where I was, in relation to the trail. Oh, I wasn’t lost lost: I could have found my way back to the wash easily enough, and from there to home. But to get to Landlady’s from where I was, you need to climb a ridge and there are only so many places you can climb that particular ridge without getting into difficulties with steep and rocky places. Which is why there’s a beaten path. Which I couldn’t see.

It was turning cold, of course, so I was wearing a long coat, and over the coat I had on a gunbelt which cinched things down to where getting that new BLF flashlight off my belt was a bit of a bother. But what I needed then and there was to let there be light. So I dug around, grunted and cursed until I got it out of its holster.

Click, very dim light. Click, off. Click a third time, and all hell breaks loose. All of a sudden I was surrounded by nearly as much light as is thrown by the center beam of my big clunky Coleman spotlight. And I could see, perfectly clearly, that the path was about three steps to my right. At that moment the astronauts in the ISS could probably see it.

As promised, I’ve carried the BLF as part of my regular kit every day since it arrived, going on two weeks ago. In that time I’ve used it quite often, deliberately never recharged it, and tried to get used to its quirks. Of quirks, it has several and they’re still kind of annoying. My principal complaint about this piece of equipment is that it just tries to do too much. I still do not anticipate ever needing it to flash at anything, and this light has not one but three flashing modes.

You can get stuck in them. Today I spent a lot of time crawling around in a small dark space, and gave the light quite a workout. Normally I only use two of the light settings: Very low and all the way on. There are times when one of the intermediate settings is more comfortable but if you simply click the button three times you get bright light, and that’s usually fine. Trouble is if you do that, then turn it off, then change your mind and immediately turn it back on, flashy things happen and you have to click through the three modes before you can get the damned thing to act like a flashlight again. If you’re already sweating and swearing over somebody else’s technical problem – which I was at the time – this makes you want to throw something. Like the flashlight.

It would probably survive the abuse. This is clearly a high-quality little piece of gear. The rechargeable battery has not yet caused that often-used high-light setting to dim, in almost two weeks of daily use. Last night it stayed in that mode for almost twenty minutes, and never showed any strain other than growing a bit warm to the touch.

The light does have one poorly-engineered bit of hardware, and that’s the belt clip which is not only nearly useless but also prone to pop right off the light if it snags on something. This has happened to me twice, and both times I had to search for the clip. If I’d been wearing a less substantial belt so as to use the clip for its actual intended purpose, I’d have been looking for the flashlight. Other than that and the above-mentioned annoyance, though, I must say this is a fine little piece of gear. All complaints aside, I expect to keep using it.