I'm stuck in the house, hunkered down from the falling snow and drivers who have no clue how to drive in it. I had a thought that it might be fun to stress the usefulness of EDC flashlights. I'm not saying it was a good thought, but it's a thought and I'm bored.
If you have a story about using your EDC flashlight in ways other than lighting your way through the dark, and feel like sharing it, please do. I'll start with some fairly lame stories, but I'm sure the members here will have much more interesting tales to tell.
A few years ago we lived in a much smaller house in a more densely populated neighbourhood. It was nice, quiet neighbourhood until new next door neighbours moved in; two young men, brothers, from South Africa. They had come to Canada to attend school. Everything was fine for the first several months.
Eventually the oldest brother, we'll call him "Y", started playing loud music on his patio at all hours of the day and night. The patio just happened to be close to my master bedroom. One night, about 12:30am, after listening to him play The Game's "My Life" at full volume over and over for an hour, I had reached my limit. I grabbed my Fenix LD12 and went outside. I blasted him full beam in the eyes at about 15 yards, not saying a word. Interestingly, he immediately stood up and turned off his music, shielding his eyes. I lowered the light for a second so he could get a look at me.
Y: Clobb, is that you?
Clobb: Yes (shining the light back in his face). You need to turn that music off. It is far too loud and it's after midnight.
Y: (Hands shielding his eyes). Can you turn off that light?
Clobb: No. Go back into your house and keep the music off.
Y: Ok, I'm sorry.
He went back into his house. I lit him up until he closed his door.
Unfortunately that dude later tried to break into my house during a domestic dispute with his brother. We later found out that he suffered from addiction problems, but that is a story for a different thread.
The next quick story was a few weeks ago.
I now live in a little mountain suburb and it sometimes gets very icy in the winter. I was coming home from the movies with my family and was unfortunately driving my non AWD car. We got halfway back to the house and it was so icy it was just too dangerous to continue driving. I pulled off to the side of the road and we decided to hike up to our house.
On the way up we saw the extent of the problems the ice had caused. Cars were all over the road, bouncing off curbs, smashing into fire hydrants. A major issue. As we progressed further up the hill I tried to stop several cars from going down the hill and approaching the mess of cars and ice below them. I waved my arms and tried to flag them down. Nobody stopped for me. I pulled out my LD12 and started flashing it towards the oncoming cars. Every car I flashed with my little light stopped, and I'm certain we saved a bunch of them from fender benders by stopping them when we did.
My LD12 is an older 125 lumen model, so it seems lame by today's standards. I believe the new LD12 is 320 lumens, so it probably time to upgrade. I like it for it's small size and AA battery. I dislike the push button adjustability and wish I could find a simple, robust, AA flashlight that has two modes; On and off.