A woman asks for a flashlight...

Had some time today, so cleaned out parts of the household where I thought lone flashlights might scurry off to hide.

I came up with two of them. The black one is my fave. I found five of these out in the middle of the desert near Palm Springs, California way back around 1991 or so when I lived in the desert.

They had not been there long as they were in perfect shape. No batteries, no wrappings, no bags, just five of them out in the trackless sand. No evidence that anyone had been there -- of course -- this was real desert, with real sand. The nearly constant "gentle breezes (30 mph)" do a good job of erasing tracks.

The yellow one was one of three or four I bought, probably around 2002 or so, when I realized a few of the black ones had gone on walkabout.

Being old school, this is sort of what I am looking for now. But the only ones LIKE THESE that I see in local stores are very cheap $3-$4 models with old school bulbs.

At least I am willing to go with LEDS, now. I like the size, because I HAVE trail lights, which I like. But these household lights need to be larger so the average woman looking for a flashlight in a power outage can find it easily enough, even in dim or no light. But not so big as to be a pain to walk around the house.

Also, I had a bad experience with rechargeables. Way back -- not too long after the whole recharge thing became "the thing" (late 1990s). But long enough so that I thought the bugs had been worked out, I invested in rechargeables buying the chargers for different size batteries, quality rechargeable batteries, etc. Lets just say it did not work out well.

I now stick to buying industrial alkaline. I did not have problems with those until the last time I bought 48 AA from one of the best known companies, the little suckers leaked like crazy -- switched to a competing major brand and no issues for the past few years.

 

Anything is possible, but I bought them from Zoro, as I pretty much do all my bulk batteries (which is the way I have been buying for years) and plan to continue for years and years. I go through a lot of them on my camping, fishing, hiking, hunting, etc. trips.

Zoro isn't the cheapest. Which is good. But they are pretty competitive and they have a few charitable projects they support. So, if they were fooled, I guess anyone could be. But, I doubt they were. Lots of internet chatter about one particular battery maker having less than stellar batteries in the past couple of years. I can't believe ALL that talk is coming from counterfeit batteries -- especially since I see nothing comparable for the other two big battery makers.

I DON'T usually buy batteries from other sources that may be less reliable. including one of the biggest names out there, although I have been tempted by that place's "house brand." I figure if they can't keep that supply line ligit -- but for the moment -- Zoro works -- in other words, they have earned my trust.