Gifties – Pt. II

Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Happy, happy, joy, joy! As the mailman climbed outta his truck to give Nuke his MilkBone bribe I noticed the familiar Amazon box in his hand. (The mailman’s hand, not Nuke’s.)

Could it be? Dare I hope? Birthday gifties! w00t! (My birthday is next Tuesday…I’ll be 45. I should buy myself a Sig 220 or something to commemorate it.)

A very generous soul plucked a few items off my Amazon Wish List and had ‘em sent to yours truly. Well, I don’t know about you but I’m not exactly a ‘Do Not Open Until Xmas’ guy sooooooo……let’s crack this thing open and see what we got!

Ahhhh…..I’ve been very eager to try one of these. I love the notion of getting the advantages of Nalgene and still be able to have backwards compatibility with my older canteen covers and the like. Definitely going to have to check this out and see how it fits with a canteen cup and a few other accessories. Surprisingly, this thing is much more flexible than I was anticipating…I was figuring it would be a hard Lexan-like product like the traditional 32 oz. Nalgene bottle. Not so. It’s about as flexible as a regular GI canteen. (Are they even using those anymore? Seems like its all-CamelBak, All the time.) I have a feeling I’m going to wind up getting a few more of these and retiring the GI canteens down to a tertiary level of redundancy.

Next up, a package of Tuff QuickStrips…I got a couple of these a few weeks ago and still haven’t gotten a chance to go to the range and try them out.  I’ve played around with them a bit and they are dead-ringers for the Bianchi strips in .38./.357, just scaled up. I have a very nice 1983-era reintroduction of the S&W M24 that I like to carry from time to time. (What can I say…too much Skeeter Skelton on my reading list when I was a young, impressionable 19-year-old) N-frame speedloaders can be a wee bit bulky, so these strips should be just the ticket for carrying some spare ammo discretely and unobtrusively while still retaining a speed advantage.

And, finally, a copy of TM 5-125 Rigging Techniques, Procedures and Applications. In the last few months I’ve developed an interest in non-powered methods of moving large, heavy objects…which means rope and pulleys. Some day there’s going to be a time when you need to move debris off the road, pull stalled cars out of your way, move heavy obstacles from your path, and lift/lower heavy gear into/outta the back of a vehicle. Can’t rely on electric winches, although theyre darn nice to have, so I figured this would be as good a place as any to start reading about how set up gin poles, windlasses, and that sort of thing. I loves me some TM’s and FM’s.

My sincere thanks to the generous reader who sent these birthday gifts along. I very much appreciate it and I’ll try to review these things and report back on ‘em so we can all get some use out of it. Again, mucho thanks.