James' Tactical Procrastinator's Christmas List for Your Armchair Commando

My grandmother used to buy value brand ice cream from the grocery store for the holidays. And my little brother and I were perfectly content with econo-neopolitan UNTIL we tried the the top shelf shit like Ben & Jerry’s or Blue Bell. It was never the same after Chunky Monkey.

I used to use cheapo LED lights from Amazon. They’d cost $3 each and they’d work well enough. I was happy. Consummate torch aficionado, Nick Chen, would give me an extremely hard time about it, so I finally took the plunge into top shelf gear. Boy, was he right. Flashlights have never been the same since.

I’m kicking off with flashlights. They are all Surefire. There’s really no way to go wrong with this one. Even if your significant other has a decent handheld darkness eliminator at home, it isn’t like he’s going to open up a Surefire light, look at that stealthy, matte finish and the fine machining…God, the lumens…and then give you a resigned sigh with a “thanks hon” like he just opened a tactical MRE fruitcake from your mother. Point being, even if he already has the exact same stick you buy him, he’ll be thrilled with any of these:

Wow. Of all of the lights, this one was the most impressive for me. Lindsay and I camp a lot and weight/space comes at a premium. The Minimus is not only small and lightweight but puts out a strong 300 lumens on max. However, its variable settings are one of the best features: While most headlamps have a high and a low setting, but the Minimus has 13 output settings which is important if you only have one set of batteries and need to stretch out your runtime. At the 300 lumen setting, you’re getting a good 1.5 hours of full blast, but at the lowest setting of 5 lumens (great for sorting out the tent interior) you get 75 hours of light. The adjustable angle of the lamp is great, too – you can rotate the beam firmly in about any angle. Adjustments are easy as everything is tactile.

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Having dabbled in photography, I’d always been interested in binoculars that offer image stabilization but never tried them. It wasn’t until I was sitting next to some Polish guy with a crocodile/birdwatching tour on the Rio Tarcolitos in Costa Rica that I realized what I was missing. He had a pair of 10x Canon IS binos and he let me borrow them. When you look through them, they look like good, sharp glass – nothing more. But once you hit the IS button near the focus wheel, it’s a whole new experience. The image in the binoculars becomes stabilized, eliminating your hand shake – just like looking through an optic that’s steadied on a tripod. You see much more detail out of the 10x Canon IS binos than you would through conventional 12x or 14x binos (which would have a more exaggerated shake effect than the 10x without image stabilization anyways). I bought them right after that trip, maybe 3 years ago, and I don’t even know what type of batteries it takes because I have been on the same one(s) this whole time. These go everywhere with us.

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I’m not saying I would wear every 5.11 tee that they make, but they have some pretty dope shirts and they tend to fit well. This isn’t your Gildan tee from your college hayride, they are nicely designed and made shirts, and most of the time that I wear one on camera, I’ll get several comments asking what shirt I’m wearing. In the screenshot below, I am wearing the 5.11 Kraken (which, coincidentally, I am also wearing right now). Nice inexpensive pickup that appeals to just about anyone.

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