Author: Ben Brooks

I put this post idea down last August, little did I know then that the weather this winter would be insane, a major volcano would erupt in the Pacific causing many tsunami warnings, and oh tornados — doesn’t bode well for the summer fire/hurricane seasons if you ask me to extrapolate from unrelated events. Anyways, this isn’t a listing of gear in my bags, but rather updates to my thinking about each bag, the needs for the bags, as well as other odds and ends of that nature.

The big thing heading into 2022 is my shifting focus and thinking around which bag I prioritize, and focusing more directly on the most likely, instead of the most terrifying needs. Which is surprisingly hard for me personally to do.

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I’ve managed to standardize on two bags I rotate between for heading to the office day to day. Back in October of 2021 I told members about this setup, and it’s still my setup, so it’s time to go a little deeper on this, why these two bags, why two bags, and how I shift between them.

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I wrote about the Emisar D4SV2 recently, and the channel switching setup I have on that light. Shortly after that light came out, the smaller D4V2 had tint ramping / channel switching added to it — I quickly purchased a setup to provide a massive tint range: 2000k to 5000k.

This light is amazing, and one of my favorites.

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This isn’t my typical knife. When I go looking at knives I tend to focus on what I think I would use, and what I am likely to like the best — which means I buy a lot of knives that are increasingly similar to each other. Not a bad thing if you know what you like.

This knife, the WE Knife Co. Arsenal Frame Lock Knife in Gray Titanium/Green G-10 was a holiday gift from my parents and I have to say — not what I would have bought myself, but I am very glad to have it. This knife surprised me a lot.

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A few people might notice in some pictures of my flashlights that there’s spots of a green-white-yellow colored thing in different spots. This is the Glow Tape — which is a roll of glow in the dark tape. It’s really great stuff, and has an unreal amount of glow from just a little bit of light and a little bit of the tape itself.

You need this, but in case you need more convincing for $8, here’s how I use it.

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I am a big fan of the Emisar D4V2, but it has a larger sibling, the D4SV2 which is a chonky beast of a light that takes a beastly battery. I grabbed one as it was among the first ‘hank light’ to get the new channel switching / tint ramping version of Anduril in it. Let’s talk about both this light (it’s great) and the new tint/channel switching setups (it’s even greater).

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At the end of January last year, I started tracking the gear I used the most. Flashlights, knives, bags, and watches. And shortly thereafter I added in tracking my wears of different clothing. And throughout the year I’ve done a good job of logging all this stuff everyday.

I did this all in Numbers, as it presented an easy way to record the data, as well as to chart/analyze the data. There’s other tools for this, but this is what I went with. The downside of this is that I am recording raw counts, and nothing with dates associated with things. There’s also the issue that I don’t record the things I wear to work out in, or my clothes I wear when I head to bed at the end of the day.

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A quick end of the year round up of the bags I have, and what I use them for:

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Note: this item was sent to me from GORUCK for review.

I love merino wool, most of my tops are merino wool. It’s very performant as a material in both hot and cold, dry and wet. It also can go a long time without building up odors. But, merino wool can be delicate at times, and so it’s more challenging to build a rugged shirt out of merino. GORUCK took on that challenge and recently introduced the 24.7 Merino Wool Tee.

I’ve been wearing my review sample rucking for dozens of miles now, all under the Rucker 3.0 25L with 45lbs in the pack — it’s holding up great. It might be the best rucking shirt I’ve seen to date.

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With 2021 in the books, I wanted to do a quick run through of some of my favorite backpacks at the end of this year. So, with that in mind, here’s some quick thoughts on some of my favorites and why/what you would want these for. It’s a bit of a ‘state of backpacks’ post, with a nod to the fact that there are still a few I have yet to test. There’s a longer form variant of this in the best list with better delineation — this is the quick hit version.

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It has been a while since I grabbed a Fenix light, and while the PD series is popular, the PD36 Tac specifically is a newer light with a standout feature: tail selector switch. This is a big tactical light, which is clearly meant to be used for long stretches of time, in security type situations.

It’s solid too…

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Barrel Flashlights are expensive and hard to get. They are ‘dropped’ on their website in themed drops. They also do collaborations with Triple Aught Design — should Barrel’s standard base price be too low for your interests. They make some of the sexiest looking lights I have seen, with a lot of the design being about the coloring of their ‘Rail’ designed lights, or materials in the ‘Brake’ design.

My light was bought secondhand off a member, and is the Rail 3 Picatinny setup with a white cerakote for extra bling. I use this light a ton but mostly because it ‘sparks joy’ and not so much because it is the best. It is, however, quite a good light.

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