Marduke
Flashaholic
This Saturday I went caving with some friends at a local favorite of mine. Part way in while walking in a stream passage, I saw a foreign object floating in the water. It's common caver practice that when a caver finds trash they pack it out of the cave. But I squinted, and quickly recognized a familiar shape.
It was a flashlight floating in the water!!
I rush over, pick up it, and alas, it was a generic incan dollar store special!! :sick2: With an attempt to turn it on, no light... I open it up to see if it is flooded, and to my surprise there were only a few drops of water visible inside. However, I quickly noticed I was looking at the negative end of the battery. No biggie, it's an incan, so polarity doesn't matter, right?? Then I noticed a physical reverse polarity protection around the blulb base (like it needed it :shrug: ). Shake the top one out, and I see the positive end of the bottom battery. D'oh! They were arranged as seen below in the pic. On top of that, they were not even alkaline, but heavy duty!!
At this point, I could barely stop laughing enough to put it back together to see if it still worked. To my surprise, it DID!!! Sorry, no beamshots...
Well, I asked everyone to turn off their lights, so we could "see the cave through the eyes of a spelunker" (spelunkers are not to be confused with cavers, they are two completely different types of people). Well, my helmet mounted backup E01 put this thing to shame. We all had a good laugh, put the piece of trash in someone's bag to pack out as originally intended, and kept going.
Throughout the rest of the trip I kinda half expected to find the spelunker, ready to receive his Darwin Award.
It was a flashlight floating in the water!!
I rush over, pick up it, and alas, it was a generic incan dollar store special!! :sick2: With an attempt to turn it on, no light... I open it up to see if it is flooded, and to my surprise there were only a few drops of water visible inside. However, I quickly noticed I was looking at the negative end of the battery. No biggie, it's an incan, so polarity doesn't matter, right?? Then I noticed a physical reverse polarity protection around the blulb base (like it needed it :shrug: ). Shake the top one out, and I see the positive end of the bottom battery. D'oh! They were arranged as seen below in the pic. On top of that, they were not even alkaline, but heavy duty!!
At this point, I could barely stop laughing enough to put it back together to see if it still worked. To my surprise, it DID!!! Sorry, no beamshots...
Well, I asked everyone to turn off their lights, so we could "see the cave through the eyes of a spelunker" (spelunkers are not to be confused with cavers, they are two completely different types of people). Well, my helmet mounted backup E01 put this thing to shame. We all had a good laugh, put the piece of trash in someone's bag to pack out as originally intended, and kept going.
Throughout the rest of the trip I kinda half expected to find the spelunker, ready to receive his Darwin Award.