When I go to a gun show I don't go shopping for guns. Generally I don't come home with any ammo, either. But just as I did almost two years ago, when I went to last weekend's gun show on the west side of Columbus, I picked up a new knife.
It was a purposeful purchase -- for business reasons, actually, I sought an affordable small blade that was handmade locally. Among the limited choices, what I ended up getting was a Shadow Tech Talon B. Here are the specs and measurements:
Overall length: 7.0625"
Blade length: 3.1875"
Blade thickness: 0.1875"
Blade width: 1"
Blade tang: Full
Blade steel: 1095 @ 59-60, coated
Blade grind: Hollow, sharpened swedge
Blade pattern: Spear point
Handle: Cocobolo, brass pins
Sheath: Kydex with multi-position belt loop
Price: $65.00
I'll be candid here -- out of the box, the Talon isn't a particularly good knife. Geometry of the too-thick blade is poor, in addition to being roughly ground and crudely coated, and it doesn't cut worth a damn.
The performance of the Talon is hamstrung, I think, both by its geometry and by the Ziebart-grade coating. Eventually I was able to strop the edge to where it was acceptably sharp, if not ideally so, but the blade desperately needs to be stripped and re-profiled.
The portly wood handle fills my large hands nicely. I can't help wondering if the slabs are unreasonably thick, though, and they certainly add weight to an already heavy (albeit well balanced) knife.
After all that, the Kydex sheath is a pleasant surprise. It's decently made with good retention in all positions. I like that it offers a range of practical ways to mount the belt loop, as well as providing hollow rivets for lashing the sheath to gear.
Shadow Tech aims the Talon at the personal-protection market, and the sheath carries the heavy knife well horizontally on the belt in the small of the back. For now I've settled on horizontal carry in front (right-handed cross-draw, to the left of the belt buckle).
In concept the Talon B has promise, but not without some changes.
Reducing the thickness of the blade by 33% (to 1/8") would be a good place to start. It'd make the knife much lighter and (with thinner handle slabs) far more manageable.
The coating and the "sharpened" swedge have to go, of course. And although I'd prefer either a flat or convex grind, the current hollow would be okay if done properly.
Don't touch the sheath.
That's not asking much -- just attention to details and a focus on performance -- but it's the small things that make a big difference.
That's what Mrs. KintlaLake said to me early this morning. She was talking about our search for a place to live.
Our quest has begun in earnest, thanks to circumstances beyond what I might've imagined a few months ago. More important, at least to me, is seeing the re-emergence of the hopeful, purposeful side of the woman I love.
I've decided to let her take the lead on screening candidates, which is too much for me to process right now, and I'll accompany her on follow-up visits. Last night I saw two, one of which has potential.
We're still looking.
Our goal is to move out of this alcohell and into a place of our own by summer's-end. So before we know it we'll be "on the move" -- again.
Mobile phones are at once necessary and evil. I embrace the technology because I must.
As a long-time user of Palm devices, my Centro has filled my personal bill perfectly, marrying my needs for a PDA and present-day communications. For two years, I've wished for nothing else.
On Sunday, Mrs. KintlaLake and our spawns went to the cell-phone store, where "new every two" met "buy one, get one free." All three of them decided that it was time to trade up.
Do the math -- I got a new phone, free.
The Palm Pre Plus wants to be an iPhone, but it's not (not yet, anyway). And while it does say "Palm," it's not that, either.
It is, however, way-cool.
The new webOS platform omits much of what I love about Palms, including the desktop interface. I've set up a data sync with the old PC-resident software (using a third-party application) and I'll maintain my Palm TX as a master PDA, but dammit, I miss the old OS already.
Pining aside, I can't seem to put the new phone down. Its flickable touch-screen has me hooked, and the ability to run multiple apps at the same time makes me wonder how I managed before.
What's more, I've downloaded several cheap (or free) apps that turn the Palm Pre Plus into a GPS, a compass, a flashlight -- even a seismograph. (Yes, it has a "Big Brother" auto-locate feature, which fortunately I can turn off, and a built-in accelerometer.)
It's still not a real Palm, but real cool will do.
Having nothing of substance to say on this, the first day of March -- and being too busy to say it even if I did -- here's one more Marble's ad from a 1918 issue of Outing magazine. Obviously this was before my time -- hell, it was almost a decade before my father's time -- but I'm thoroughly intrigued by this stuff, on many levels.
While taking some hard-won time today to unwind, I stumbled across a digital edition of a turn-of-the-(last)-century magazine called Outing. Published from the 1880s into the 1920s, Outing ran the gamut of outdoor sports, notably hunting, fishing, hiking and the like.
I'd found a compendium of 1918 issues, more than 800 pages in all, and what appealed most to me were the ads. I present three of them here -- two for Colt firearms and one for Webster Marble's venerable edged tools -- trimmed by an endearing excerpt from a 1915 article entitled, "Knives I have Known: How Various Types Meet the Real Woodsman's Test of Ability to Slice Bacon" by C.L. Gilman.
"Neither as a weapon nor as a means of giving his prey the thrust of mercy has the knife any claim to a place on the belt of the wilderness adventurer. And right here the knife serves, if one may borrow some from the Book of Rites of the Boy Scouts, as a ready guide to the three preliminary degrees of woodsmanship.
"First, there is the tenderfoot, who carries a sheath knife of the bowie pattern on his hip ready for cutting the throat of the buck he expects to find posing for his rifle and for that hand-to-hand grapple with an infuriated bear which lurks pleasantly shuddersome in his imagination.
"Next comes the 'second-class' scout who, having found no fighting or throatcutting to flesh his maiden steel, makes pompous parade of his wearing no knife at all.
"Finally, there are a few who, having passed and persevered through the two first stages, may fairly lay claim to the title of 'first-class scout' who have a real use in mind for the blades which dangle from the reefing straps of their breeches. And that use is generally slicing bacon with a little skinning and general whittling on the side. A good bacon knife will peel the hide from a muskrat very neatly and then -- after sundry and searching purifying processes -- go back to slicing bacon.
"Careful case-keeping on the uses made of a sheath knife during twelve months of woods living shows the slicing of bacon far in the lead, snipping browse second and general whittling, potato peeling, and skinning trailing along in the order named."
I have my small desk-side TV tuned to CNN as I answer e-mails and manage some website issues this morning. The network is airing live coverage of a health-care "summit" convened by Pres. Obama.
Over an hour into this dog-and-pony show, it's what I'd expect from a bunch of federal elected officials. It's been a predictable exchange of talking points, with one notable exception -- the President himself.
He began by trying to set a tone of collaboration and compromise, encouraging participants to discuss substantive issues and to seek whatever common ground may exist. Because he was addressing a bunch of Congressional leaders -- read, "entrenched ideologues" -- that didn't happen, of course.
Majority-drunk Democrats want to jam an existing bill through the legislative sausage-grinder. Republicans, dragging their obstructive feet all the way to November, want to "start over."
Both have the right idea. They just don't know it.
Specific to health-care reform, finally the ball is rolling. There's no longer a clean slate, no fresh sheet of paper. In that sense, I back Democrats' wish to press forward rather than retreat -- no, not the typically stubborn defense of legislation now on the table, but rather an atypically honest effort to engage in constructive conversation.
I also agree with GOP leaders that it's not too late to "start over." By their definition, that means purging the legislative system of the Dems' proposals. By mine, it means dropping the "loyal opposition" act and doing precisely what the President suggested at the summit's outset -- climbing out of their partisan trench and conducting themselves as if they're truly interested in accomplishing something for The People.
Neither side will make my wish come true -- I know that. But hey, a guy can dream, can't he?
Yes, I was a "spin doctor" in a previous life. As a practitioner of critical thought, however, I've grown weary of six Big Lies.
Big Lie #1: "We've turned the corner." This flows from the belief that upticks in equity markets, sporadic reports of quarterly profits and anecdotal accounts of hiring are so-called "leading indicators" of a hoped-for economic turnaround.
Don't believe it.
We haven't yet learned that recovery will begin only when we, individually and collectively, change the ways that we consume and spend. If our goal is to return to "the way things were" before the downturn, we're dooming ourselves (and likely our children) to "the way things are" right now.
Until we move from want-driven consumption closer to need-based consumption, nothing of long-term consequence will change.
We can't rely on providers of goods and services to cooperate -- they'll continue to play to our desires and prey on our emotions. It's up to us to resist their hype. We have to make better choices.
Big Lie #2: "We must cut taxes and reduce the national debt." Like a woman who slathers on makeup to hide her age, this Big Lie is a "blocker" -- attractive from a block away, but don't look too closely.
Reining-in revenue is (by itself) wholly incompatible with eliminating debt. It's simple-minded (along with delusional and selfish) to favor political candidates because they promise to cut our taxes -- it exacerbates the problem rather than solving it.
Lightening the burden on the next generation can be accomplished only through a combination of increasing revenue and reducing spending. Taxes will need to be higher, not lower, and government services must be far fewer.
Pay attention, all you low-hanging-fruit conservatives: gutting social-welfare programs won't get the job done. Spending would need to be slashed throughout the bureaucracy, and that includes defense and infrastructure. Get a grip on that.
It's fine, especially in hard times, to complain about the taxes we pay, but let's start telling the truth about that and stop trying to turn this Big Lie into a pseudo-intellectual argument.
Big Lie #3: "The Tea Party can be a player." The current incarnation of the Tea Party is little but a smoke-screen for anti-administration ideologues. Soon it'll be reduced to a handful of far-right klaxons within the Republican Party and that'll be that.
What's more, the Tea Party shames true independence. It claims to be beholding neither to the Democrats nor to the Republicans and makes good on only half of its promise. It's a scam, and an extremist scam at that.
Our political climate doesn't need a third party. We need millions more independent citizens who pledge allegiance to no party.
Big Lie #4: "It's Obama's economy." It's no more credible to blame (or praise) this President than it is to blame (or praise) previous administrations. The government isn't the problem -- we're the problem.
In short, there are entirely too many people bitching about bailouts while paying for an oil change at a GM dealer with a Citi VISA card.
This is our economy. We created it, we broke it and we must fix it. Until we get that -- and act like it -- what's broken can't be fixed.
Big Lie #5: "Bipartisanship." Party loyalty reigns. Collaboration is dead. Statements to the contrary are sheer puffery.
Our only escape from The Big Lie of Bipartisanship is independence -- not just independence from the two dominant parties, but from political and ideological herds in general. Big Lie #6: "Socialism." This canard owes its life to The Cult of Talk Radio. That alone would be enough to torpedo its credibility.
Any attempt to label the current administration as "socialist" reflects a gross misunderstanding of "socialism" itself. Adding insult to ignorance, objecting only to "socialist" government programs that fail to line-up with conservative ideology, while giving a convenient pass to pets of the far right, is intellectually laughable. And that's the rub, really, with all of these Big Lies -- under scrutiny, they're patently ridiculous. Because the future of my country is at stake, however, I don't feel much like laughing.
After seeing a disturbing animated map on CNN this morning, I went looking for its source. I found it here.
The animation, developed by Latoya Egwuekwe using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, presents a time-lapse image of U.S. unemployment over the last three years. In January of 2007, a year prior to the "official" start of this recession, the map looked like this:
Counties in gray and beige had relatively high employment (97% or more), while the counties in darker colors had higher unemployment. The national unemployment rate at that time was 4.6%.
Fast-forward to December of last year, the most recent month for which statistics are available, and the map looks like this:
In just three years the national unemployment rate had more than doubled to 9.3%, and that didn't account for millions of under-employed Americans and those who had abandoned altogether their search for work.
The two images I've posted are plenty startling enough, but you really need to go to the animation page and watch the stain of joblessness creep across our country.
Recovery? My ass.
I've been back working for about four months now, but I haven't forgotten the pain of the preceding two-plus years. I'm also neither naive nor so ideologically deluded as to think that we've "recovered" from anything.
Every time I've taken a vacation, long or short, there's always a pile of work to greet me when I return. I spent yesterday digging out from under a mountain -- dozens of e-mails and voice-mails reminded me that it's a pleasure to be employed.
No worries, no complaints -- it's all good.
My family and I got a late start Sunday morning, chalking up our tardiness to exhaustion and an extraordinarily comfortable motel room. Once we got rolling, however, we clicked off miles efficiently, almost effortlessly. We marveled at spectacular icefalls draping the highway cuts, made a game of spotting deer grazing by the roadside and generally enjoyed the bright, clear day.
I tend to resist detours on a home-stretch run, but as we approached northern West Virginia I saw that we had time to grant my wife's wish to stop at one of her old haunts. The 45-minute side-trip for comfort-food, Morgantown-style, was well worth the time we took.
Mrs. KintlaLake ordered up her usual burrito, as did our younger spawn. The older boy had sweet'n'spicy tortilla chips and I dined on chili with a side of fries'n'bleu, the restaurant's signature fare.
I think it was the 18-year-old who noticed an old phone booth outside the front windows. I snapped a quick photo with my cell phone, appreciating fully the techno-irony of what I was doing.
The final three-and-a-half-hour dash back to central Ohio was pleasantly uneventful and relatively quiet, each of us keeping to our own thoughts. Likewise, our re-entry into these imperfect quarters was without incident.
Somehow, I believe that our dinner stop had something to do with all of that, putting us at well-fed peace and serving as the perfect cap on a great road trip.
I'm sitting here in my office once again, drained of physical and emotional energy. We made it back to the house in good time late today, avoiding bad weather and beating the sun to the horizon.
Crossing the snow-covered mountains on I-68 was a pleasure during daylight hours, by the way.
My late father's oaken tool chest rests on my workbench. It represents the tangible cargo collected over the past 52 hours, but we brought home much more than that.
My family and I drew closer, grew stronger and gained a better understanding of the connections we share with each other. Through hours of conversation and countless moments that didn't require words, the four of us are more than we were on Friday afternoon.
Treasures fill that old tool chest and, thanks to a road trip, my heart is full as well.
Interstate 95 took us south and I-64 east to Williamsburg after dawn this morning. We rolled up to the condo where my mother and my sister live just after noon.
Thus began a three-hour visit with two people I hadn't seen in five-plus years. It's a long story, and today wasn't quite the catharsis you might expect.
That said, the time we spent there was pleasant and long enough.
Turning back the way we'd come, next we prepared for another reunion of sorts, this time with one of my wife's old friends.
The deep snow was melting fast today up in the mid-Virginia foothills, making the unpaved roads muddy enough to deserve the label "quagmire." It was dark by the time we slithered to a stop in front of a log cabin hidden in the woods.
There are so many ways to describe my wife's friend -- Dutch, hippie, stroke victim, widow, free spirit. Tonight we ferried her to a store selling her brand of unfiltered smokes and took her out to dinner.
"Memorable" doesn't come close to describing the evening.
We'll slog back home tomorrow. Now I lay me down to sleep...
It looks like my family and I will begin our road trip, postponed once already, late this afternoon.
My wife is off to work and the spawns are on their way to school. I was at my desk working before 5am, planning to wrap things up by noon. At that point I'll pack, prepare the TrailBlazer, await the return of the rest of my family and we'll head east toward the mountains.
I've mapped our route, along with a couple of alternates in case of bad weather or man-made hiccups, and this trip we'll bring our GPS. We need to make good time to accomplish the 1,200-mile whirlwind adventure in two-and-a-half days, so I have my fingers crossed that the main roads, at least, will be clear.
When I start packing this afternoon I'll be considering more than the requisite toothbrush and change of clothes. I'll include provisions for first aid, communications, food, water, fire and yes, defense. (The last, incidentally, will account for two states that haven't yet codified reciprocity agreements with Ohio.) Fortunately, it should be a simple matter of collecting four grab'n'go bags and a few other items.
I am, by at least two definitions, anxious, both looking forward to the all-too-rare weekend trip and dreading hours-long drones along iffy Interstate highways, especially at night.
After a long wait, Bark River Knives has produced another run of its stellar Bravo-1. Until this week, dealers' stock had dwindled to only a few or dried up altogether. Now, to the delight of Barkaholics in particular and knife knuts in general, they're back.
We have three of these masterpieces in the KintlaLake household, so we won't be joining the feeding frenzy -- but, if you'll pardon my unequivocal recommendation, you should.
With all due respect to other makers and other blades, I know of no better all-around, do-it-all, damn-it-all, would-you-like-fries-with-that knife available today.
Bark River offers the Bravo-1 in an array of handle materials, as is the case with all of its knives, but I go for black canvas Micarta, preferably matte. It's the least expensive choice and arguably the most durable. The Kydex sheath that's standard-issue with a synthetic-handled Bravo-1 isn't to my liking but is easily remedied.
In case you missed it, that's another recommendation.
Finally, if you're more of a fan of stainless steel (as opposed to the original Bravo-1's A-2 tool steel), you'll have to wait a bit longer -- word is that another run of the CPM-154 Bravo-1 SS will be out in a few weeks.
This latest winter storm, our third in two weeks, began yesterday morning. It snowed steadily for about 20 hours, continuing in squalls well after daybreak today.
Atypically, metro Columbus and its surrounding communities took the brunt of the blast -- usually we dodge the big accumulations, but not this time. All of the schools (including Ohio State's main campus) and many businesses are shut down, and what's not closed is delayed.
It's great.
I would've liked to get down to the woods this afternoon but settled for experiencing our winter wonderland during a quick trip to the post office. My TrailBlazer sat in the driveway, which had been shoveled clean before dusk last night, under ten inches of snow. Once it was cleared off I got underway, the little four-wheel-driver churning eagerly up and out of the semi-plowed neighborhood.
I roosted repeatedly, gleefully, broadsliding at every opportunity just to annoy the locals. This is, at long last, winter -- and isn't that what winter is for?
As we wrapped up our purchases Saturday afternoon, Mrs. KintlaLake and I were asked about magazines. The LCP and the P22 were supplied with just one apiece, so we bought two more for each pistol.
That decision, like many others we make, came down to a single fundamental principle of preparedness:
"Two is one, and one is none."
It's a truism closely related to Murphy's Law, "shit happens" and "best-laid plans" -- having a tool or a plan is essential, but having a backup can save your life.
My wife and I view magazines as consumable items, arguably the weakest mechanical link in the armed-defense chain. Being prepared with two loaded mags is a no-brainer, really, and for us that means three, assuring us of two -- which is, in principle, one.
Beyond this case-in-point are myriad other examples of our pattern of three-fers, notably:
Starting a fire (matches, lighter, firesteel); Purifying water (boiling, chemicals, filtration); Communication (mobile phone, GMRS, CB); and Evacuation (three escape routes, three shelters).
It's less versatility than contingency. Nessmuk and Kephart advocated their trios, a concept evolving from the need to accomplish multiple tasks, not from a wish for redundancy. Their approach is instructive, however, if not quite parallel, and it can be useful when extended to the rest of a preparedness scheme.
It's a mindset thing.
And so, whenever possible, we prefer to have three. Actually, specific to magazines, we consider it wise to have ten (at least) for each firearm -- but that's another story for another day.
In yesterday's post I assembled a to-scale image showing the relative sizes of the Walther P22 and Ruger LCP. Perhaps it'd also be useful to illustrate those new-to-us pistols compared to the pair of Glocks they've joined.
Most readers probably are familiar with the ubiquitous G19. With that as a reference point, then, today's image makes it clear that my wife and I have added a couple of significantly down-sized handguns to our family of arms.
What's not obvious is how much slimmer the P22 and LCP are than the G19 and G26 -- single-stack magazines vs. double-stacks, along with the Walther's diet of .22LR, are (in part) to thank for that.
In closing, some caveats. First, the Glocks remain our primaries. We're more familiar with them at this point, of course, and the 9x19 round gives us a much wider variety of options for effective defense.
And that brings up the whole question of caliber. Conventional wisdom instructs that carrying anything that doesn't begin with a 4 and end with a 5 is good only for knocking cans off of fenceposts. For a variety of reasons, based on our own experience and that of others far wiser, we don't subscribe to that.
When invited to a critical personal-defense incident, rule #1 is be armed -- no point in pining for a "better" gun at home in the safe. Whatever we're carrying at the time -- 9mm, .380, .22, .45 -- is what my wife and I will use to defend ourselves and our family.
In that dynamic moment, an elephant-gun round that misses its mark is useless. Shot placement is the key, regardless of caliber, and that happens reliably and consistently only through training and practice, which remains our focus.
Singer, not song.
Incidentally, I still feel pretty good about complying with the Fred Thompson Rule. I've posted only stock images, not photos of our strategically modified arms, and I've said nothing about our tactics or choice of defensive rounds. My disclosures comprise only a fraction of what we have, what we do.
As I've said, "to do otherwise would be imprudent."
Mrs. KintlaLake and I did indeed go shopping yesterday, spending some carefully managed funds we'd set aside for the purpose. It was part personal-defense acquisition, part Valentine's Day gift exchange.
At the risk of breaking the Fred Thompson Rule -- "I own a couple of guns, but I'm not going to tell you what they are or where they are" -- I'll divulge what we brought home.
For my Valentine, who's long struggled to conceal a small-but-chunky Glock 26 on her slender frame, I bought a RugerLCP. This ultra-pocketable pistol, with six rounds of .380 Auto on tap, will serve her better simply because she'll be inclined to carry it more. It'll live in a black-leather DeSantis Trickster, at least to start with. She is, in a word, ecstatic.
My missus marked the occasion by getting me a Walther P22 in "military" (OD) trim. Certainly, ten rounds of .22LR won't replace my Glock 19's 15 rounds of 9mm, but the P22 will be a worthy BUG and ideal for logging cheap trigger time. Another benefit, I think, will be drilling on a different manual-of-arms. I'm still mulling over my own carry options, although I do have a few ideas.
The whole buying experience, by the way, which took place at an independent outdoor-sports retailer northeast of here, was just super. It's a big store, but the crew behind the gun counter are knowledgeable and personable. They worked together, even though they were take-a-number busy, to make sure that my wife and I were informed as well as satisfied. We'll definitely do business there again.
We decided to push back our road trip by a week. Eyeing weather and travel conditions along the route, it just made (common) sense.
And so my family and I will settle into our regular weekend routine here in suburban alcohell -- relaxing, doing laundry, maybe making a trip to the grocery to re-stock our separate pantry. Stuff like that.
In this house that's not our own, the four of us have made our physical home in the chilly comfort of an unfinished basement. It's where we cook and eat, where I work, where the spawns watch TV and play video games and where my wife feels safe. We sleep peacefully in three upstairs bedrooms, our other booze- and dysfunction-free zone, and we remit our share of household utilities to our antagonistic hosts but pay them little attention. It all must sound odd -- and ok, it is -- but it works for now.
Outside these walls the neighborhood is frozen, up to its pretentious knees in white. When I took the dogs out this morning I saw that another half-inch had fallen since midnight. More is on the way, they say, tomorrow and Monday. Fine by me.
Events in the wider world, as reported from Huntsville and elsewhere, have me wondering if the political undercurrent that threatens our Second Amendment rights might be tempted soon to rise into a wave. Perhaps my wife and I will add a shopping excursion to our Saturday rituals.
It's one trip that we shouldn't postpone any longer.
I spotted this Hank Williams, Jr. music video this morning. For me it struck edgy echoes of others I've posted on KintlaLake Blog -- "Close to the Land" and "This is My Home."
Put away your redneck stereotypes, now, 'cause country isn't about politics or parties, candidates or campaigns, Jesus or NASCAR.
It's about precious liberties -- good People living life simply, well and by their own choices.
