Packing A Canon

Delta has announced a new Economy Comfort Class of seating for international routs.  The seats have  ”up to” four inches extra leg room, and let you recline 50% further.   I’ll be curious to see how this works out.

Economy Comfort Seating

4″ is only about the width of your hand, but at least this means someone 6′ tall won’t be hitting their knees on the seat in front of them. The extra recline sounds nice, and will probably be very helpful when trying to sleep on international flights. The seat also comes with free spirits, in addition to the beer/wine that are already complimentary on international flights. This, too, will help with sleeping.  :)

They’re going to let you board early, which doesn’t seem beneficial on a long flight. For domestic flights, overhead space is at a premium, and you need to grab it early. But I’ve never had problems with overheads on international flights. There’s already more space up there,  and people tend to check their bags for such a long trip.

I’m planning a trip to Asia soon, and hope to be able to find upgraded seats on my trans-Pacific flights…but if not, these Economy Comfort seats should a step-up from cattle class.

Last month some goon at the Newark airport stole my flashlight…but I’m okay with that now, because Delta reimbursed me for the cost and the replacement arrived today, and it ROCKS!!!!  My old light isn’t made anymore, so I decided on the Surefire 6PX Pro.  It’s a dual-output LED flashlight, with a 15 lumen low output and 200 lumen high output setting.  Trust me when I say that 200 lumens is blinding.  In a normally lit room, looking at it shining on the palm of my hand hurts my eyes.  If someone were to have it shine directly in their eyes, they’d be seeing spots for a while.

I think the Surefire marketing team has missed the mark, because the most amazing feature of this light isn’t even mentioned in their literature or videos.  Get this…when you first press on the tail cap, you get the low beam every time.  This is great, because the vast majority of times that you’ll use the light, you only want the low output.  And if you don’t want the high output, you don’t have to cycle the switch past the high setting every time.  To get the high output, you release the button and press it again within two seconds.   You can even do this without fully “clicking” on the light.  So you can almost instantly get the high beam by tap-tapping the button.  Then if you want the high beam to stay on,  just push till it clicks.  Or click it on to the low, then if you need to you can click it off and press again quickly to get to high beam.

The 15 lumen low beam will run for 45 hours on a pair of batteries, or you can run it at 200 lumens for 2.5 hours.  Given the very long life at low setting, I’m sure I’ll use this light a whole lot more than I used my old light.  The 123A batteries aren’t cheap, but 45 hour of run time will last me a LONG time.

So what does this have to do with travel?  It’s a safety thing.  There are lots of times that you may need additional light:  searching your bag in a poorly lit area, checking-out a rental car at night,visibility during a power outage, etc.  A good/bright flashlight can also be a very effective defensive weapon.  When traveling by air these days, you can’t carry any kind of weapons at all.  But a flashlight is still legal.  If an attacker can’t see you, they can’t effectively continue to attack you.  A super bright light will temporarily blind someone, giving you precious time to strike back, or relocate.  I carried my other light with me wherever I traveled, and it usually lived in my brief case.  The only down side of the new light is that there’s no clip on it, so I’ll have to be careful not to lose it.

The 6PX Pro is made of anodized aluminum and retails for $79.  The G2X Pro is a polymer bodied version of the same light, and costs only $65.

Surefire 6PX Pro