CURSE OF THE SNAKE

Or How I Decided To Get A Cheaply Made STABO Rig... And How The Universe Turned Against Me

Today's Top Gearbox is a wee bit different. Instead of choking the shit out of my new KJW USP Tactical (which, on a side note, is doing fine), I'm gonna talk gear. More exactly: a STABO Rig - rare as rocking horse shit, hard to find a repro and absolutely necessary for the right impression of Naked Snake. Yeah. Naked fucking Snake. I have the hair, I have the voice, I nearly have the uniform. What I need is a decked-out M56 or LC1 belt (Davis wire buckle a must) and a STABO for a good start.
I managed to find a guy who would put it together for me cheaply - if I sourced the materials, of course. My girlfriend (not anymore, fuckdammit!) reportedly got the materials and reportedly sewn the harness herself - of course, it was all real like a nuclear strike against fucking Saudi Arabia. So, suddenly, I was on my own. Like a real Legendary Soldier. So, I had a contact to US-based shop that, as I soon found out, was all fucking out of two important pieces of stuff: black v-rings and silver snap hooks, so I couldn't put a harness together until mid August. What's worse, it was selling the necessary webbing for over 100 bucks a 100-yard roll, which was waaay above my needs - all of that rounded up equals one real nasty case of a Curse of the Snake. Soddin' buggeryfuck.
I started frantically searching everywhere. The first part - hefty 70 feet of webbing, just enough to make two harnesses, for me and my good friend Scotty Killingsworth - cost me 75 bucks shipped, which is an equivalent of an arm, a leg and a kidney, but if you split the costs, it's $37.50 for each one of us - which still leaves over 120 bucks for snap hooks, v-rings, adjusters and other minor shit like work fees and small but important amounts of 1" webbing (we set ourselves a goal not to go over $100 on a single rig). Locating an UK-based company dealing in aforementioned hardware seems to be another sign of breaking the curse - if only they can be arsed (as the limeys say) to ship my wee little order to Central Europe, where I can pack it up along with the just-ordered webbing and toss it all at the tailor.