The Grey Nato - EP 14 - "TGN Summit"

Published on Tue, 02 Aug 2016 09:03:02 -0400

Synopsis

Jason Heaton visits James Stacey in Vancouver for a weekend of hiking, scuba diving, good food, and watch talk. They recount their adventures, including a foggy hike up St. Mark's Summit, a wall dive at Kelvin Grove, and issues with diving equipment that required a trip to a local dive shop. They discuss the watches they wore, like the Oris ProPilot Altimeter, Doxa Mission 31, and vintage Doxa T-Graph, as well as new strap discoveries like the Watch Gecko Rubbernado straps. They also answer questions from listeners about recommendations for mechanical GMT watches around $2,500 and watches under $1,500 to commemorate a graduation.

Transcript

Speaker
James Stacey Hello and welcome to my living room. For episode 14, Jason actually came to Vancouver. He's here in my house.
Jason Heaton Yep, here I am.
James Stacey We're in the same room, staring into each other's eyes. And for two obsessive introverts, it's nearly unbearable. This is The Graynado, and I'm James Stacy.
Jason Heaton And of course, I'm Jason Heaton. Just to set the scene here, there's some dive gear drying out on the balcony next to our muddy hiking boots. We've got our trusty glasses of Oban 14-year-old scotch here at our sides. And I actually hardly wore my rain jacket this weekend, and I might have even gotten a little sunburn. Yeah, we had the full spread, the full Vancouver spread.
James Stacey Beautiful day, a less-than-beautiful day. We didn't get any heavy rain, so that was kind of a plus, but... Yeah, well, maybe tomorrow. There's always hope, right? Yeah, we still got tomorrow morning.
Jason Heaton Yeah, so I fly home tomorrow at noon. We're recording this on a Sunday evening. And just so you know, it stays light here in Vancouver until about 1030 at night, which was a bit of a surprise. I mean, I'm from a northern climate, but it's pretty crazy out here. You get nice long days.
James Stacey No doubt. Yeah, we really do. Especially this time of year. I mean, they get really short in the winter. But this time of year, you've got lots of time for adventures and shenanigans and such.
Jason Heaton Yeah. No, it's really made it... Allowed for a really luxurious pace for all of our fun stuff. So there's a saying, divers always say, plan your dive and dive your plan. And we certainly didn't want to over plan our weekend. But we kind of had this rough plan that we would hike on Saturday. I arrived on Friday. We would hike on Saturday and then dive on Sunday. That was kind of just the basic skeleton of our weekend. And then everything else was kind of roughly optional. And it was a blast. We did that. I mean, we pulled that off. And then in between that, we had some great Some great Thai food, some great Indian food, some great sushi. I got to see quite a bit of Vancouver, driving here and there and going out for food and drink.
James Stacey Yeah, we made it up to Squamish. Check out the Chief.
Jason Heaton Yeah, I went to Squamish, which is a place I've always heard about for its climbing scene in the mountains, and that was really fun to see. I even got to meet Jason from Helios Watch Company, who's based just up the block here. So it was really a great time. Yeah, we've done really well. Yeah. Um, so I arrived on Friday at about midday after a delayed flight from Minneapolis and kind of settled in here, unpacked, sorted gear, got my dive gear all squared away for Sunday. And then we, we just walked down to, uh, you know, I'm staying at James's place and we were, we're not far from a place called, uh, what's it Granville Island, right?
James Stacey Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So Granville Island's like, uh, it's, Essentially an island under the Granville Street Bridge, and it's all kind of touristy spots and shops and and spots to sit and have a drink or you know a great public market and you got some Snacks there, so I figure that's the my favorite kind of welcome pattern when people come to town is just stroll down Such a beautiful day, and there's a lot of people out, but we you know you wouldn't have to drive from where I live So it was a 10-minute walk.
Jason Heaton I think and you know there was a distillery there And, uh, we got some, I, you know, I, I was, I wanted to stock up with some food for our hike on Saturday. So I, I wanted kind of Pacific Northwest staples or what I would consider staples or I guess, emblematic foods of the region. So I, I had this quest for salmon jerky and, uh, Rainier cherries, which are two things I really love from, from kind of this part of the world.
James Stacey I had not had a, had a, uh, Rainier cherry before and they're delicious. Yeah. Much, uh, in my opinion, much more palatable than. a standard cherry, especially if you're going to eat a bunch of them. A standard cherry is just very sweet.
Jason Heaton Yeah. So that was fun. And then we kind of ambled back and got squared away for the evening, got ready for our early morning for the hike, got some Indian food from a place just up the block. And that was it. That was Friday. And then Saturday morning, You know, it gets light at 5 o'clock. I was up at 5.20 and then you came out.
James Stacey I didn't get up quite that early. We got up early and we got out of the house at a good time. We're going to go hiking and it was kind of, we were basing it roughly on the weather. The original plan was Joffrey Lakes, if anybody knows the area, it's up above Pemberton. And we just couldn't really make it sit with our timeframe to also be able to get the scuba tanks that afternoon. So we pivoted and went with St. Mark's Summit, kind of a signature North Vancouver hike. which is from the Cypress ski area and takes you kind of into the woods and then along kind of a pretty mellow climb up to a big lookout and it's a fantastic lookout it really is and I'll be telling Jason how fantastic it is for a long time because it was full-on fogged out we were just in the full-on cloud you could see about 30 feet yeah so the forecast I think the forecast for the weekend was like
Jason Heaton Partly cloudy. Partly cloudy, you know, decent day, good temperature. And admittedly, it was great for hiking. It was kind of cool and misty. Very X-Files in the woods. Yeah, yeah. A little bit of fog. I mean, we were literally hiking through pea soup fog for a while there. And it made for, you know, I don't know when it had rained last or if it's just always like that, but it was muddy.
James Stacey It was real muddy. Yeah, that trail's definitely not always like that. I think it just A mix of maybe some cooler temperatures and a couple days of a cloud sitting in that area right on that mountain.
Jason Heaton It was really muddy. Just for the listeners here, when James says it's a mellow hike, here's a guy who's at least 15 years younger than me and he's been training to climb Mount Baker for about the past three or four months. For me, it was a good, I would call it, intermediate hike. I wouldn't necessarily Say it was easy, but it was wonderful. Yeah, I wouldn't call it easy either. It was a great hike. There was kind of some all fours climbing and slipping around on the slippery roots. About the first half, maybe the first third of the hike was sort of a crushed limestone or gravel-y sort of trail that sort of zigzagged up the side of the hill, the mountain there through the woods. And then it kind of turned into some washed out sort of muddy, you know, root strewn rocky trail. But it was very doable. It was fine. It was safe. And I enjoyed that hiking. I mean, we don't – where I'm from out in Minnesota, we get certainly great hiking. But the hiking here is just – it just felt like classic Pacific Northwest. You know, the big old-growth trees. You know, you get what – like firs and sequoias and things. It was great. And I think we set off because we got a nice early start. You know, we drove to Squamish first to see if maybe the clouds would lift. and then came back down to St.
James Stacey Mark's. It might have been worse by the time we got back to North Dam. Yeah, it didn't improve.
Jason Heaton But I think we still got an early enough start that, you know, we beat the big crowds, because on the way back down, apparently it's a fairly popular weekend hike.
James Stacey Yeah, we passed a lot of people.
Jason Heaton Yeah, there were a lot of people headed up when we were headed down, which was nice to kind of beat the crowd to the top.
James Stacey And it gave us kind of a real-life example to see the Oris. Yes. Pro-pilot altimeter.
Jason Heaton Yes, so, you know, we got to throw a watch element in here. I mean, it wouldn't be the Granado without adventuring in watches, and I had my AORUS ProPILOT Altimeter, the watch I recently had written up for Hodinkee and have had for a little over a year, and it performed great. I calibrated it at the trailhead, which was, I believe, I'm trying to think here, I think it was, well, in feet, it's a feet version of that watch. A little over 3,000 feet. Slightly over 3,000 feet. And I didn't refer to it a lot during the climb, but, you know, we got close to the summit and it was at around 4,500, I believe. Sure enough, you know, we sat down at the summit, had a little snack. I pulled out my salmon jerky and rainier cherries and we fended off the chipmunks and... A couple of dogs. A couple of dogs. And then... And there's a trail marker at the top that gives the elevation. And sure enough, it was it was dead on.
James Stacey It was as accurate as it could be given its resolution. But I mean, like we were laughing because like, why wouldn't it be accurate? But yeah, it's way more charming for that watch to be accurate than like a Suunto Vector or my Phoenix or something like that. Like it. That's a really cool watch. It's much bigger in terms of thickness than I expected. I don't know why I expected it to be thinner than it is. It has an entire mechanical altimeter in it. But Very wearable, really cool strap. You know, Oris is just really locked in on straps these days. Nice deployant on it. It's a really, really cool watch and that mechanism's pretty charming just in how mechanical it is, how different it is while still providing the same thing I would get from a Phoenix for a hike like that.
Jason Heaton Yeah, yeah, it was fun. I mean, you know, for a watch geek to have a watch, I mean, they sell it as a pilot's watch, but for me, I'm not being a pilot and I'm guessing for pilots it's probably not as applicable as something like hiking. I just love it. It's fun. It's my hiking watch. It's kind of my outdoors watch.
James Stacey We drove down, I mean there's a big access road, many, many kilometers to get up to the Cypress ski area and driving down you could watch the Yeah, it was dropping. Yeah.
Jason Heaton Indication fall, which is... Pretty much took it all the way down to close to sea level, you know, just a couple hundred feet above, you know, wherever the road skirts along the seashore there. And, and, uh, yeah, it was, it dropped from, you know, 3,000 at the parking lot down to a couple hundred down at the, down at the bottom, which was really fun. And then I also, I guess I didn't really think of this, but I've been, I've had this sort of long-term test going on. I know we've talked about, uh, hiking gear and shoes and boots, and I've been asked over the years by various people. I know James has as well about, you know, recommendations for shoes. And I've, uh, we both kind of were testing boots, I guess, to a certain degree, James has got a kind of a newer pair of Helly Hansen hiking boots. And I've been sort of had this long-term test going with some Arc'teryx. I think they're called the Bora, uh, GTX, um, boots. And they're really a unique hiking boot. Um, they're, they're a two-part boot, the outer, part of the boot is, they're kind of modeled after mountaineering boots that have like an outer shell and then an inner bootie. And the inner bootie is actually, it's red and it's a Gore-Tex bootie with a sort of a slightly formed rubber sole, fairly thin. And then the outer is a fully synthetic boot with a really nice grippy, great rubber outsole and some It's speed lacing, but they're locked so you can lock the bottom, you know, bottom part of your foot, bottom half of the boot and the top half separately. So if you want to loosen the top for going, you know, uphill, you can and downhill, tighten them up or whatever you want to do. And they worked really well. They were grippy in that, that slippery mud and my feet stayed dry and they were super comfy all the way. So, uh, you know, my initial opinion of that boot wasn't great from a trip I'd taken last year. But I'm coming around to them. I wore them in Colorado, too, and I really liked them.
James Stacey How'd your Helly Hansons work? I thought they looked great. I bought a pair of my Scarpa's, the approach shoes. I want to say they're called the Crux. They're just demolished. I've gotten them wet so many times and muddy so many times. And on the hike in from the car to base camp at Baker, that's what I wore. And they were fine. I mean, my feet got wet, but it doesn't really bother me that much. But I did find that I was getting like some midfoot pain, some plantar fasciitis style pain. Yeah. And I'm just really fearful of that as someone who runs with some frequency. So I read up a little bit, just not even that much. And I found a good deal in Vancouver on these Hallie Hansons, nearly 50% off. They're called the Rapide Mid Mesh HT. And they're kind of like a classic-ish mid height.
Unknown Yeah.
James Stacey hiking boot, but they're remarkably light. When you hand them to somebody, it's pretty surprising. Yeah. Really grippy. They have kind of a synthetic suede, nubuck, um, mid span upper and they're water resistant right to the laces. So like, I don't really care about if I step in a puddle and some feet, some water gets into my shoes, like that's life. Just avoid the puddle if you can. But I really like where they're waterproof up to the laces because I can spray them off in the sink. Oh, right. And even though this is kind of like, it looks like a faux leather, sort of treatment, you know, it's kind of a semi-technical boot with a big sole. And I think they look really cool and super comfortable. I've put maybe 20, 25 kilometers on them so far with not even a hint of a hotspot or any blisters or anything. So that's a success. And then I'll put another 30 on them next weekend for my second attempt on Baker. So I'm thrilled to have those and that they seem to be working. I'm always pretty scared when I get a new running shoe or a new hiking shoe that I've picked one that's going to hurt my foot. Yeah. In a way that requires me to rehabilitate it. I had some running shoes that gave me some fasciitis a couple of years ago and it took me months to repair. Yeah. And now I'm just a real chicken around it. I've thrown away shoes that I've only had for 50 K. Yeah.
Unknown Yeah.
Jason Heaton I had a real, real run in with plantar fasciitis the year I trained for and did climb Mount Rainier three years ago or whenever it was. And I, I trained by running, hiking and doing a lot of cycling and I, By the time I actually did the climb on Mount Rainier, I had my foot so taped up for support for my arch because I just had this horrible plantar fasciitis that I looked like I almost had a full-on plaster cast on my foot. But it did, it took a long time to fix. Ultimately, I think I solved it with orthotics. But yeah, shoes, they can be the greatest shoes, get the greatest reviews, but it's really all about fit.
James Stacey Yeah, it's all about your foot. And then the thing to keep in mind, that sort of connective tissue doesn't heal like muscle. Muscle takes like a month to start generating new. new tissue, whereas, uh, the connective tissues, you're looking at 270 to 290 days to start generating new cells. So rehab, if you get something like that, you really need to like baby it and go on YouTube or talk to a physio and learn how to wrap it. There's a specific wrap for where the pain is on your foot. A lot of you probably don't care about this, but I do feel like in our group of listeners, there's a few people who are like, I should be wrapping my foot, I should be icing it. Just go online and figure out that there is a method to it. St. Mark's is 11 or 12 kilometers maybe. To say that it's mellow isn't so much to say that it's easy. It's uphill the whole way going in. I'm saying it's mellow simply because there's no exposure or danger. You can go at any pace you want. which is, I think what I like about these hikes is you could take just about anyone on that hike and just go really slow if they didn't want to. I mean, we did it in just a few hours, including a nice break at the top, which is about roughly the quoted time, maybe a little faster. And we weren't taxed at all. That was a nice, a nice hike. And it's nice because, you know, we didn't have a sunny day, but if we did, it's, it's a relatively covered experience. You're in deep, pretty deep, tall woods, which can also be nice while still getting you some altitude and the view at the end, You can go on my Flickr, Jason, you also can go on my Flickr. Um, there's some pictures on there of the view at the end. I think I put them on Instagram too, you know, probably the better part of a year and a half ago, but there's some pretty killer view into Howe Sound. But I did, we did drive up to Squamish and you saw that view. And then for diving today, we did that drive a few times cause I forgot to put gas in the car. Yeah.
Jason Heaton That drive, you know, for those that haven't been out here, um, it's just this stunning drive. I think, I think, you know, James, you've lived here, what, five, six years and it's, uh, You're maybe a little immune to it or jaded, but it is truly spectacular. And the road headed north out of Vancouver is just stunning. It skirts right along the shoreline. And to your right, you get these peaks that rise really dramatically, especially when you get that sort of low cloud cover that sort of plays around up around the peaks. And then to your left, you've got the sea, you know, down steep below you, you know, ships and sailboats and things down to the left. And it's just winds and it's a great driving road too. I mean, it's just windy roads and it's in good shape. Yeah, 99's a treat. No doubt. Yeah. I mean, even driving between the locations was spectacular. You just, you just, um, it's a, it's a pleasure.
James Stacey Yeah. Coming back from our second dive. Yeah. We had like a really nice sun. There was a lot of sun in the area at that point through the clouds. And I mean, it's, you just get a thousand mile view of, you know, how sounds essentially a big, uh, inlet, a big Fjord of some sort. And, pretty steep rises on both sides, not unlike a Milford Sound. Less dramatic, I think, than what I've seen in the photos of Milford Sound.
Jason Heaton Not by much. It's pretty cool. It's bigger. It's wider, so it's not quite that amphitheater effect, but what was really cool is you look out across the water and you get sort of layers of mountains, The closer ones in are darker and then you get shades of gray kind of going back.
James Stacey And then you start getting the really rocky and that are still holding glacier this time of year. Yeah, yeah. There's some great stuff out there.
Jason Heaton Yeah, I put up a photo on Instagram. I'll certainly, as I download and process some photos from the trip, put up more. But I put up a photo of this place where we dove today, Porto Cove. And, you know, it's just great. I mean, you get this inlet and it's a place where people go kayaking. and diving and, I suppose, fishing and swimming and everything else. And then, you know, you've got mountains. To me, it's a place like this or, you know, some of the southern parts of Alaska or the Seattle, Oregon coast, you know, Pacific Northwest coast. It's just, it's almost the perfect climate, the perfect terrain, geography, or, you know, it's just, it's wonderful. It's an adventurer's paradise.
James Stacey Yeah, no doubt. The accessibility here is really high. You know, we were not even 30 minutes if you're because we go early in the morning to get to the hike. Yeah. And if I had remembered to put gas in the car, I'm sure we would have made it to Kelvin Grove first dive site this morning. Yeah. Well, on time. Yeah. Adventures being adventures. We ran into some difficulties diving this morning. So Kelvin Grove's if you're a diver in Vancouver and you haven't dove Kelvin Grove, I think Jason would support My suggestion, you should really go out and dive Kelvin Grove. It's easily my favorite feature dive. Great site. And how sound. But the people who live there don't necessarily want divers around. So they've allotted just a few parking spots. We got there. We were first. We're locked in. We kind of laboriously put some gear down by the in road to the little park that leads you into the dive area. And then we went and got some gear on. turned on a tank and in Jason's first stage, the part of the regulator system that connects directly to the tank is just hissing like badly.
Jason Heaton Yeah. And usually when that happens, it's a faulty O-ring. It's just this, you know, cheap little rubber ring. It's easy to replace. You swap it out because they get kind of mashed, flattened over time. And so we decided we would swap tanks and see if it worked on James's regulator. And the tank was fine. The O-ring was fine. So it was clearly something with my regulator. And I just noticed that the yoke, which is the kind of the clamp that holds the tank to the regulator, was suspiciously loose. So we hoofed it back up to the car. James, at this point, is, you know, he's half dressed in his dry suit with a fluffy underwear, you know, full expedition weight unisuit on underneath. And I've got my, I opted for a seven millimeter hooded wetsuit and I had that half on. So we're both just pouring with sweat, hauling all this gear back up the hill to the car. And, you know, we tried a few things. Tried a wrench that I had, then there was another guy who had pulled up and his wrench didn't fit. So it required a little bit of adapting or, you know, ad-libbing. Perseverance. Perseverance. And so we, I guess our conclusion was, fortunately there were a couple of dive shops in Vancouver that were open on Sunday, and one of them is called Sea to Sky. divers or dive shop and they opened at nine and the timing was perfect. We drove back. Unfortunately, we had to load everything back in the car, drive 20 minutes.
James Stacey Maybe 20 minutes to North Van. It was really not too bad.
Jason Heaton 20 minutes back to North Vancouver, found the dive shop and went in and had a really pleasant experience. The young guy there, the tech, took a look at the rag, tightened up the nut that holds the yoke to the main body of the regulator, tested it for leaks on a tank that he had there. And we were off. We went back. Oh, and just a little side note, while I was there, I was digging around, you know, just looking around their shop, and they had an old Sportsways Water Lung Vintage Regulator, which I tried to get them to sell. You can post a photo of that, too. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You took a photo of that. That's really cool.
James Stacey Check Instagram for that. It was really cool, and they didn't want to sell it. Yeah.
Jason Heaton I might have to troll eBay for an old regulator. But anyway, so yeah, then we drove back down to, or up to Kelvin Grove, And all went well, you know. It was a great dive.
James Stacey Probably one of the best dives I've ever had there.
Jason Heaton Yeah, it was awesome. We suited up and walked in. It wasn't too cold. To give you a sense of the dive site or the setup there, you know, as James mentioned, it's in like a little sort of exclusive neighborhood. You park up higher up on a hill in a small parking lot and then we suited up at the car with all of our gear and then you walk down a fairly steep paved road to a little gravel trail that then leads you down to this shoreline, this little cove, beautiful little cove, inlet, Pebbly Beach, so to speak. And, you know, you wade into the water, and it's, you know, we swam out a little bit on the surface to the edge of this rock, rocky sort of cliff, and descended. And it's what is referred to as a wall dive, so it's a vertical site. Cliff underwater. Yeah, it's a cliff underwater. And it's kind of the way the mountains go into the sea here. There's not, like, when you think about the Caribbean or some of these places where it's a reef, You know, it's kind of like you go down a little ways and then it's all flat bottom and there's coral, but this is, this is vertical. It's a vertical dive site, which is, which makes for, you know, really fun.
James Stacey It feels like you're flying. And, uh, once we were deep enough, the visibility was great. There was a fair amount of wildlife. Yeah. Uh, you know, lots of little critters in, in the rock. Yeah. And really it's the, the overall environment's not necessarily about finding a specific animal or doing a specific thing. It's really just a dramatic scene because, When you're going out, there's just nothing below and to your left. It's open space. The same as if you were rock climbing. It's just open space. It's just green. Dark green.
Jason Heaton I think with wall dives it reminds me of, you know, you watch these wingsuit jumpers or base jumpers. That's really what it's like. I mean you're cruising alongside a cliff.
James Stacey And in 45 minutes we go about a quarter of a kilometer. Not even. You don't go very far.
Jason Heaton So we did, our dive was 35 or 40 minutes long and the water temperature in Fahrenheit was 50. What is that in centigrade roughly? I think it's about eight or nine. Eight or nine centigrade. Maybe a little more. So it was chilly. You know, James had a dry suit so it was pretty nice and toasty. I was in a wet suit and I was okay. It was fine.
James Stacey And I had your Sola, your Wicked flashlight, which is just so much more color, so much brighter than my flashlight. You could see a lot more as far as the animals. And then that dive has one of my most favorite exits. Oh yeah. Which is you end up in a shallow space that's deep enough to do your safety spot stop, but not much deeper than that. Yeah. But it's a shallow spot with a lot of green algae, like kind of flowy green algae. Um, now we're seeing the return of the purple and the orange starfish and then just thousands and thousands of little silver fish. I don't, I don't know what they are. Some larger stuff, little basses, stuff like that. But And you just kind of chill in this space. It's bathed. We had a lot of light today because it was like 10, 10, 30 on the first dive. Yeah. It was a, I love that exit so much. It's like being in an aquarium. Yeah. It's beautiful.
Jason Heaton Yeah. It was, it was really awesome. And a highlight for me was, you know, every time you dive in a new place, it's always fun to see the distinctive wildlife that's in that place. Distinctive aquatic life. And, you know, I had heard rumors of stinging jellyfish here. And so I asked James, you know, hey, what's the deal with these? And so he was telling me about this jellyfish called the lion's mane jellyfish, which is somewhat common around here. So we had to look out for that, which is a pretty distinctive looking creature.
James Stacey Yeah, they look like an aggressive jellyfish. Like there's a lot of these moon jellies. Yeah. And they're beautiful. Beautiful.
Jason Heaton Yeah. They're like discs, you know, like a bell shape.
James Stacey Yeah.
Jason Heaton Just white.
James Stacey No tentacles.
Jason Heaton No tentacles. They kind of pulsate when they swim. They're docile, they're fun to photograph, they're beautiful.
James Stacey And then the lion's mane or these fried eggs or the other kind of another variety have kind of a dense basketball sized body. Yeah. And then these tentacles of different lengths and their center ones, the really long ones, they sting. Oof. And in our situation, you would really only get stung on your face and really only the space around your cheekbone. Wouldn't, really wouldn't be fun. I mean, nowhere near as bad as people who get the, you know, long body. Yeah. Or get wrapped up in the stinging kind of nettle based. Yeah. Tentacle things. But luckily we were you know they're fairly obvious. They're bright white or sort of an orangish color and the the lion's mane can actually be like a deep red with a white bell. But they're fairly easy to avoid. There were a lot at both. Yeah. Both sites a lot like there were a lot of those for the fried egg sort of ones at Porto, our second dive.
Jason Heaton Yeah they're easy to avoid but you know it I guess you have to look out for them. You know, like if you're just kind of looking down or peering around and you're kind of drifting along, you're kind of cruising up and it's, you know, the visibility is as typical for cold water, Pacific diving, you get particulate in the water and kind of some haze and a little murky in some places. And if, you know, I guess if you're cruising along at 20 feet or something and you. Oh, it's super possible.
James Stacey I've had them on the surface where you're just about planning to go down and they're just right next to you.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So that was a, the Kelvin Grove dive was a pretty deep dive, but it was worth it. You know, it was great. I mean, a wall dive, that's kind of the point. You know, you sort of go down and keep looking and look for stuff. And it was kind of murky, got a little hazy. And then there's like a bit of a thermocline where, a thermocline is where the temperature of the water changes and it creates this hazy, blurry effect as you're descending through it. And once we got below that, it was dark, but good visibility. You know, there wasn't a lot of particulate in the water. And we made it down to, what, 35 meters, which is 107 feet, is what I saw on my computer.
James Stacey Yeah, my alarm went off at 36 meters, which I think is pushing 115 feet, something like that. But I was leading and you were just behind me, so my variances might have been a little wider.
Jason Heaton Yeah. So it was a deep dive, 50 degrees, about a 35 or 40 minute dive, and then we angled back and did our safety stop, hoofed it back up to the car, And then, you know, just took our time. We went on to this next site called Porto Cove.
James Stacey It's a provincial park. It's like a part of the BC Park system. And it's for all sorts. There's two beaches and a boat launch and picnic tables. You can set up a barbecue. I believe you can have an open fire there, which is fairly rare for BC Parks. And it's really popular for divers because in this kind of, again, a sort of larger sheltered cove-like area, they've prepared a bunch of wrecks with markers. And, uh, and so you swim out on the surface to one of the markers and drop in on it and kind of kick around a wreck for a bit. And I've probably dove 20, 25 times on Porto. And this is the only time that I've ever found all three ships in one go, which was pure luck because the visibility, the visibility above about 10 meters, like between zero and 10 was, You can barely see your computer, let alone me or you.
Jason Heaton Yeah, it was a challenge. But the parking lot is huge and there's a lot of people there, but as far as entries go at shore dive sites, it is probably the best I've ever seen because there's a big sturdy concrete staircase that goes down from the parking lot right down to the... Well, if the tide was in, you'd be walking right into the water. But the tide was way out, so... You just wade into the water, and there you are. So that was fun. That was our second dive. I preferred Kelvin Grove. I thought that was just spectacular. I always do. So we had a couple of dive watches with us. You were wearing the Seiko, the SRP777, which our love for that watch is well known.
James Stacey Yeah, I figured with Jason being here and not only knowing how to use a camera, but having a better camera than my RX100, I thought that was a good opportunity get a couple of nice shots for my review, which should go up soon on a blog to watch. And then you had this watch that I'm pretty infatuated with, one of all, really all the watches you brought I like a lot, but this, your titanium Doxa Mission 31.
Unknown Yeah.
James Stacey So, so good on wrist, really love it.
Jason Heaton Yeah, I haven't, I actually haven't had that watch underwater since Mission 31 a couple of summers ago, and it was just fun. I put it on, I wore it on an isoframe rubber strap, which is good and long, fit nicely over my 7mm wetsuit sleeve, and yeah, it looks good. It just looks like a natural watch. I mean, both watches, I think the Seiko and the Doxa, they just look right, you know, underwater, they look great with dive gear, and they work, you know, they're great. I mean, the orange, you know, arguably orange is a color that kind of turns to kind of a dull gray at 15 feet of depth or so, but you know, this one, it's, it's a really bright orange and it's great. I mean, it's the minute hand is just massive and it really shows up well underwater. And of course the bezel's awesome. I had big five mil, five millimeter neoprene gloves on and that bezel, you just can't beat it. You can just grab it, twist it.
James Stacey And yeah, it's the same titanium case as the T-800 TI. Yeah. The case with that orange that darker tone that you get from titanium with the orange dial is killer. It's such a good looking watch. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, and then, but I, I'm going to be honest. I think the, the, I think the star watch was your T graph. Oh yeah. I mean, that thing is, yeah, it's good in pictures and I'll post, I, I broke out this small studio and I've shot a couple of posts, shot a couple of photos. I'll post those on Instagram, but that watch is, so much better than it even looks in the photos. It's so good on wrist. It's small, but it's big. Yeah. I don't know how they do both. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it doesn't feel too big, but it still feels chunky. Yeah. Yeah. And that silver dial, so killer. And the use of color is great. The bezel, no vintage watch should have a bezel that good.
Jason Heaton It's as tight as a modern watch.
James Stacey It just feels like a brand. Yeah. Like a brand. It feels no different than your Mission 31. Yeah. And that chronograph is really smooth and yeah. What a great watch. I wore that the whole night that we went out with Jason from Hallios. I had it on a new strap that we're kind of infatuated with and it was just super, super.
Jason Heaton It's my latest crush. I mean, I wear that watch all the time. It's no secret that we love our Doxes and vintage Doxes especially, but it's still, I think, one of the better deals in vintage watches these days and I think it's such a I mean, DOXAs are such niche dive watches that we were talking today that you know, you won't get, I think what you said is, you know, you just don't get some rich guy just randomly like showing up with a DOX on his wrist. It's usually somebody that has an appreciation, if they're not a diver, at least they have an appreciation for what DOXA has done for the dive watch territory.
James Stacey There's no like necessarily watch prestige. Yeah. Inflated watch prestige attached to Yeah, it's not like rocking out like even a Submariner since Rolex on it. There's a certain prestige tied to that Yeah, and Doxa operates on a different level that feels just so legit. Yeah, and yeah, I loved having a chance to play with both it only it only made my current Want for a Doxa so much more painful.
Jason Heaton Yeah, definitely So another watch that we got to check out or that I got to check out for the first time was the Hallios Delphin which you know we went out with with Jason from Helios, the founder of Helios, on Saturday night, between our hiking and diving adventures, and we had a great time. We went to a couple of restaurants, we went down to Granville Island again, and then we went to a nice upscale sushi place, and I got to meet Jason, which was really fun.
James Stacey Yeah, he was wearing a dolphin.
Jason Heaton Yeah, he was wearing a dolphin. So I got to try the dolphin, that's his latest watch. Well, he's moving on to other things these days, but I love that watch. It's a really cool watch.
James Stacey Yeah, it's a great watch. So I dove that one in Mexico and it's a fantastic one. I don't know, did you, had you seen a Tropic before? Probably some version of one.
Jason Heaton I had seen a Tropic, which I love the Tropic. I can't, I mean, of course you have a Tropic. which is really nice. I can't decide which one I like better, actually. They're kind of similar, but they're also very different.
James Stacey You can tell that they're Hallios. He's made enough watches now that you can kind of draw a line through them.
Jason Heaton The Delphin feels a little more refined, a little more upscale, I guess, or a little dressier.
James Stacey I don't know if that's the right word. I think it's a little dressier. I think it might also be a little sportier at the same time. It's just a different sort of thing. The Tropic's a very strange watch, which I really like. It's a great case. It's small, diminutive on wrist. It takes all sorts of straps really well. It's so good on a NATO. And I have mine with a steel bezel, which is a bit of a strange combo. I call it the blue steel.
Jason Heaton Yeah, I like that. It wears well. It makes it look a little smaller, kind of almost vintage. Port hole-ish, yeah. It's cool. I like it a lot. So that was fun. And then you introduced me to this new strap, the Watch Gecko strap.
James Stacey A little gift for Jason's arrival. I picked up an order of Watch Gecko BC-328. Zulu Diver Rubbernado straps. And I can't claim any credit for this. It goes all to Instagram buddy, Atfarlius, who's part of the NYC Red Bar crew. If you're not following him, you definitely should be, even if only because he'll tip you off to some great product like these Rubbernados. And I actually think I'd seen this Rubbernado before, but I hadn't heard anyone specifically say like it's amazing in hot weather. Oh yeah. Or just for general wear. Cause you kind of think like rubber might be stiff or it might be kind of stinky or it might be kind of like sticky on wrist. And I ordered a naturally a stack of gray rubber Nados and they're awesome. This might be the only thing I'm going to wear for a while. So just enjoy Instagram. Yeah. They seem to work with just about anything. I'm currently wearing my Explorer 2 on one of these rubber straps. And the strap is really light. So you don't notice that it's there. It conforms to your wrist better than nylon. Yeah. It's almost like if you've had a NATO for a long time and it kind of gets that shape built into it. And this just picks it up right away. It has some really trick hardware that keeps the strap from moving around. Yeah. So if you see a picture of it, the underkeeper where it's fastened on the top side of the strap is actually shouldered and has two sets of pins in it and it holds them separately so they can't slide around. It's really clever. It's made by Bonetto Cinturini and sold through Watch Gecko. By all means, order one through Watch Gecko and if you're worried about buying them from the UK, which is where Watch Gecko is, Jason and I are looking into maybe buying a stack of them and offering them out of North America. I had a really good experience with Watch Gecko. It was easy. They were 30 pounds, which is about 40 U.S. dollars. And then there's promo codes going around. So certainly maybe do a quick Google search for the promo code. You'll get the best price that way. We'll have to see if maybe we can get a Greynado promo code. Yeah. I don't know if they do that, but maybe. I really love these straps. It won't be the last one I buy. I do too. And they come in different colors. A bunch of different colors. And Farlius has like a digital camo that actually looks really good. I'm not much for digital camo but you know that mix of colors kind of fun especially on a steel watch.
Jason Heaton Yeah they've got that bit of what's cool about them is it's not just just a flat rubber it's the top side that you see is actually has that texture that looks like a NATO like a nylon NATO it's you know so it's and they feel like the last two they're not like stretchy and flimsy, like they're going to tear or anything like that.
James Stacey Yeah. It's a spring held buckle and it's a signed buckle. So, I mean, big ups to Farlius for putting these on Instagram. And then I wrote him and he told me where he got them. I love this strap. It's not expensive. It's really wearable. It's nice and casual. It seems to suit a sport watch. If you've got a sport watch lying around that maybe you don't wear in the summer because you don't like its bracelet or something like that, pick up one of these straps. I think you'll be really surprised. Super wearable.
Jason Heaton Yeah, they were really awesome. That was a real revelation for the weekend. I think I'd seen them around as well online, and I just kind of thought, you know, yeah, cool, you know, but like you mentioned, I mean, I thought they'd be kind of tacky or clammy in the heat or whatever, but they're so light. And you know what's cool about them, too, is that they fit a lot of watches. I mean, they fit your Explorer II, which is notorious for really tight tolerance. I think I'm able to fit it on this Doxa. I'm going to try it on the Mission 31. It certainly fit nicely on the Teagraph, which is what I've got it on now.
James Stacey And then I wore the 777 on our hike with this, so I'm sweating. It's also a very humid environment. If that strap was going to be uncomfortable, that's one of those situations I would have found it to be uncomfortable. I didn't even notice it was on my wrist. I'm totally sold, and if you enjoy NATO's beyond the naming of this podcast, feel free to order up a couple of these. I'd be really blown away if you just got them and didn't like them. They're really sad. And to be clear, we don't have any connection with Watch Gecko or with Bonetto, Cinturini. This is just... I paid for it with real money, my own money, and I really like them. I think they're awesome.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Just if anyone... Anticipating questions from listeners or anybody on Instagram. In terms of length, I have about a... Pushing a seven and a half inch wrist, and it's about as shortest strap as I can wear. It just fits through the second keeper, if you picture a NATO with the second keeper that is closer to the watch head.
James Stacey Yeah, and my wrist is right around seven inches, and I trimmed about a half inch off, so it makes perfect sense.
Jason Heaton Yeah, so just if you're one of these guys that has like an eight inch wrist, it might not work for you, but for everybody else it should be.
James Stacey Yeah, or it just probably won't, it won't make that second keeper. And the rubber is too thick to do a fold over. That's a good note. You can't fold the rubber over and send it back through the keeper. So if it's way too long or way too short, it's going to dangle either between the keepers or way over the second keeper, which is why I trimmed mine. Which is really easy to do with a quarter coin and an exacto knife. Not tough at all.
Jason Heaton Yeah, so here we are about halfway through the show here and, you know, this is the first time we've recorded face to face in person. We've always done it by phone or rather by Skype in the past. And I thought it'd be a little stranger than this. I'm loving it. It's pretty awesome. Yeah. Yeah. You can kind of make eye contact. You can roll your eyes. You can... I'm not fighting like trying to cut in.
James Stacey Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's great. Well, yeah, it's been a killer weekend. And obviously we'd like to say thank you to the guys at Sea to Sky Scuba for saving the day today. And definitely a thank you to Jason at Hallios for a really fun night kicking around town. And we, you know, got a chance and it's on Instagram now. We got a chance to chat a bit about the new Laguna 2. A watch that I adore. The older Laguna, my brother, wears it and I will never see it again. But it's still in my family. It's a family watch now.
Jason Heaton Yeah, the Laguna is the, Halleo's is a couple of editions ago, it was the twin crown internal bezel dive watch. And the new one, he's put up a couple of teasers on Instagram, so you'll have to check out at Halleo's watches on Instagram and check out what's coming. I think it looks really promising.
James Stacey I think it's gonna be really promising and certainly, you know, he's always known for having something new up his sleeve and that certainly looks to be the case after the Laguna too. So if you're not following on Instagram, certainly check it out. And if you're into dive watches, I've had quite a few of these now, and I've enjoyed all of them. I absolutely adore the Tropic. I wear it all the time.
Jason Heaton Yeah. So, Grenado Summit number two is probably going to be in Minneapolis or somewhere.
James Stacey Yeah, like I was saying, either like Minneapolis or like Chalmeny or... Yeah, right. Okay. Swiss Alps, we'll go to Zermatt.
Jason Heaton Sure, yeah. Why not? I don't know about the diving there, though. We've got to have something that hits both. I don't know. We'll think of something. If you have suggestions, you can certainly write to us and let us know.
James Stacey So what do you think? How about some Q&A?
Jason Heaton Yeah, let's move on.
James Stacey So Q&A question number one is from Justin. Justin, thanks very much for writing in. Justin asks, I'm looking for a new watch and due to regular travel, I need a true GMT mechanical watch. I would like to find a less expensive option somewhere around $2,500 USD to hold me over until I find the perfect GMT Master II. Excellent taste. Additionally, I would like this watch to have a lower profile than some Rolexes as the places I travel, a Rolex could be a target. The problem I'm having is that all the watches in this price range aren't really true GMT watches or they're not mechanical watches. When I think of a GMT watch, it should allow the wearer to quick set the primary hour hand only. I would appreciate any suggestions for a true mechanical GMT watch in and around the $2,500 price range. Good question. I actually emailed Justin back when he wrote this, but this is roughly the answer. I see GMT watches as kind of two different formats, what I call a flyer and what I call a caller. So a flyer offers the ability to quick set the local hour hand. So when you land on your plane, and this is like a GMT Master II or my Explorer II or all sorts of true GMT watches, you land on your plane in a new location, and the pilot says it's currently this time, and they never get the minutes right, but it doesn't matter because all you have to do is bump the hour hand, the local hour hand forward, and providing you either left the 24 hour hand on UTC time or home time, you now have a very convenient way of knowing what time it is here and what time it is at home. Alternatively, if you consider a watch like my Zinn 144, that gives you simply essentially another hour hand that's set at a different position on the crown, So instead of being the main hour hand, you have the ability to jump set a second hour hand to just track another time zone. And this is very handy if you're calling somebody somewhere else in the world. You know, with a blog to watch, I have David, who I work with, and he's in Budapest, and I'll set all of my second hour hands to Budapest time, UTC plus one. That works out really well when you want to go, well, if I ping David on Slack, what are the chances of my getting an answer? If I, let's say, I don't ever call David, but if I did, would he pick up? And that's basically your two concepts. So with, with a flyer, there are actually some options under $2,500. Uh, the first one I would, I would say is if you don't mind a larger watch, it's 44 millimeters is the Alpina Alpiner GMT4. So as part of the Alpiner line, it's anti-shock and anti-magnetic and water resistant and steel. And you get a jumping local hour via a module and it works really well. The bezel's actually fairly strange. It's a 360 degree compass bezel in two digits. Oh yeah. So when they first hand you the watch and you're kind of like, well, what am I looking at? It's not a 12, it's not a 24 hour bezel. It's a 36 hour bezel. And then you're like, because you see 36 at 12 and then you get 360 degrees. But it definitely has the jumping local time and it has a price point in and around that range. Alternatively, go to the pre-owned market and buy an Omega Seamaster Professional GMT. So this is something like a 253450 or the 2538, which is called the Great White. The 253450 being a black dial. And these use Omega's expression of their 1120. called the 1128, which is based on the ETA-2892, but it was modified for local jumping, which is really cool. And I'll actually put a, uh, if, if you're skeptical, I'll put a YouTube video of somebody showing the jumping mechanism and how it works. And it's basically, you now have a GMT, uh, 2254-50, a really cool dive style from Omega, a great time in Omega's history. that has a local jumping hour. This is the same functionality of the GMT-Master 2 or an Explorer 2. And these aren't at all hard to find if you go on WatchRecon, and I always see them between say $2,000 and $2,700, depending on bracelet condition, red box, papers. To be honest, if you're going to buy it and then wear it to travel around the world, skip the papers skip the box yeah you know like i wouldn't i wouldn't care too much as long as you knew that it was a real you know have it checked by somebody or have some assurance that it's a that it's the right thing and there's lots of guides online to buying 2254 cased watches um and if i didn't have a 2254 i would quite likely hunt down something like a 2538 or 2534. I think they're killer watches.
Jason Heaton It really is. It's got a real following online. I mean, a lot of guys like them in the forums and it's kind of an unsung watch.
James Stacey The great white version is really strange.
Jason Heaton Yeah, it's cool. And if I'm not mistaken, so it's got the white dial. Does it have that wave texture it has i believe it has a texture and then it has only the outside of the one hand is colored red yeah it's it's strange it's really cool and then the 24 hour bezel is has these really bold digits i mean it's definitely like i think it's it's just kind of a funkier almost sportier version of like a gmt master like a rolex version it's it's really a it's really a cool watch so the only You know, my only experience, James, you're kind of the GMT guy. I know you're a real travel watch guy. The only GMT that I have that I can really kind of add to this discussion is the Grand Seiko GMT. It's an automatic. I believe the reference number is SBGM003. And the one I have has the ivory dial and the beautiful polished hands. It's more of a dress watch, but, you know, it's got decent water resistance for kind of a dressy watch. Throw it on a leather strap. Just a beautiful piece. That has the, what you'd call a flyer style. You know, it's very easy. First position when you pull out the crown is the jumping, you know, move the hour hand around. And then that also affects the date. Right. So you move it forward or back, set the date forward and back. If you pull the crown all the way out, you're moving the GMT hand as well, as well as the minutes. Minute and hour, yeah. So that's one I would throw in. It's definitely above the price range you're looking for. New, it's about $4,500 or so new. But I've done the quick search and I've shown a few that show up used for around 2300. So if you can find them, it's not always with the ivory dial, but there are a couple of other dial choices that you can find. And if you want something a little dressier from Grand Seiko, that's a good choice.
James Stacey And Grand Seiko makes a couple other GMTs that would be worth checking out. They have a spring drive that's pretty cool with a sapphire bezel. And they make the 5 Hertz. the high beat GMT, this is going to blow through a $2,500 budget. But if you change your mind and you want one watch that's not a GMT-Master that you could wear anywhere, that's your Grand Seiko. Probably better finish than a GMT-Master too. I mean, they're just, the Grand Seikos are really, really the pinnacle.
Jason Heaton Of course, Grand Seiko has that added benefit that it's not going to necessarily make you a target. They're very nice looking watches from a distance. So, you know, people might say, oh, that's a really nice watch, but then Seiko on the dial, it's not quite as, recognizable as a Rolex.
James Stacey Yeah, I think if the theoretical thief has a visual literacy of nice watches, they'll know that there's something there, but it's not a Rolex. Justin, thank you so, so much for your question, and let us know what you end up finding. Obviously, Instagram will work, at thegraynado, or send me an email, thegraynado at gmail dot com. Looking forward to hearing how it works out for you.
Jason Heaton Our second question comes from Garrett, And Garrett wrote in to ask, I'm graduating from an MS MBA program at Colorado University in Denver in late June, and he would like to get a new watch to commemorate the event. Well, sorry Garrett, we're a little late with our response, but congratulations. Yeah, congratulations. But hopefully you haven't bought that watch that you're going to ask us about yet, because we have a few suggestions. So Garrett's budget is about $1,500, and he would like to get something of solid quality that when he puts it on years down the road. It reminds him of his graduation, that great milestone. He currently is a project manager for a solar company in Denver, spends about 25% of the time in the field and 75% of his time in the office. So he's looking for a watch that won't seem out of place with a pair of work boots, but will also fit in well at the office or out to dinner with just changing the strap. And Garrett is considering the Weiss Field Watch, and he's just looking for some opinions about any other options that might be out there. So, well, like we said, congratulations, Garrett, and apologize for our slightly tardy response, but, you know, he only graduated a few weeks ago, so, yeah. Still fresh. Yeah, right. Well, James and I, you know, we're both big on getting watches for milestones. I think you got your Explorer II for a big birthday, and I got my Submariner for a birthday as well. a few years back. But I think regardless of what we recommend, get the one that you really feel the closest kinship with, the one that really bonds with you. Don't get something based on a brand or what we recommend, certainly. And the Weiss is a cool watch. It's one that you don't see a lot. It's certainly high quality. It's made nicely, and you just don't see it around. So it's unique, and you might get some kind of cool questions, good conversation starter. And it's a really versatile piece, too, just a change of strap. It can be dressy. sporty, but we've, you know, we've got a few other options that might fit your criteria. Under $1,500, we found a few. The Sin 556. Sin is just a great brand in this price point anyway for, you know, whether it's a milestone watch or anything. For sure. The 556 is their, you know, bare bones, classic, ultra rugged. I think it's a 200 meter water resistant pilot watch. Simple time only with a date. You know, it's a thousand bucks or less. So easy fit, you could wear it till you retire, and you never have to take it off your wrist, frankly. So that's kind of a no-brainer, kind of an easy one if you like the aesthetics of that. Another Sin that you might consider is the 104, which is a three-hand pilot's watch that has the one-hour countdown bezel. It's a really pretty watch. Yeah, it's cool. It has those, I think they're called syringe hands? Yep. Black dial, some sort of script, verbiage on the dial font. And that one goes for, I looked at watchbuys.com, which is the American, US distributor or retailer online. And they're selling it for $1,240. So again, under your, in your price range. If you want to kind of stay German, but you don't want to even spend that much, you can go to one of my sort of favorites. It's kind of a sleeper brand, that's Archimedes. Cases made in Germany, Swiss movements, really high quality. Yeah, Ickler cases. Ickler cases. Great dials. Great dials. You know, speaking of milestones, I mean, when my dad turned 70, I gave him a 45mm Automatic Pilot and he still wears it, you know, so many years later and loves it.
James Stacey And yeah, if you like that classic Flieger style, they just keep kind of multiplying. You can buy versions that have no branding on the dial, you can buy them with big crowns, you can buy them with You option when you order if you want to display case back or not. I think they offer them in bronze. I want to say titanium.
Jason Heaton Yeah, and you can get one from like 39 millimeters up to 45.
James Stacey Yeah, like the 39 millimeter, if that's in titanium, that'd be a killer watch. That would look really good. They come on that kind of big pilot double stud strap, and then they would work on anything. They're going to look great on a NATO.
Jason Heaton And they're way under a thousand bucks. I love that watch. Agreed.
James Stacey Their dive watches, their sport talkers are really cool too.
Jason Heaton Yeah, I'd strongly recommend an Archimede or a Sin. Another one, you know, again, kind of in this pilot theme area is another favorite brand of ours, and that's Oris. Yeah, complete no-brainer with the ProPilot. The big crown ProPilot family. They make the basic automatic date version, and that comes in roughly right about at $1,500, maybe $1,600. You know, so that's probably in your price range. And of course, Oris is just, you know, so much bang for the buck. Great style, great watch, really versatile. Another one that you could you know, put on any strap and just wear it for decades.
James Stacey Yeah. You put that on an alligator. You could wear it with a blazer and a collar at dinner. You could put it on a NATO for the field. Yeah. Nobody's going to notice. It's always going to look good.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Yeah.
James Stacey So then, you know, you'd mentioned, yeah, you'd mentioned possibly being able to sell a bike or skis to up your rate a little bit. So we've got a couple uprated watches.
Unknown Yeah.
Jason Heaton Uh, again, another sin, um, the, the eight five six B or, which is, Kind of their take on that World War II German Flieger watch, pilot's watch, that has the inner register for hours and then the outer register is for minutes, or the outer track is for minutes. Nice watch, kind of has a similar case to the 556, that classic SIN tegament steel case on a nice sort of honey-colored leather strap. Beautiful watch. That's retailing for around $1,700, so not much over your price range. if you like that style. And then finally, the Tudor Ranger, which you mentioned the Weiss Field Watch. You know, the Tudor Ranger is kind of a classic Field Watch style watch. It's getting away from the Pilot watches that we recommended here. And that, you know, that's a bit more new than your price range. It goes for, what, $2,400 new? I think so, yeah. But certainly, you know, now they're popping up. In the range, yeah. They're popping up used now, and you can probably get it down, you know, a few hundred bucks from there. And the Ranger's another versatile watch. You know, you can get it on that cool straight end link bracelet, the big Boone strap, or... One of a few different fabric Natos. Yeah, a lot of fabric straps, or you can throw it on any strap that you want, so... It's got nice lugs, you can put it on whatever you need.
James Stacey Yeah, so... I think that's a good stack of options. Garrett, you know, congratulations again on the graduation. That's awesome. I think this is a really cool way to commemorate it. I think graduation watches, it's a thing for a reason. That's cool. And, you know, just like with Justin, please let us know what you got. Either send us an email or let us know on Instagram. We would love to hear how it worked out. And if you got something before this message reaches you, then please accept my apologies on the number of Q&A emails that we're getting. We're getting through them as we can. And we certainly appreciate it. So if you have your question, if you're listening and you've got a question, please, please send us an email at TheGreatNadoAtGmail.com. I read, I respond, and I'm thrilled by not only the feedback, but also the small essays that I got about the one watch question. I'm still getting them. And I've seen, you know, so many of these emails and they're great. People really loved the topic of the conversation. I think it's something that's pretty close to most kind of watch nerds.
Jason Heaton Yeah, listener feedback. We love it. It's great to hear from everybody. I can tell that our show is resonating with a lot of people, and we really appreciate it. So thanks a lot, everybody.
James Stacey All right. You want to get into final notes, wrap this up?
Jason Heaton Yeah. James, you sent me a couple of interesting links over the past few weeks that I checked out. Why don't you share those?
James Stacey So the first one is from a site that I'm actually not familiar with called The Daily Beast. And they produced an article called the watch thieves who picked LA clean and it's this uh medium length medium to long length post about a string of robberies in LA exclusively focused on high-end watches and it's a really interesting story it doesn't have a very compelling end it just kind of they got caught yeah as as one would assume that's how we i assume know about the story But I mean, some of these like I mean, in one robbery, they got $1.6 million worth of Rolex. Yeah. So not even like, necessarily what you would consider like top tier brands like Rolex is a, you know, a lot certainly a luxury brand by any right, right. But it's not a Patek Philippe or Richard Mills. I mean, 1.6. It's two Richard Mills. Yeah. Yeah, one for each pocket, you walk out of the store, right. But no, these guys, these guys went big. And it's a really fascinating story. So by all means, I would say swing by the, uh, swing by the show notes to hit that link. I mean, it was violent there. They weren't in some, some brazen. I mean, in some cases it was 122 minutes in and out with $200,000 in watches. And it's really, it seems from what I can tell, I'd, like I said, the endings kind of vague, but it seems from, uh, this writer's breakdown that, that they basically got pinned because they went back to the same place. They seem to favor malls probably due to somewhat liquid security standards at a mall and they went back to a place where it hadn't worked previously and it worked but not on the exit.
Jason Heaton It's a good read. I recommend it as well.
James Stacey Pretty interesting stuff. What's one that you've got?
Jason Heaton So I've got a really interesting one. I think last show I put out a couple of ideas from outside magazines, online sites, podcasts. Yeah, Into Deep. I hope everybody checked that out. Yeah, Michael Proudfoot. So I checked out, they've got a new series started in their podcast series called, I think it's just called Outside Interviews. And the first one that I listened to, I actually listened to it on the flight out here to Vancouver, was from a guy who's fairly well-known in outdoor adventure circles. His name is Robert Young Pelton. And they did a, it's about a 45-minute interview with him. He's a guy, he was actually born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and he Had kind of two main chapters to his life. When he started out, he kind of worked his way up through an advertising career, like literally started in the mail room, kind of the cliche. Worked his way up, got some huge clients. The interview kind of starts out setting him up as a version of the most interesting man in the world, one of these guys who's just done so many things. He helped Steve Jobs launch a certain big product of apples, and he's It was part of the search for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and whatever. But his real claim to fame was years ago he was one of these guys who was well known for traveling to very forbidden places in the world and having some scary run-ins with rebel groups and whatnot. And he started writing guidebooks to the most dangerous places in the world. And he must be I don't know how old he is, 50s, 60s. He's getting up there, but he's a bit of a legend. And he's just, he's got a fascinating story. He doesn't come across particularly cocky or, you know, arrogant about his past or jaded or anything like that. He's just kind of a normal guy. I was actually surprised because I've read a lot about him over the years and I always thought, I bet he's a bit of a jerk, but it was, it was really quite, it was quite good. So I, you know, I would recommend him if you see him pop up maybe in the past and articles in men's journal or outside magazine over the years. It's a great chance to kind of get an insight into why he is the way he is and kind of the background of his life, which I found really, really fascinating.
James Stacey Yeah, I normally listen to a lot of podcasts, but you know, you came in on a Friday and then through the weekend, so I'm behind, but I have that one in my queue on Pocket Cast and I'm definitely looking forward to it. I think it sounds like a great story. You were telling me about it on the drive in from the airport and it looks great. Yeah.
Jason Heaton So I'm going to give one, I'll just roll into my next one here. I've got the guy who runs, I think his name is Joe, he runs Blue Shark Straps, watch straps. It's a watch strap company. You know, we're big fans of NATO straps, as we talked about today. We've talked about toxic NATOs. And he wanted to send over a couple of his, they're called Alpha Shark Luxury NATO straps. And they're kind of, if you can envision The strap that comes on the Omega, the Seamaster 300 that James Bond wore in the latest movie.
James Stacey Yeah, the Bond one that came on the Spectre edition.
Jason Heaton Yeah. It's a bit of a shinier striped, that classic Bond stripe strap. But, you know, Omega sells them for hundreds of bucks if you want to get that for your Omega or any other watch. And so Blue Shark sells the Alpha luxury strap for, you know, much less. I think they're, let's see here. They're $28, so it's reasonable. It's kind of a different weave than a conventional NATO, and the hardware is really quite nice. The bars are a little wider, the buckle's nice and a little bit thicker, a little beefier. And a PVD. Yeah, and there's a PVD version as well.
Unknown Cool watch.
James Stacey A black and gray stripe on a PVD watch would probably look pretty good. Yeah, it would.
Jason Heaton If you have a PVD watch, I think that the black PVD hardware on that strap would look really sharp. I might try that on mine. on my Seiko Tuna, actually. I think that'd look pretty cool on there. Yeah, that'd work. It'd look great on Tuna. Thanks a lot to Blue Shark for sending over those straps and for letting us check those out. So if you want to check it out for yourself, certainly head over to their website and we'll put a link in the show notes. James, you got a final?
James Stacey I do. This is a hardcore one. So this is an article by a sub-site for Jalopnik, the car blog, called Black Flag. And this is by a guy named Rob Holland, and it's a great piece. It's called Subaru 600 horsepower Isle of Man STI inside one of the fastest sedans on earth. So, um, to keep this as brief as possible, cause I figure a lot of listeners will already know what Isle of Man is. Um, it's, it's a place, but it's also a, an active road race that goes on for about a week every year on the Isle of Man and has this, uh, huge course. And there's the main claim to fame is a motorcycle race. I think three different classes, five races. And the course is 37.7 miles. And basically the two numbers that people talk about is average speed across the course. And it's disturbing. And then imagine a race course. So this is it changes a huge amount of altitude. It's they run unbelievable 160 miles an hour through towns, two lane roads on towns. It's an amazing race anywhere else in the world. This would have been shut down by health and safety concerns. This is this is what's left of the spirit that gave us Group B rally. Yeah. And Subaru. Bless them. They have a thing about trying to set and maintain the fastest car across the track. It's a bike track, but it's not a bike track like you would imagine in a circuit course. It's very bumpy, it's very dangerous, and people die with some frequency. And if you want a background on this, watch, there's a fantastic documentary called TT3D. I think it's called Closer to the Edge TT3D or the other way around. If you type in TT3D, you'll get it. Unbelievable documentary that gives you as close to being on the bike perspective of what these guys do to take part in a race that not a lot of the world even knows exists. And if they did would probably question like, why do people keep dying? And Subaru has Mark Higgins driving their car as they try and bid for the fastest lap and Mark Higgins made a name for he's an amazing driver. But he made himself a little bit internet famous either last year the year before, driving their previous generation STI set up for WRX because he lost the back end of the car in a corner where you there's like a tiny amount of tolerance for a mistake and he recovers it and just keeps going at 10 tenths. Wow. And the save is huge. It's a huge save. And if you I guarantee you even now despite the fact that this year he broke the record. If you Google Mark Higgins you'll get this save and you only need to see 40 seconds. He's coming into a really disturbing corner and it's off camber, it's downhill. And as he makes the corner, he makes this massive two or three part correction and then just keeps going like the road runner. So this year he ran the course in 17 minutes, 35 seconds, which is flat out unbelievable. And you can watch the whole video of the run, the entire run on the post. So swing by the show notes if you're interested, and I would say just Maybe idly click around in the video to get an idea not only of how the course changes over the 37 miles, but also just how hard he is driving. It's just absolutely fantastic. It's a 600 horsepower pro drive. Those of you into motorsports will know pro drive prepped Subaru STI. And I think I remember reading that this may be like their last year sponsoring the event. So this might be their last chance to set a really, really fast time. but this would be one of the most single most impressive cars and driver combos ever to hit that road and uh... just fantastic article if you're into this sort of thing this kind of bleeding edge fringe racing that somehow legitimate on this little island uh... by all means check it out it's uh... it's it's a lot of fun well I'll have to check it out today maybe we can uh... maybe we can queue up that video after we're done with the show here and pour another Oban and Watch some cars. Sounds good to me. I mean, no time like the present. So I would say, as always, thanks so much for listening. You can hit the show notes for more details. You can follow us on Instagram. Jason is at Jason Heaton and I am at J.E. Stacey, and you can follow the show at The Graynado. If you have any questions for us, please write thegraynado at gmail.com. We would also love it if you would subscribe and review the podcast wherever you get your podcasts, or you can simply grab the feed directly from thegraynado.com. Music throughout is Siesta by Jazzar via the Free Music Archive.
Jason Heaton And we close with a quote from Roberto Assagioli who says, there is no certainty, there is only adventure.