The Grey NATO - Ep 49 - The Rocky Mountain Way

Published on Tue, 12 Dec 2017 09:41:58 -0500

Synopsis

The episode begins with an announcement about the podcast taking a break for the holidays. Jason and James are in Colorado for an event hosted by Oris, where they got to preview new watches, go skiing with Oris CEO Rolf Studer, and learn about Oris's new Clipperton limited edition watch. They discuss various aspects of the event, including the world timer watch they got to try and the outstanding audio system in the Porsche they drove. Finally, they share updates on Ben Saunders' Antarctic expedition and provide a few other adventure-related recommendations.

James mentions that though they saw many new watches, they can only discuss the Clipperton limited edition due to embargo dates. The watch ties into an expedition to Clipperton Island that raised awareness about ocean pollution. Rolf Studer joins them to discuss the motivation behind the watch and Oris's support for the expedition.

Transcript

Speaker
James Hey guys and gals, James here with a quick note at the top of the show to let you know that we're going to be taking a holiday break just like last year, so there'll be no new episode on the 26th. Episode 50 will go live on January 9th, 2018, and will help us to better align with SIHH and with other travel concerns over the holidays. So happy holidays from Jason and I, please be well, and we'll chat to you soon in 2018. On with the show.
Jason Heaton Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Grey Nado, a loose discussion of travel, adventure, diving, gear, and most certainly watches. This is episode 49, and we thank you for listening.
James How's it going? Nice to see your, uh, your face. You look, uh, younger, I guess.
Jason Heaton Yeah, face to face. It's the mountain sunburn. It's, uh, makes me look a little younger. Yeah.
James Yeah. Uh, yeah. So we're in Colorado and, uh, we're here for the 2018 Basel World Preview with Oris, which is an event they're doing in, uh, An area just adjacent to Vail, there's Beaver Creek. Bachelor Gulch.
Jason Heaton We're actually at the Ritz-Carlton in an eighth floor, really nice suite. It's actually, we're doing a fireside chat.
James It's the fanciest space we've ever recorded in, certainly. That's for sure. And yeah, we've got a nice fireplace and we've had a really, like a really full day. It's a, you know, it's a tight schedule to come out. It's a short event. You know, it was, Sunday to a Tuesday and, you know, today was Monday and we spent the morning skiing. Yeah. And then we spent the afternoon having some lunch and then looking at watches.
Jason Heaton Yeah. It's, uh, it's, it's been a pretty ideal trip. Um, and if we're, if we both sound a little breathless, it's because the altitude here in, uh, Beaver Creek is at, uh, uh, 8,100 feet according to the maps. I'm not sure what that is in meters, but it's, uh, it's, uh, you know, it's, it makes you a little breathless, uh, climbing a flight of stairs or, um, You know, when we first arrived yesterday, it was, uh, took a bit of adjustment. I had kind of a headache until about the wee hours of this morning, but now I'm, I'm doing okay. How about you?
James Yeah, I'm a C level boy. That's where I, that's where I run around. That's where I do things. So yeah, you, you notice it a couple of times. I think I just, maybe I'm not as good at breathing as I thought I was. Cause I'll just. sit down and realize I'm a little bit behind on breathing. Yeah. And you have to catch up for a moment. But other than that, I mean, skiing, I didn't notice it at all, which is where I thought it would be hardest. Yeah. I noticed that too. Yeah. I didn't notice it skiing, but you notice it just occasionally you go to catch your breath and you don't have quite as much in your lungs as you thought you would.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Yeah. So it was interesting because we arrived on, uh, on Sunday and it was, uh, it was breezy when we flew into the, um, Eagle County airport here, just up the road from Vail. And, and, uh, it was unseasonably warm for these parts for this time of year. It was, You know, Fahrenheit, it was 50, I think, or thereabouts. And, um, it, uh, it kind of gave us, you know, some concerns about skiing. Cause he looked up at the mountains and most of them were pretty Brown. There were a couple, a couple of couple of runs that were just starting to get some snow cover. Um, but we woke up this morning, which was our ski day and, uh, a very brisk, uh, 15 Fahrenheit this morning with a nice dusting of snow and, and, uh, turned out to be just a, just a spectacular day in the mountains.
James Yeah. It was kind of mixed cloud, but not warm, not cold.
Unknown Yeah.
James And there weren't that, there weren't a ton of people out, so we never waited for a lift.
Unknown Yeah.
James And there, they had essentially two runs open, but I would, you basically won meandering overall route. Yeah. And we just lapped it until we ran out of time. It was great. The weather was awesome. And, uh, we had, uh, we had a really good time.
Jason Heaton Yeah. So I had done, I don't, it was probably on a gray NATO about a year ago. Um, I probably talked about my visit to Zermatt with, with Oris for the similar event last year. And, uh, at that time I was, uh, very much a novice skier, hadn't skied since high school years, and was kind of just getting back into it. And the bug bit me right after that trip, and I did a lot of skiing last winter. So it was fun to come out here and actually do some legitimate mountain skiing. But it was challenging. It was a challenging run for me. I'm still, I would say, pretty much a beginner skier. But we both held our own, I would say it was kind of a A hard blue run, I guess.
James We had some good tutelage. Yeah. Some kind instruction.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Yeah, we were skiing with Rolf Studer, who's the co-CEO at Oris. And so it was pretty much the three of us running up and down the lift all day. And we'd go down the runs. James and I feeling pretty good about ourselves, weaving in and out. And then there'd be this bright streak go past. It's like getting passed by a Ferrari. And it would be Rolf zipping down the hill. And he'd go down and wait for us little ways down. So it was, um, it was great. And, and, and Rolf was a pleasure to ski with, and he's actually in the room with us here. We, we thought we'd bring him in for a couple of questions in a bit here.
James Yeah. And it's, I mean, there's never a bad day skiing on the mountains. I grew up in Ontario and of course you're in Minneapolis and so you're used to runs that last 30 seconds a minute, right? If you're cooking, if you know what you're doing, you're down and you're back at a lift and you just, you're doing laps basically. And I mean, even, even here, you know, it's, it's a lot like Whistler and where you get. to go for a bit long enough that you would stop at some points on the way down. Certainly. Yeah. Rolf has to stop so we can catch up. He's just a lot faster than we were. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Heaton And, uh, and you gotta, you gotta like, you know, catch your breath and sort of shake out your legs a little bit, you know, halfway down the hill.
James Especially the first few runs. Yeah. I felt like I had lead in my shoes.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Yeah. But it was great. And it was, um, you know, the sun peaked out and it got just pleasantly warm, you know, you'd warm up a bit going up on the lift and work up a good sweat coming down and, um, Yeah, it was good. I mean, fun to kind of have a little adventure for a couple of hours. For sure, yeah. But, you know, interestingly enough, you know, this was kind of my second AORUS Preview event, and I guess one question that we both had was, you know, a lot of, we saw a lot of watches today. I don't know, maybe a dozen watches or so. Better part of, yeah. Yeah. But on this episode, we'll talk about the only one that we can talk about because There are, all of the others are, have what in the industry they call embargo dates, which means that we, we can't write or talk about these watches until their release dates, um, or until the dates that the Oris tells us that, uh, it's okay to, to write anything or discuss them. Right. Um, so we'll talk about the one in a minute here, but, um, you know, some really spectacular stuff and I wish we could talk about it. There was some really neat pieces.
James There's a lot to see between now you're in the next several months.
Jason Heaton Yeah. But we did have a question for Rolf. We're curious about, you know, a lot of the watches that we saw today, the embargo dates coincide with Baselworld in March. And I guess one question we have is, why does AORUS do an event like this annually to preview watches that most of which will not be seen until Basel? What is your kind of strategy for doing a preview event like this every year?
Rolf Studer Yeah, Basel is a very busy time. I have a lot of meetings every 30 minutes, every hour at a meeting. And if we do a preview event like that, we really get to spend some time together, get really to talk about these watches. You understand, we can really explain what we wanted to achieve with a certain piece and make you understand what our reasons are for doing things the way we do and I hope we accomplish that today.
Jason Heaton Yeah, that's, I hadn't thought about that, but that's a good point. You just don't get a lot of time at Basel. You're sort of, especially with you, you know, we're meeting with our own geography, you know, so yeah, that's, that's a good point. Of course, of course you, you, you like to ski, so it's a good excuse to get out on the slopes, right?
Rolf Studer Well, I wouldn't, uh, didn't want to put it as a first reason, but of course it's great to be on the slopes and we really had a great day today, so I enjoyed that very much.
Jason Heaton Yeah. So, Speaking of the skiing, how would you compare Zermatt skiing to Beaver Creek skiing? Or just Switzerland to Colorado in general, would you say?
Rolf Studer Well, unfortunately, it wasn't so much snow. Yeah. And then there was... There were these two runs open. Yeah. You know, it was pretty comparable.
Unknown Yeah.
Rolf Studer I really enjoy the scenery here, the skiing in the trees. Yeah. In these rocky mountains. I think it's fantastic. It's beautiful here.
Unknown Yeah.
Rolf Studer Looking forward to being in Zermatt next week. Oh, that's right. Yeah. And I'm sure that will be a good time too there.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Yeah. So Oris is doing another, um, of these preview events for kind of the European, uh, watch journalists, um, over in Zermatt, uh, Switzerland next week. So, um, yeah, they'll get to have some fun and you'll get to do some more skiing.
Rolf Studer Yeah, absolutely.
Jason Heaton Yeah. So the, the one watch that, uh, that we were able to talk about today and that, um, we're, we're going to be writing up here shortly is the, um, the Oris Clipperton limited edition. which is kind of a follow-up to your past couple of years. You did something with the Great Barrier Reef. You've done something with the Coral Reef Restoration Foundation, the Coral Restoration Foundation, and the Hammerhead LE from last year. I don't know, can you just sort of briefly describe the Clipperton edition and kind of what your story behind that, I guess? I mean, we sort of know it from James.
Rolf Studer You know, he's talked about it on... Yeah, well, the real expert here is James, right? Because he is the only one of us who actually has been on that island. I think it's a fantastic project, what N2Pix does, trying to create sanctuary around Clipperton Island and even further from the coast to Clipperton Island. And as we know from James, Clipperton Island is really a symbol of what's happening today in the world and in the seas. The island is totally remote. It's full of trash. And we really want to raise awareness for the cause of this island and for the cause of the pollution of the seas. And yeah, I hope that with this watch and with the contribution we made towards this expedition that we can do that.
Jason Heaton I guess I didn't ask this earlier today, but is there a portion of the proceeds going to some sort of a research organization or was that kind of your underwriting of the trip and this is sort of what comes of it?
Rolf Studer No, we helped make this trip possible by financing part of it. We also communicate now about it, so we are supporting the projects in different ways and hope that we will be able to help establishing that marine sanctuary between Clipperton Island and the West Coast. Yeah.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Um, and I should just mention, I guess we could describe the watch. I mean, there'll be plenty of pictures up by the time the episode goes live, but it's a 43 and a half millimeter, um, uh, steel cased, uh, it's the Aquas family from Oris. So it's a diving watch. Um, and it has this, uh, sort of beautiful, um, I don't know if you'd call it like a gradient or sort of a radial patterned, um, blue sort of a beautiful, Oceanic blue, I guess you'd call it. Color that sort of changes depending on which angle you look at the watch. What I really like about it was the engraving on the back, which is the Clipperton Atoll. So there's 2,000 pieces and it's $2,000 on rubber and $2,200 on the bracelet. And then the other thing about it too that was kind of cool is you mentioned that the packaging, the box that it comes in, it's made of 30% algae, right? Yeah, that's right. And that is to kind of one of your efforts to kind of experiment or work with packaging that maybe isn't quite so fossil fuel dependent, right?
Rolf Studer Yeah, exactly. It doesn't stop with supporting projects as this Cliburn expedition. We also want to contribute from how we do things and look at all angles in our production chain. And yeah, packaging is one of the things where you can change things, try new things, and that's what we want to do with this packaging that's made of 30% algae. And this way saves oil that's not being used for this plastic.
Jason Heaton Well, it's a great piece and, you know, we'll, by the time this episode goes up, we'll have an article up on Hodinkee about it and certainly you can check photos on Instagram and take a look at it. It's really a neat first piece and it'll be exciting to kind of roll out the other pieces that you showed us today and start talking about those in the coming weeks. Well, thanks, Rolf. Thanks for the ski lesson today, for letting us, you know, slow guys tag along with you.
Rolf Studer Yeah, it was really great. Thanks for being here with us. And yeah, all the best. Yeah.
Jason Heaton Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Rolf.
James So yeah, that's a little bit more about Clipperton from Rolf, who helps to run AORUS and pick their direction. And certainly I had a long chat with him at dinner last night about kind of the inspiration behind these projects, because to be honest, they pick projects that watch companies maybe shouldn't pick.
Jason Heaton Yeah, they're kind of oddball off the map, almost literally.
James How do you make any money back with the Clipperton thing? Like, they're only going to make 2,000 watches, and the watches cost roughly the same as a normal Aquas. Right, right. The dial looks really cool, and that's pretty much what it is, this dial and a cool case back. And the dial really is like a wave. If you imagine the sunlight hitting a wave, it's all this gradient of blue that fades to this black on the outside. Right. And it's kind of iridescent, and it still has the ceramic bezel, and it's the same size. And then beyond that, I mean, It sounds kind of dumb, but we saw a bunch of cool stuff that I'm legitimately excited about and we took pictures of and we'll get to write about later. But embargoes being embargoes, you can't really chat about it. So we probably shouldn't bob that hook any more than it has been.
Jason Heaton I think it's just neat to, um, you know, there aren't a lot of brands that you get such a great access to, um, upper management and to actually be able to go and, uh, and ski with Rolf and then to have him sit in for a bit here and chat with us. And, uh, you know, go to dinners and stuff. Oris is one of those brands that I don't know of many, if any, people that don't like Oris. And I think the vibe that they project... They're just kind of down to earth, even for a Swiss watch, like especially among Swiss watch brands.
James Totally.
Jason Heaton Yeah. It's exactly... The vibe, you know, for those that haven't met people from Oris, but you know their watches, the vibe of the company and the people that work for it, for the company, is exactly as you'd imagine just by, you know, wearing a watch or looking at the watches or reading about the watches. It's very no-nonsense, very unpretentious, and, you know, to a person, I think the folks that work for them, from, you know, Jamie in PR to, you know, Vijay, who's the, kind of, the U.S. President, and then Rolf up at the top there and over in Switzerland, I just think they're just fun-loving people, you know?
James So, it's... And how do you feel after, I don't know, maybe we did ten laps? That's probably well fair.
Jason Heaton Yeah, I was trying to figure out how many we did. I mean, we skied for about three hours and, you know, yeah, I don't know. My legs are a little stiff now. I'm actually doing surprisingly better than I thought.
James I was a little scared, you know, that first... Yeah, there was a steep section that also had like some loose kind of heavier snow sitting on it. Yeah, yeah. And it was right kind of at the top, as I guess you would expect. But it was also tighter, so if there were other people, they were kind of zipping by you right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And at this point, I mean, Rolf is three football fields down the hill just waiting, leaning on his poles, waiting for us.
Jason Heaton Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was... So that was a little daunting. After the first run, I thought, I can't do this. It's too steep. You're looking down over the edge, and it looks impossibly steep. But after that first run, my confidence grew each time. And then I would say by the second to last run or so, my legs were starting to feel a little crampy and sort of tight. And I thought, this is where you kind of get into that injury zone, where you're not quite ski fit, and your muscles are going to give out at the wrong moment and tear a knee up. That last run of the day. I was great, and we finished at about 11.30, and it just felt right. It felt like kind of a good time to end. I mean, I could have certainly had a nice lunch and skied the afternoon as well. For sure. I didn't mind that there was only one run open today.
James No, and then, I mean, we're on a, how many people do we figure is in this group? Maybe 12? Yeah, yeah. And so there's only three of us that opted to ski, you, myself, and Zach Weiss of Warn and Wound. Yeah, yeah. Zach had a good time and you and I had a good time. The rest of them went on like a Jeep tour, which sounded fine and fun. And I think they saw some great scenery. Yeah. Of which there's tons here. I mean, everything looks a bit like a postcard. Yeah.
Jason Heaton It's, it's really beautiful. And the setting of, of, uh, the Ritz Carlton here, you know, I mean, the Ritz itself is just, uh, it's a, it's too fancy for TGN.
James I mean, if you could see the room we're sitting in, we couldn't be, you know, we're in a suite that more auspicious or us had, had, you know,
Jason Heaton booked for the day, I guess, to do the presentation. So nobody's actually sleeping in this room. In fact, maybe we should take it over. We're not waking anyone up. Yeah, right. Yeah, it was a good, it was a good spot. But there's, you know, there's this two sided, beautiful fireplace and kind of a buffet table on one side and a bunch of couches and balconies that overlook the pool.
James And yeah, so we got to see basically an explanation of each watch. Yeah. And then an example of each watch. And then once all of them had been explained, we got to take the photos that we'll need to cover them as they become, uh, released models. Yeah. And yeah, that's a pretty fun, great NATO sort of day skiing in the morning. I mean, we had a relatively early start, got some good skiing and then we've seen some watches and now we're doing a TGM by a fireplace. I mean, maybe a roaring bonfire would have been better. We were by a bonfire last night. It was pretty chilly. You would have heard my teeth clattering.
Jason Heaton And we're actually drinking some good Blanton's bourbon whiskey here as we're talking. And yeah, I was just thinking, you know, as you were saying that, I mean, what's our intro for the show? It's, you know, travel, adventure, diving gear and watches. And we kind of hit almost all of those.
James Just trade diving for skiing.
Jason Heaton At least there's a, yeah, right. And we had a diving watch to talk about. So yeah, it pretty well was a good, almost a near perfect TGN day.
James Both you and I. Exhibited a certain faux pas on this trip in that neither of us have an Oris. Yes. Yes. So what have you got on wrist?
Jason Heaton Well, I've got my Bremont MB2 with the white dial, which of course I love. It seemed like a fitting kind of ski watch. And you know, certainly they're a competitor of Oris, but I think, you know, it's not, it seemed like a kind of a cool watch to wear on the trip.
James And, you know, I used to have- It's kind of a boss move to wear somebody else's watch. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Heaton Well, maybe, I don't know. I go onto the, you know, the auspices of, uh, you know, staying objective. But, uh, no, I, I had, I had one of those, um, the pro pilot altimeters for a couple of years, and I actually wore that in Zermatt last year and did a fair amount of kind of mountain sports. We did it in Vancouver. I had that watch with me and, uh, it's still, it's still a really cool watch, but I ended up parting ways with that. I had a certain old Land Rover I have to pay for. So a few watches had to, had to leave the stable and that was sad.
James There's always, always, and I mean, lots of, uh, They have a lot in the lineup right now that I find pretty interesting. I finally got a chance to play with the world timer. Yeah. And this is not embargoed and it's a watch I've wanted to see for a long time. Yeah. It didn't get a lot of fanfare when it was launched. And I think it's because they didn't explain exactly what the function, like the functionalities explained through a little video. Right. But there's a tactile element. Yes. So for those of you that don't know this watch, it's a, I think it's 44.5 millimeters, 44, 45 millimeters is right in there. Steel pro pilot. And what it does is it has a world time feature where you have a sub dial at three that has an entirely independent display of hours and minutes, as well as an AM PM scale. And that's your home time all the time. And when you fly or you change time zones, you actually move the bezel, but it's on a spring action. So you're not turning the bezel around. It kind of has, let's say it goes 10 degrees in one direction and 10 degrees in the other. And when you hit 10 degrees to the right, the local, the big hour hand jumps an hour forward. Yeah. And it'll bring the date with it, which is excellent. If you've had a, any ETA based quote unquote GMT watch, the date will be tied. Of course, not to the 24 hour hand, but the main hand, whereas this is, this will tell you the date where you're going. Right. Right. Which is like a, an Explorer 2 will do the same thing and, and that sort of thing. And the actual functionality, it's a big watch. It's a little bigger than the sort of watch I would wear and I would love to see them miniaturize it to their 40 millimeter pro pilot, which is such a great size to begin with. Yeah. But that actual like hands on turning that bezel or wiggling that bezel, because it's not really turning it, you're rotating it, but it only rotates a little bit and then it kind of bounces back to center.
Jason Heaton Yeah. It's kind of like the old rewind levers on a... Yeah, exactly.
James Yeah. Or like on a VCR, those ones, you know, like the scrub forward, scrub back.
Jason Heaton Yes. There's a tactile detent, like a click as you rotate it and then it snaps back. And it's very satisfying to use. And we were joking because we took the watch off of Vijay's wrist. He's the AORUS US President and he was wearing it. And I think by the time we gave it back to him, I mean, he couldn't tell what time it was. I'm sure it was off by six hours when he was playing with it. Yeah. But what's neat about that watch to me is that I love the pro-pilot aesthetic. I love that I don't even know how you describe it. It has this vaguely aviation radial engraved bezel.
James It's like a turned bezel of some sort. Yeah.
Jason Heaton Yeah, they look cool. What's neat about it is that they took that bezel, which on every other pro pilot, big crown pro pilot, it's fixed. And they actually made it functional, they made it so that you could turn that. And I'm sure that years back when they came out with that pro pilot bezel, they didn't intend it to be grippy to turn or anything like that. Yeah. It suddenly is perfect for that without having to resort to like a dive style bezel or something with, you know, and the, the movement is one that they've had.
James It's their module.
Unknown Yeah.
James And it's one that they've had on their push button world timer GMT plus minus watches. And you know, this is a watch I've hunted for, for years. And if you're listening and you have what's called a BC solo, preferably a blue dial, they're 40 millimeter sport watches from Oris. I would say they're about 15 years ago.
Unknown Yeah.
James And on the lower lugs, so like at four and at like eight, they had a button. And if you press the four o'clock one, you went ahead an hour. And if you press the eight o'clock one, you went back an hour and you had this little sub display of your home time zone. So they're just essentially removing the buttons and making it in this sort of trigger like bezel where it clicks and then it goes back to, it's cool. I mean, like it's the exact sort of this. I remember with that IWC that had a similar functionality, the pilot time zoner. Yeah, it was the time zoner, I think. Time zoner, yes, you're right. Whereas that one, it ratcheted. It turned all the way around. With each click, it made another move of the hand.
Jason Heaton And I think it had the world cities on the names.
James And it could account for summer DST, which was pretty clever. Right. But it was also probably three millimeters thicker than the Aorus. And it was 45 millimeters wide. It was like 18 millimeters thick. And quite a bit more expensive. Yeah. And I remember gushing about that because, I mean, I'm long on record on this show and in a lot of stuff I've written. I love GMT watches and I love world-time functionalities. And I just think it's really cool when someone finds a way, and I love push button. You know, I would prefer the Explorer II to have been a push button compared to pulling the crown out and finding that first position, advancing it. It works fine. It's very elegant. But the functionality of just kind of the way doing it in the bezel makes so much sense. I mean, even Rolex has moved the functionality in the Sky-Dweller. to the bezel. Yeah. And theirs is a three position, I believe, where you're basically at 11 noon or 12 and deciding what features being changed. Right. I think that's how that works. I haven't actually had a chance to play with a running Sky-Dweller. They're always the ones you see at Basel are always like dummies. The movements are dummies or they're plastic or whatever. Yeah. But yeah, I'm fascinated by these movements. And I really like that a brand like AORUS, which is, you know, they're attempting to make watches that regular people would buy and use. Yeah. And I think I travel a lot and I see that functionality. And if you put in a slightly smaller watch, I'm on board. That's really cool.
Unknown Yeah.
Jason Heaton Yeah. That's the neat thing about Auris. I mean, their, their complications tend to be clever in their simplicity.
James It's so many now.
Jason Heaton It's like they seek the, they seek the, um, not the easy way, but the, the, the more simple way to do something, you know, whether it's the, Straightforward, accessible. Yeah. You know, that uses water pressure to indicate depth or the mechanical altimeter, you know, pointer date, you know, this kind of stuff. And it's their watches have always kind of had that element to them. It's sort of a running theme. And I think I think this is the same same way. And I think that that that world time pro pilot is neat because it's so subtle. You look at that watch and it could just be like any sort of two time zone
James watch. It's not overpowered because they didn't have, you don't have to put a bunch of texts on the dial to explain what button to press or to show a bunch of other cities. Like they avoided all that. You could claim it's technically not a world timer as it doesn't show the time zone in all. Right. It doesn't show the time in all time zones. Yeah. Which is accurate. It's not a world timer. Yeah. But the functionality and the ability obviously to run the date and to run the time. Yeah. And maintain your home time zone and the AM PM at home is cool. And it works. Yeah. I think these, you know, the, the time zoner world timer GMT name has been a bit, uh, overused, not overused, but, uh, misused, I guess is the term, but I mean, that's how it is in a lot of these names, but I think, I think at least to my understanding or in my mind, if I, if you're going to say something's a world timer, it has to be, have the ability to show you all the time zones, right? Or as many time zones as possible. You know, think of stuff from Patek or that GP 1966 world timer. The Seiko, the Seiko is passive. You have to set the bezel yourself, but once it's set, it's a world timer for an hour until the hand, you know, moves on. But yeah, I think it's a, it's a, it's a great functionality and yet another, yet another like useful and nicely implemented complication.
Jason Heaton Yeah, it was cool. I mean, we saw, you know, Rolf was wearing a Carl Brashear, you know, one of the limited edition watches from last year that had that beautiful blue dial, and he was wearing that skiing, and, you know, he said he uses that kind of as his sports watch. He normally wears, like, one of the, you know, the caliber 112s or 113s, but he wears this for his kind of sporting opportunities, and he was wearing that, so it has a nice patina to it. It kind of has that nice green. It's just a cool watch. We were sitting outside for lunch today and just to see that, the way that thing's kind of patinaed. You know, for a while there I thought bronze watches were a little bit, I don't know, not for me, a little bit gimmicky, but the more I see them, like a nicely patinaed one, it's pretty cool.
James They look good, they look good when they've got some age on them. Yeah. And I mean that brochure, they all sold out. Yeah. They're gone. Right. And you don't see them that commonly unless you're on Instagram and you know who to follow and that kind of thing. Yeah. Definitely, definitely a neat piece. And yeah, I think you see the, see them all clean and shiny and it's kind of like, I'd rather it be steel. Right. And then you see it all kind of gunked up a bit and the color, the other colors are coming through and then they make more sense. Yeah.
Unknown Yeah.
James I know that like Hallios had done a bunch of different samples with the bronze tropics with different types of accelerated patina by like encasing the watch in various, like above and in the gases of various chemicals. Yeah. And one of them, and I'd have to double check with Jason what it was, but it was like a very smooth, very even, almost black finish. It looked incredible. Huh. Interesting. In like direct light, there was more color in the curve of the case, but otherwise it was like an inky, almost like gas on top of water sort of color. It was really neat. So, I mean, there's all sorts of stuff that you can do by using different Chemicals and vinegar and you know, you said you can read all sorts of these things on watch You see cuz guys test out and then clean the watch it goes back to normal and then they start over again with a different type of treatment So that's kind of fun. I said it's like in a watch with a project.
Jason Heaton Yeah, right like that So yeah, it was fun to just kind of hang out with a number of people that we don't see that often I mean, I haven't really spent as much time with with Zach from from worn and wound, you know, we had some nice chats with him and
James And Josh from Watchanista. Yeah, for sure. Adam's here from Red Bar and Ariel from A Blog to Watch. It's a good crew.
Unknown Yeah.
James And you know, it's always nice. Yeah. It's always nice to catch up with those types. And then before we kind of move on to other new business and stuff like that, I would make sure that if you're listening to this and you don't know what Clipperton is or any of that, the backstory, very briefly, it was an expedition I went on earlier this year via Oris to a coral atoll near the equator, north of the equator, but very far south of certainly where I've ever been. Yeah. And I won't go into really any detail because we did a whole show devoted to it, so that's episode 35. You can go back on SoundCloud or in your podcast aggregator, episode 35 from Clipperton with Love. And if you need to know more about Clipperton or if you have any questions, you can always email me, thegreatnadoatgmail.com.
Jason Heaton Yeah, it was a cool story, and I was glad to hear that there was some follow-up to it at this point. I mean, it had been months since we'd talked about it. Yeah, for sure. You know, I'd seen photos of something in, I think, the Explorer's Club Journal came out about the expedition, and then I saw something, might have been in Diver's Alert Network magazine or something. And so these things pop up every now and then, but it was neat to see that they've acknowledged that trip, you know, here at the beginning of 2018. It certainly gives you something to look back on you know, revisit seeing this watch and you'd give a nice little talk to the group here today.
James So, uh, yeah, it was an amazing experience and not something I'll ever get to do again, most likely. So it's something I'm definitely, uh, very humbled and happy to have had, uh, and even any part. And, uh, you can still go back and find the fairly large, probably the largest thing I ever wrote for a blog to watch, uh, on a blog to watch. And that was called, uh, 16 days, two watches, one forgotten Island. Yeah. So, yeah. But, uh, what do you think you got anything, uh, anything new to chat about? I guess this is, this is where we can branch out beyond the confines of Vail Valley.
Jason Heaton You know, I, so last time we spoke, I had just returned from Bonaire a couple of days earlier and then, then it was, uh, it was, you know, our Thanksgiving holiday in the U S and, uh, and, uh, you know, I think the last episode I talked that, uh, I was still hand cranked, starting my, my old Land Rover and waiting for the starter motor to come in. Well, that was a successful. Successful operation that the new starter motor Went in the day before Thanksgiving. So a couple Wednesdays ago and almost seems like cheating now. You just yeah It's a luxury, you know, it's all your perspective, right? I mean when your hand like 30 years younger, yeah Yeah, and it's you know, the weather's starting to get a little colder and you know I'm happy to happy to notice that the heat is blowing pretty well on that thing. So, you know if I don't want to turn every new business on the show into my Land Rover adventures, but it seems like every week there's some new thing to learn about, but it's just been fun to kind of get something, I guess, outside of watches to kind of geek out on. I'm a complete novice with these vehicles, and it's just kind of fun to kind of visit new forums. After years of going to watch forums, it's kind of fun to be the new guy on an old Land Rover forum and meet some new friends and just tinker a bit. Yeah, so starter motor operation was successful and knock on wood, it'll get me through the winter without too many issues.
James For sure. Well, I mean, speaking of cars and bits that go inside them, I had a pretty wild trip to Belgium. I previewed it on the last episode. Yeah. So, I mean, I was a zombie on that trip, I hope. I have no, like, I don't even remember some of the conversations I had. I just remember sitting at tables and talking, but I'd been awake for so long by the time, by the time we got to Belgium, I didn't even want to drive the car. I'd already driven the Panamera. So this is the trip for those of you who listened to last episode. So the trip with Porsche to a place called Galaxy Studios in Belgium to preview a new stereo that Porsche had worked on with Bohrmeister, which is a Berlin-based manufacturer of very high-end audio equipment, home stereos, and they make the premium sound option in almost all Porsches, but for the Cayenne and the Panamera, due to their size and their ability to cram speakers everywhere, they have this new one, which is a 3D surround sound stereo that uses some technology that was developed at Galaxy Studios, which is this world-renowned recording and mastering facility. They have a room in Galaxy Studios where they record all sorts of orchestra work and piano work that has a noise floor of 14 dB. What does that mean? Like a very quiet inside a car is like 60 dB. Oh, okay. And a whisper is like 30. Okay. Like the kind of whisper where you have to put your mouth close to somebody's ear. Right, right. So I've never experienced the type of silence of 14. So the entire facility is on springs, which isolates any noise above three Hertz, any frequency above three Hertz. Yeah. And then they have like multiple panels of 11 centimeter thick glass in the walls. They had to develop a special crane thing to lift the panels of glass. Wow. Didn't exist because the glass didn't exist. But instead of layering all these types of glass, which could have resonance between them.
Unknown Yeah.
James It's one thick piece of glass. Like you would use if you were designing a huge aquarium. Oh yeah. And the room, so they gave us a tour of this room, and the room's quiet even when people are talking in it. It's weird. Yeah. And that's 14 dB with the AC on. Oh, wow. So they said that it gets even quieter if you decide why you would do this, but it gets so quiet. 14 dB, the microphones don't matter. It's not going to pick up. Yeah. And so they walked us into the room, and we listened to a very talented pianist play a song. And then the gentleman who had helped design the room spoke about it at length. And then he said, get very comfortable on your feet and don't move your bags or anything and just hold your breath. And I mean, all I could hear was the inside of my brain, like just my tinnitus, my slight tinnitus and like the heartbeats of other people in the room. Like it was insanely quiet, disturbingly, upsettingly quiet. And then we saw a bunch of recording facilities. We saw where they master movies for various types of theaters. So we saw where they mastered the sound for Blade Runner 2049 and all this type of stuff. And then, you know, we had driven from Brussels airport to Galaxy Studios, maybe two hours, the route that Porsche, this kind of meandering route through the Belgian countryside. I was too tired to drive, but I wasn't too tired to play with the stereo the whole way. Oh yeah. The stereo is unbelievable. I mean, it should be it's 60, 68, 70 Canadian. Wow. $7,000. Yeah. And like the, There's a base stereo in these cars, and then you can option the Bose, which also comes with higher spec versions of the cars, and then the Bohr Moisters, that like pinnacle. And the take rate's probably like around 10% of vehicles. But I mean, if it's a $220,000 car, would you rather have $10,000 ceramic brakes on your family sedan or the best stereo? I'd buy the stereo. And so it has a bunch of tech to basically make you feel like the sounds coming from different places in the car. There's 21 speakers. It's 1500 watts. Wow. And when you, you know, through my phone on Spotify, it sounded amazing. And then they had like SD cards full of lossless music. Yeah. And then it's just, it's unbelievable how clear and how loud you could listen to it. Yeah. The mirrors are moving. Nothing in the car rattles. Yeah. That must have been a huge engineering Don't get me wrong, it's a new Porsche, a $200,000 car, nothing should rattle, but still nothing's rattling.
Jason Heaton Yeah, you'd think you'd get that boom.
James Nothing like that, none of the weird humming or buzzing. The glass isn't moving around, the rear view mirror's not moving around so much. It's just the wing mirror, you could kind of see it when the bass would hit. There's speakers everywhere and you can kind of shape the 3D sound to your liking and its positioning. But with the 3D element on, it genuinely sounds like there's no walls to the car, like the sound's coming from much further away. And it was fantastic, a really neat experience. Because I've heard some nice speakers. That Maserati I drove had a Bowers & Wilkins that I thought was fantastic. Not in the same league. And then after that, we had a demo from Bohrmeister of €170,000 stereo, two speakers, couple amps, and like something, a network player. They had like two things to play the file the cleanest way. Yeah. I've never heard anything like that. Wow. Wow. Like live doesn't sound that good.
Jason Heaton Interesting trip for, you know, presumably this was as part of your car coverage.
James Yeah, for Nuvo, the pieces on Nuvo, nuvomagazine.com.
Jason Heaton But it's an interesting angle because, you know, so often automotive articles focus on the ceramic brakes or the engine tweak or, you know, stitching on the seats or something. This is, this is, uh, that would be an interesting, uh, interesting trip, even though you were horribly, uh, zombified.
James I was unbelievably tired. And then at the end, they like hand me the keys to a, uh, Panamera turbo wagon. And they're like, they're like, okay, the road is more direct. It's just on the highway back to the airport, park it at the airport. Go home. And I was like, nah, I've been up for like 40 hours at this point. Yeah. Can I just have a ride with somebody else? Yeah. And so I rode back with this German auto writer. He played death metal the whole way.
Jason Heaton On the Bohrmeister?
James On the Bohrmeister, yeah. For sure. We were in like a chalk gray e-hybrid Panamera. Wow. I mean, lovely cars. Yeah. But just a fantastic stereo. And now I'm like, Is there other places in Vancouver I could go to hear really high-end stereos? I just want to hear more of them. Don't get me wrong, I think they said once if you wanted to buy that 170,000 euro one and get it all the way to North America, it's like 300 grand. 300 grand. It's absurd. But the experience is pretty absurd, too. I would never aspire to own one or buy one or spend that kind of money on a stereo. But if you could walk into a store in your city or your town and hear something like that, please do it. Go find your favorite band. And if it's Wolfpack, you can go to their base camp and buy the FLAC, the FLAC files, or the lossless files. Go buy some high bitrate versions of three or four of your favorite songs. It'll cost you $5. And then go to a hi-fi store and actually hear what they sound like, because it's bonkers.
Jason Heaton Do you think they'd, would they make a version of that for my Land Rover?
James Do you think? Oh, probably. Oh, I mean, you can get like a, like a, almost all of these guys, I mean, Boar Moisture doesn't, they're very like pure in their thinking, but almost all of the really high end, quote unquote, high end stereo manufacturers make like some Bluetooth stereo. Yeah. You should get like a Bluetooth. Sure. Bowers and Wilkins. Oh yeah. Nice Neo modern. Yeah. Would really look the part. I'm sure nothing would rattle. Velcro to the dash of the.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Yeah. Nothing would rattle.
James I'm sure if I turned it up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. No. Yeah. There's definitely no nothing that's going to rattle in, in that car. But yeah, so that was, that was really, really cool. And, uh, and I think the takeaway for the normal person that's not buying Porsches with $7,000 stereos is if you have the opportunity at a listening gallery or to try a really good pair of headphones, just try the experience. It's a really fun experience, especially if you know the song and you can start hearing things you haven't heard before. Don't bring a Grenado, you're just gonna hear lip noises or blinking sounds. I have no idea what other sounds are hiding somewhere in these recordings, but pick a really cool track that you love and try it on. the most expensive stereo you can find. It's just fun for the 10 minutes, and I honestly think it doesn't change the way I feel about my home stereo, which is worth maybe, at best, a couple grand when it was brand new. And I still listen to that and love it. It's fine, but it is a fun experience.
Jason Heaton Now, wouldn't that be something if there was some guy cruising down the Autobahn in his Panamera listening to Grey Nato on his Bohrmeister right now?
James Turn it off, man. Put on some Wolfpack. Or whatever something else I yeah, I heard some eat. I'm not even a fan of the Eagles and they have like Hotel California, but that sounds good And and they had some stuff by Banks, I don't know some people know banks I'm going thanks is a fantastic artist and It was really amazing the lossless stuff on the right stereo. You can hear the difference. Yeah, it's it's cool Definitely a fun trip and I was really thrilled to be writing about something that was like car adjacent Yeah, and still nerdy. Yeah, but not It's this fast, I went this fast, I braked this hard, or this track. All of that's great, but it's so nice to have something that's from the other side and still hugely obsessively engineered. They had all the little pieces of the whole stereo on a table, and everything's custom. Obviously, but to a very high degree to fit, the subwoofer surround curls around the spare tire. So it has a custom fitted box for the spare tire just for that. Panamera or cayenne. Yeah. Some really neat stuff and multiple amps and weird, these weird solid state speakers that sit in the dash and push sound off of the windshield so that it sounds like it's coming from in front of you. Oh, sure. Like a soundstage. Yeah. Really, uh, yeah, really. I mean, I've rambled extensively at this point, but I had a really, a really cool time. And if you can walk into a Porsche dealer and just add and see if they'd have one of the cars there, I'm sure they'd be thrilled just to see somebody. Yeah. walk in to check out an $8,000 option, so why not, right? Certainly cooler than, yeah, the ceramic brakes. How you feeling about a little final notes and we'll put a bow on this before dinner time?
Jason Heaton Yeah, let's do that. Yeah, what have you got for us? Well, I'll jump in here first. You know, we've certainly talked in past episodes about Ben Saunders, who happens to be a Bremont ambassador and who I interviewed just before he left for his Transantarctic Expedition, which was in an outside magazine's website about a month ago. Ben's a bit of a hero of ours. We both met him when we were in London last year, and he's in the thick of his trans-Antarctic expedition right now. And if you follow him on social media, whether it's Facebook or Instagram, his team is putting up photos that he's taking. and kind of little blurbs, excerpts from his daily blog, and then they provide links that you can go to his website, bensaunders.com, and there's, you know, there's daily tracking and daily blog updates from Ben from Antarctica. And I think he's about, what would he be, about a month into it now, I would say, maybe 20, 25 days. And it's a little bit, you know, Reading his blog entries. He's actually quite a good writer, which is kind of fun because he comes up with these interesting sort of Links or metaphors or sort of pop culture references when he's when he's talking about, you know The suffering and the kind of rotten weather and horrible conditions. He's going through and so it's good reading It's short reading certainly, but I check it every day.
James It's good. I like the post quite a bit I would agree that they're easy to read and well written and fun and maybe too fun for a guy that's doing some like the hardest thing ever. Yeah. You'd think it would just be like four or five words, most of them swears. Yeah.
Jason Heaton And well, we'll see, we'll see when he gets to you soon, you know, day 60, but you know, he's, he's, it was a, it's roughly a thousand mile trip. And I think he's, you know, I was looking the other day and he's still, you know, they, they show like miles to go and it's like 861 miles. I just cringe. I'm like, Oh, you know, every day he's going, you know, 15 miles or something. And it's like, just, it seems so painstakingly slow, but, uh, you know, he knows what he's doing. So, um, yeah, one foot in front of the other. Yeah, exactly. Right. Forever.
James Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, my first one, uh, I guess my only one actually this week, I haven't found a, haven't come across a ton of stuff, just been kind of underwater with various projects and stuff, but this is a really fun video for anyone that's on the SR 71 kind of hype team with me and the drive published, uh, a write up about a video where a pilot gives a cockpit tour of all of the gauges and controls in an SR-71. So cool. And I mean, I've sat in the cockpit or a faux cockpit of an SR-71 of a trainer at the Air and Space Museum outside of Seattle. And this is really, really cool. It's a 20 minute video, so it's a little longer than your coffee break, but maybe you could cut it up into a couple of viewings or whatever. Yeah. It's really fascinating. It's almost like vlog style guys holding the camera pointing at gauges. And, but like, it's, it's not so much what the gauge does. It's the next thing that he says as the numbers or the metric that they're measuring relates to some aspect of piloting. Oh, sure. The most amazing plane that ever existed. Yeah. It's a really great video and I highly recommend it. Uh, like I said, if you're on the, uh, on the, the kind of, never-ending love wave of the SR-71 that I am, I think you definitely get a kick out of this. It's obviously less generally informative than your normal SR-71 documentary or a chat with a pilot.
Jason Heaton It's much more like... This is probably level three of geekdom, SR-71 geekdom. This isn't like level one, you watch the overview of the history of the SR-71.
James We all know how fast it is, we all know it bleeds fuel when it sits on the tarmac, none of this. I wanna know what all these... There are cages and buttons everywhere. Yeah. It's 20 minutes well spent, really fun.
Jason Heaton That's cool, yeah. My second one is, it's a video that I found via one of our favorite websites, Adventure Journal, and they had put up an article kind of linked out to this. It's a video called Lucky Strike, and it's on Vimeo. And it was put together, it was these two buddies, two Kiwis, two New Zealanders who are avid cavers. They've kind of set out to link up two cave systems in New Zealand and, you know, it's a caving video. I mean, it's really cool, but what's neat about it is I like these two guys because they're super chill and they're just kind of like, I mean, I hate to say it, they're kind of like you and I. They're just kind of these guys who just, you know, they're talking about it like we talk about our day skiing. For sure. And yet they're doing this really ambitious caving project that they've got where they're kind of linking up two sides.
James And the footage from in the cave is wild.
Jason Heaton It is. It's really good.
James It's really well done. They're digging around in tiny holes full of mud. Yeah. And then it cuts them like smiling or laughing or kind of shoving mud at each other.
Jason Heaton I love when they're like cleaning their gear off. Like they come out after a day of caving. They're like hosing it off. It's just this like clay. Yeah.
James But they look thrilled through the whole thing and they're kind of teasing each other.
Unknown Yeah.
James It's a great video. It's not too long. Yeah. So yeah, I guess that's about all we've got for the Colorado adventure episode. Yeah. Obviously really nice to see you face to face and have a chat. That's a treat that we really only get. Yeah.
Jason Heaton Maybe once or twice a year. Yeah, I know. It's great.
James So as always, thanks so much for listening. You can hit the show notes for more details and links. You can follow us on Instagram at Jason Heaton and at J E Stacey, and you can follow the show at The Graynado. That's also where we do all of our giveaways. If you have any questions for us, please write thegraynado at gmail.com and please subscribe and review wherever you find your podcasts. Music throughout a siesta by Jazzer via the Free Music Archive.
Jason Heaton And we leave you with this quote from the British adventurer John Ridgway who was quoted on Ben Saunders' blog recently. Don't stare into the abyss of self-pity. Short hard tug on the shoelaces and get on with it.