Buying My Second Rolex

Using “xxxx feet above sea level” is up there with the most useless form of “accurate” measurements right next to “the whale is half a football field long” and “how much cheese the recipe says goes into a mac and cheese dish”.

To be honest, I believed, in the summer of 2021, that climbing the Grossarl mountains a little south of Salzburg, Austria would take me a modest two hours. Maybe three because I was stopping to take pictures of the landscapes and my Rolex Explorer I. I had wanted to time my ascent perfectly with the sunrise, to see the golden crest heave itself up the rolling hills of a sleepy mountain town. After, I would sit in the meadow among the wildflowers and drowsy bees, feeling the promise of a merciful breeze later in the day, take a deep breath, and know that that memory, that moment would become one of the core experiences of my adult life. That belief shattered into a one hundred thousand pieces, like a child throwing a fistful of silver glitter (that you had no idea when or where they had found it) into the air.

I stood off to the side of a dirt road, looking at a forest of monolithic trees that deserved to be screensavers, waving a truck by. As I panted and glanced behind me, I saw more of the mountain range but behind me was a valley turned golden pool in the light of early morning; like a greek god had gently scooped the earth out with their brilliantly radiant hand, more a faded mark of a memory than a scar. I watched the tail lights of the truck make their way around the next bend and my eyes drifted along its path, leading upwards to the shorter of the two peaks in the 6km area. The rubber grip on my camera was somehow sticky and slick from my sweat. The dial on the watch was smudged and the new watch strap I had ordered the week before was looking worn. I was maybe a gentle fifth of the way up and had to decide in that moment whether to continue or go back.

It turns out, walking down a mountain is just as hard as going up.

The Rolex on my wrist was actually my second Rolex Explorer and for all literal designs, they were exactly the same. The first I had sold before my daughter was born: I’d wanted to clear all the debt I had to my name so that if an emergency came along, I could take care of my family without regret or worry. And if my 1991 version of the watch was the price for that, then I’d pay it. And I did. Because at the time, I was just trying my best.

A few years later, later I would read something similar in a self-help book; that sometimes we just had to try our best that particular day or in a moment. We can’t operate at 100% all the time and that it's okay to have a bad day or experience a rough one where we muster just enough to get through it all. At that time, it is our best.

I wound up buying the second Explorer a few years later because, at the time, my collection felt hollow without it. Not in a flashy or Gollum kind of way, but that the sacrifice had meant something more than the watch. And to get it back would’ve meant that my life, my plan had gone more or less how I’d wanted it to; that the return of the watch would be a homecoming.

That hollow feeling stayed there though. Don’t get me wrong, it's a nice watch and I’m glad to wear it six out of the seven days of the week. But it's not that 1991 Explorer that, I think, is floating around San Diego right now. That watch held a promise and expectation that I could and would do better, according to plan. It felt like, pardon the pop culture reference of my favorite superhero, a little bit like two modern comic book tales. The hero sacrifices it all in one series with lasting consequences, maybe even resulting in their death. And then by the next series, they come back with some vague hand-waving explanation. Yeah, it's the same character. But their experience is cheapened somehow. Lesser than. And maybe it's overdramatic to tie that concept to the purchase of two watches worth a downpayment on a car. Maybe all I could do was be grateful that I even had a second shot to enjoy, in some relative measure of fullness, what my past self couldn't. Maybe that was enough.

I stumped back to our hotel, took the coldest of showers, and flopped onto the bed to take a nap. My wife was packing our daughter’s baby bag while the tiny girl was slapping at my face with one hand while losing what little balance she had, tumbling towards a pillow with a tiny “Ah…”.

“Would you like to take the ski lift up to the top with us? See the views?” my wife asked gently, phrasing it as a formality after hearing my series of grunts when I’d previously entered the room.

“No,” I’d told her. I rolled over and unstrapped the Rolex from my wrist, placing it on the bedside table.

“I’ve done my best for today.”