I Will Never Take My Dive Watch Diving

The thing no one tells you about is the day that you realize that the price of purchasing a salad versus making one yourself reframes how you shop for food, forever. “A buck ninety-nine for a head of lettuce?? And its not just one serving? For real!?” I called to my mother. I was lying on her authentic oriental rug in the living room. Her gas powered fireplace was blazing against the skeletal fingers of late October air trying to wiggle and tickle their way through the unsealed doors and windows. The flickering light was playing across the black dial of the Explorer. My back was feeling the lion’s share of the heat it but I wasn’t complaining; I’d positioned myself in the best seat of the house, holding court over the peasants who had to wear sweaters and zip up jackets. No, my incredulity was pointed directly at Big Salad, the shadow government of making me pay almost ten dollars (ten) for a salad at a restaurant or by delivery. One of my nephews waddled over to me solemnly, handing me the next Duplo block that I absentmindedly stacked for him. Him and I were building a massive tower (relative to his two feet of height) because that’s what cool uncles do. I gestured with my other hand to my mother who was making dinner in the kitchen as if to say, “How did you not share this knowledge with me until after I’d turned 33??”

Before heading over the Atlantic, I weighed the decision that all watch enthusiasts come to when packing for a trip: which watches would I take? I’ve said before that I prefer my travel watches light and subtle. Having an, at the time, four watch collection made the choice a bit easier for me than most. I picked my Explorer and the Tudor Pelagos. “Wait…what?” You may be thinking. Which you’re right to give me my due pause. 

I was visiting my hometown, or entire state rather, for the better part of two weeks. It was a trip I tried to make around the same time every year to the twenty or so miles outside of Washington, DC. My mother, Grandmother, sister, brother-in-law (who is (next to the Grandmother sitting next to him) the most positive person in existence), and my two nephews had come to visit during my stay so we didn’t have to juggle scheduling that much. Economically yet family focused, the Thompsons are. 

Despite it not even being November, my mother had voluntold me I was helping her set up the Christmas tree once everyone had arrived. And as the smells of soulful southern cooking, rich and full, happy laughs bouncing around the corners of the room, while we all tumbled through our 80 years of collective family history, and listening to our customary yet required Stevie Wonder’s Greatest Hits playing on CD, I felt my gruntles in total. I love my mother with everything that I am. But that day, she had gone crazy. And I had to find a delicate way to tell her that without her giving me the bum, burnt, crusty parts of her famous cornbread out of spite. “Mother…I’m sorry, but you’re crazy putting this tree up before Thanksgiving!” I protested.

My first and second helpings were filled to the brim with the best of the best foods. And also the bum, burnt, crusty parts of her famous cornbread.

My Pelagos is the OG Pelagos. All 42mm, titanium in your face, drop it on your big toe and it’ll give you worse pain than stubbing it on that dresser you keep banging it against. And subtle this beast is not. So why would I pick the Big Blue Wonder to wander with me up and down Virginia for half a month? Simple.

It's my GADA watch.

GADA refers to a watch that can Go Anywhere and Do Anything. Is there a watch that you can go surfing with at sunrise and then go to a business casual dinner in later? Yes. Is there a watch you can wear while solving complex mathematical equations and then fly to the moon the same week? Yep. Is there a watch that helps you time when to flip the pancakes without burning them but that you’re still wearing while chewing a particular nugget of undercooked, doughy batter? You know there is. 

In almost every article, video, or smoke signal since watch reviews came to be, there is a line about “So you’ll feel comfortable while doing x and y wearing this watch”. Which, from a point, is true. We do want more bang for our buck, more mileage out of our products. So, despite the truly uniquely designed watches, most are designed to wear multiple hats. And they’re marketed that way which is smart; unless you’re Bezos levels of rich and can literally have a watch for each hour of the day, having a watch that can go to the gym, the office, on errands, the bar, or to Grandmother’s house is a huge selling point. And we, for the most part, do take that into account when making our purchases.

However.

That's an obvious benefit but not necessarily one we choose to exploit.

The next leg of my journey took me down I-95 and the ungodly amount of traffic I’d somehow repressed in my memory. I was headed to, quite literally, a sanctuary of sorts. Sometimes I get a little tired of steel, cut stone, overpriced taxis, and pigeons. So I channel my inner Thoreau (within limits; I, for instance, am unlikely to ever be found camping unless I have a fully stocked RV ten feet away). One of the non-negotiable bullets on my travel checklist when visiting back home is to head to Shenandoah National Park. Without sounding like a freeholding member of their advertisement board (#visitshenandoahnationalpark) I can genuinely say…you need to go to Shenandoah National Park. Preferably sometime between late September and early November. The views (amazing vantages that stretch for miles no matter the direction), the foliage (golds, reds, and warm tones, where I find a new color hue every time I visit), and the atmosphere that invites you to take a deep breath and relax (you will). And I haven’t even gotten to the hiking trails: of course there are different levels of experience for everyone available and you really are getting the most from each and every one. Even the kid friendly ones. 

From Blackrock Summit, to Bearfence Rock Scramble; to Whiteoak Falls, to the Little Devils Stairs Loop. The park tests your senses with how much beauty it can overload you with by each step you take. Every path is an experience, and adventure, where Shenendaoh slowly and willingly shows you the secret bits and pieces of itself as if you’re finally easing into that long, loving marriage The Foundations used to croon about.

I don’t actually hike when I go there.

There's a winding road you can drive on called Skyline Drive that pretty much lives up to its name. It’s a long serpentine trail showing you all of the park highlights. Think of it as the Tiktok version of everything that would normally take hours compressed into a leisurely (if no one is driving in front of you) hour or so drive. My rental car (tank) was thankfully an automatic I’d affectionately named Big Bertha so I didn’t have to wear out my calves worrying about shifting. I’d actually gone to the mountain twice this past trip: I like to go before blue hour so I can catch everything the sunrise has to offer skirting alongside the mountain face. How the shadows play and deepen at any one point, where the light cascades through the leaves like a one-note kaleidoscope that’s no less mesmerizing for it. 

Of course, Virginia drivers are…not terribly good at driving (Berlin’s are worse by a long shot so much that I refuse to drive in its traffic at specific times of day) so there had been an accident that stopped us for about two hours or so the first time I went. The second time, I caught the Virginia skyline going up like a furnace: the deepest, goosebump inspiring blues to a soft pastel orange; a searing red that in the space of two blinks turned the perfect gold that doesn’t need one tweak in any editing software. 

The Explorer and Pelagos were with me on the mountains, ready to go through a slew of shots in various lightings. Because thats how they roll. They’re watch photography darlings. Despite being a black dial watch, a type notoriously difficult to capture a decent snapshot of with any type of lighting, the Rolex looked absolutely fantastic 4000 feet above sea level. And with the Pelagos, the light kind of dips into the step down face where one part can be completely lit and the crevices of another resting comfortably in the shadowy wings.

And arguably, the Explorer is the definitive GADA watch, an opinion shared with a lot of watch enthusiasts at some point that included myself. Even more so when hiking up a mountain thinking you’re Sir Edmund Hillary. I haven’t found a situation that I’ve been in where it couldn’t work. For a while, I considered it the quintessential Charles watch, the one most people would see me with or that I’d pick up each and every day; the one where they would notice I was wearing something different because I’d broken the chain of days I’d had it on my wrist. But that's not the watch I’m known for. Unconsciously, unknowingly, without even trying, I’d slipped into the most comfortable and rote of routines with the Tudor Pelagos.

I made the drive to the last leg of my journey without a thought. You know that thing that happens when you’re driving and you’re aware of where you are one second and then you kind of tune back in at a completely different leg of your journey? Like you have this Looney Tunes reaction of a double take saying, “What the hell just happened, Doc?”. That phenomen happens to me every time I head towards Richmond. For school, then love, then work, to leisure and finally a second home, that city holds a fair share of my favorite memories. It's also where I kicked off the adult half of my watch journey that began at age six with a gold plated quartz-powered Bulova. And in that city I found the best wings (not up for debate…because the joint closed), best work family, and good people I’ve ever stumbled across all due to chance. And those good people eventually found their respective spouses. And that's where I found Alex.

Alex allegedly comes from a line of phenomenally fine cooks but had already hit a level that my Millenial generation won’t make til their mid-50s: the coveted Grandma’s Cooking Tier. While in America, I try my damndest to hit all the old fast food haunts that my heart (literally) can take. But for two or three days out of my trip, Alex hits the hard pause for me and her husband and serves the most inexplicably delicious food. Somedays, even now, my mind will drift to this apple crumble dish she served me for breakfast one day because it's just that good. But the bit that gets her to Grandma’s Cooking Tier isn’t just the quality of the food (because that's there, no question). It's the unconditional, unconscious desire to provide comfort in probably something that transcends just being a good host. 

So while I was sitting as comfortable as I liked in their creaky red leather armchair, the Pelagos tick ticking away while I was shooting the shit with one of my best friends, sitting by an open window with a beer whose face was covered in a sheen of condensation on a side table just a twitched finger away, while the October air carried its hints of winter, their hand made fire in the fireplace yawning like a lion, and I am in hour six of a solitaire streak, Alex came by with a plate of my favorite snacks. I didn’t even remember telling them what my favorite snack was. And they definitely hadn’t left to go to the store to pick anything up. And there she was. Unconsciously gracious. Just because. Unbidden but fully appreciated.

And then she’d go off to do Alex things like bird watching while something else is simmering in the oven. I don’t even believe it costs her any measure of effort on her part. It's what she does. Not in a “1950’s housewife”, kind of way either. It's just what she is, she doesn’t have to try at it. A quiet, gentle force of nature dialed down to five feet and change, moving through the room humming something to herself, leaving and imparting the sense of peace in her wake.

It’s a similar sibling-ish feeling of contentedness that I find when I’m out roaming around putting watches down on things. Like seeing the Grand Canyon or Mount Fuji or watching a massive storm stretching towards you from the front of your porch with a whole afternoon to spare: you appreciate it on a primordial level, unknowingly taking the deepest of breaths.

The closest I’d gotten to it on this particular trip was at a spot where I should have seen a deep basin between two modest valleys in Shenandoah. Instead I saw a perfect blue sky. And a sea of clouds. There was an absolute stillness there. Like a heavy snowfall in December after nine PM, when the sky is clear and the moon is full and everything just seems so blue. That kind of quiet. A reverie. Something so great that makes you feel so small yet so glad that you can bear witness to it. And in that moment, the only thing you can do is be the moth to the flame; moving without thought.

Stripped of the fundamental consumerism behind our hobby, all hobbies, lies this: there is a little part in the back of your head that bypasses every other synapse driving you forward to pick your GADA watch. Not because of its make. Not because of its model. Not because of its horological history, the time you spent on the waitlist, or the anniversary it marks. Not even because of its original purpose and situational function. Sure, our collections have evolved and will evolve. But the go anywhere, do anything timepiece? That’s something sold to us but it is a choice made by us. It could be that Sinn Flyback Chronograph. The Junghans Max Bill Chronoscope. The Baltic Reverse Panda. The Timex Wayfinder. The Rolex Explorer. And the Tudor Pelagos.

Time after time, day after day, I pick that Tudor. Despite my perfect grail watch. Despite any given situation I tumble in to from sunrise to sunset. I will find it on my wrist somehow, someway. I don’t know why. Honestly? I kind of like it that way.