People think I’m making it up. It all started at about the same time as Miami Vice. The early 80s, when the world felt like it was effortless. All you needed was a pastel suit, a .45, and a black Daytona and you could rule South Dade. I was in Texas at the time, mostly acting like an idiot, but unbeknownst to me I was about to embark on a lifelong pursuit of timepiece destruction.
This was not something I planned or intended. In fact, it caught all of us by surprise. A watch gifted by a friend of my father’s. A brief period on my arm and the rest, well, it’s history. My legacy of destruction when it comes to watches is quite something, even if I do say so myself. I’ve burned through brands and bands and still don’t have an answer as to why this happens. Some might last a year, others a day or two, but nothing seems impervious to the “death ray” that my body puts out. Last week I torched my wife’s watch in ONE DAY. The latest timekeeper to feel my understated wrath.
With this in mind, welcome the VAER S3 Calendar Field Watch. A simple, beautiful, 36mm watch made of stainless with sapphire glass and multiple bands. This is my first dance with VAER but I do love their story and their work. This is not an expensive watch folks. I’m testing the water. I will run in this watch, cycle in this watch, hike in this watch, paddle, travel, and explore and I will submerge this beauty when the time comes. And yes, I will photograph in this watch.
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I’ve had good luck with the Luminox. Once a watch goes on my wrist it doesn’t come off! The luminous face and hands come I. Handy when I’m camping and have to relieve myself only to discover its 3:00AM. Pricey? Yes a bit depending on your taste but so far it’s the last watch I will need to buy.
Author
Hmm, will check that out. I know the name but not much else. So far so good with the VAER.
I love watches! I had something similar happen to two watches. After my dad died, my mom gave me his University of Michigan watch. I wore it for about two weeks and it died. I put in a new battery and 2 weeks later it was dead again. I gave up. When I turned fifty my wife bought me a new watch. It constantly lost time. I took it to a jeweler who took it all apart and found nothing wrong. I wore it for a while and it lost time. I took it to another jeweler who kept it on a shelf for a month and it kept perfect time. They gave to back to me and after a few weeks it started losing time again. So strange!
Author
I think there are more of us out there than I first thought. Cursed ?
Watches must work for me. Timex has worked for me most of the time. I use the Timex Ironman for everything. Swimming, surfing, rugby (left it on too often in training) …. I broke one and bought a new one. The first one lasted 10 years. 50 bucks for one. Works for me.
Hopefully, there won’t be so many gear posts now?
I confess I skipped most of them, sorry Mr. Milnor.
Author
I wish that was me. Gear posts?
Now I see that I am also talking about equipment (Timex and so on). It’s crazy how hypersensitive I get when someone opens a box at the beginning of a video. Maybe that’s just me? By gear post I guess I mean, any post that activates my inner whatever, that’s looking for the price on Amazon.
Author
Ya, that buy instinct is easy to get triggered these days. So easy to click click away.
I hate watches. I’ve got a couple of Garmin watches. I hate them, too. Garmin Forerunner blah blah blah, the band broke. You’ve got to order a toolkit to replace the band. Granted, it’s an easy fix once you have the tools. But if I’m selling someone an over-priced watch and labeling it as run, hike, swim (really, count your daily steps), I’m going to make the band easy to replace. Heck, I’ve already taken them for hundreds of dollars and their data. I don’t need to go full Musk Bezos.
Yeah, I haven’t worn a watch years. I think the last one I had was a Timex of some kind.
Author
I love Timex. They are a great brand but they tend not to last too long on my deranged body.
Author
I love them. Even when they break. I have a Garmin too but don’t use it anymore. I really don’t have a need to track my exploits.
Milnor – you’re not a freak. I once worked with a woman who announced at a staff meeting one day that she ‘broke’ every watch she’d ever worn. We were so intrigued that we went out and bought a number of fairly cheap watches one day at lunch (Timex, Casio, etc.). Sure enough, they all stopped working within days or weeks of her wearing them. I think some people have energy fields or magnetic fields that destroy watches. Love the look of Vaer watches – I’ll be interested to see if it lasts!
Author
I think you are right on the money. I think there are more than a few of us out there.
Watches, yeah, love ‘em or hate ‘em. First one whose brand I remember was a Tissot; given to me when I was mid-teens, and lived with me until I was 35, when the business was starting to do okay and I bought a Submariner. A bit expensive, but in ‘72 it wasn’t marketed as male jewellery, but, rather, a sports watch. (At today’s prices, I don’t think I would have bought into the brand.) The following year I bought my wife a Lady Date and we wore those things everywhere we went, on all our gigs and on into retirement. She died in 2008, and her watch went to our daughter.
The idea had always been that our son would get mine, but unfortunately, a young Roma woman mugged me in the street and in the ten or fifteen seconds it took me to figure out what had gone down, both she and watch were out of sight. I went to the Guardia Civil office to report the theft, and the first question the guy asked me was how many Rolexes had I had stolen? I was dumbfounded. Victim treated as con artist! Anyway, I was able to prove ownership, and it turned out the woman is a specialist: she steals nothing else; not money, nothing. Apparently, according to the Guardia, over a hundred Rolexes have been stolen in my area of Mallorca; I never imagined them to be so mundane!
That was in October of 2019. Naturally, nothing has ever surfaced. However the same thing happened to a judge in Palma, Mallorca, and he had the fuzz wake up, and his watch was found, same day, in the care of an Italian couple that had just boarded a flight back home. The wheels do work, but they require the right key to switch ‘em on. I have no such key.
I subsequently bought a cheap Invicta, for about 130 euros, and it’s as near as dammit to a Submariner as you can get. Snag is, it embarrasses me: anybody who knows watches could be forgiven for thinking I’m trying to pretend I have the real thing. As I have had that, it irks me. Lesson: old guys shouldn’t wander out with anything valuable on show. And yes, it has freaked me out about carrying a camera these days. It’s not about the camera, now worthless in monetary terms, but about violence: I might be assaulted by a male, this time, and I don’t think I’d survive violence and a third heart attack.
Anyway, your problem: my son, during the late seventies, was one of those kids who could bend spoons simply by rubbing them between two fingers. The shafts would break apart in just a couple of minutes, and to me, the newly opened ends looked like metal fatigue. He did this one day for a highly qualified engineering client for whose company I shot calendars, and the man’s response was I’m seeing this, but I don’t believe it. That said, my son can successfully wear watches.
Have you tried the spoon-bending thing? I’m convinced that it has something to do with body electricity and some rare – or simply unexplored – form of magnetism that’s capable of realigning basic metal structure, perhaps breaking down some compounds. It might be where you’re at: get thee to a lab!
Author
Whoa, Submariner. That’s a beauty. The theft thing is new to me, at least to the extent it happens now. People have always stolen watches but another friend just left for a trip to Europe and mentioned he wore something he could depart with. Crazy that this is now such a thing. I’ve not bent anything with my mind. But I’ve not tried to bend anything with my mind. My luck it would deflect off the spoon and hit my camera.