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GPHG 2018 Preview (And Some Auction Talk)

Published on Mon, 5 Nov 2018 11:00:00 +0000

This Friday, Geneva will play host to the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève, or GPHG, the most prestigious awards we have in the watchmaking industry. Winners are chosen across a variety of categories, including things like complications, sports watches, best watch under CHF 6,500, etc. We thought it would be fun to get a few of our editors together in the studio ahead of the awards ceremony to give our thoughts on the 72 short-listed watches, so Ben, Cara, Jon, and I each picked our own winners and debated the finer points of what separates the best from the rest.

Synopsis

In this return episode of The Grey NATO after a summer hiatus, hosts James Stacey and Jason Heaton announce their exciting new partnership with Hodinkee, which will bring advertising support to the show and move the release schedule to every other Thursday. The hosts emphasize that despite this partnership, they maintain full editorial independence and will continue their signature discussions of adventure, travel, diving, gear, and watches.

The bulk of the episode consists of James and Jason catching up on their extremely busy summers. James recounts an impressive run of automotive journalism, including drives in the Aston Martin DBS in southern Germany, a Ferrari GTC4Lusso, the new BMW M5, and most dramatically, the Lamborghini Huracán Performante Spider and a Bugatti Chiron worth over three million dollars. He also discusses his growing passion for film photography, particularly with vintage Canon lenses, and his attendance at a Hodinkee pop-up event in Los Angeles where he got to wear a vintage gold Royal Oak.

Jason shares his diving adventures, including Great Lakes wreck diving trips to Milwaukee and the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario's Tobermory region, where he tested his new custom Aqualung dry suit. He also describes a trip to Monaco for the yacht show and free diving in the Mediterranean with Belgian free diver Fred Buyle for a Ulysse Nardin story. Both hosts discuss recent affordable watch purchases—James with gold-toned Casio digitals, and Jason with a vintage Aquadive from the 1970s. The episode concludes with their trademark final notes covering adventure films, military ship salvage operations, travel gear, and a book on British sports cars.

Transcript

Speaker
Unknown Hey everybody, it's Hodinky Radio host Stephen Pullmorant, and I've got something a little extra for you. Today, we're super excited to announce the Grey NATO is officially a Hodinky podcast, and we wanted to make sure you didn't miss the news. While the Grey NATO lives in its own stream, we figured we'd bring you the latest episode, the first after a few months off, right here. Give it a listen, subscribe, and then let us know what you think. With that, here are Jason and James and the Grey NATO
Unknown . Hello? Hi, is this uh can I speak with uh Jason? Am I pronouncing that correctly? Yeah, yeah, who's this? This is James, how's it going? Oh geez. Wow. It's been a while. I think it's been since August. Wow. For sure. So we're back. Jason, I'm thrilled. This is great. We took a nice little summer break. You got crazy busy. I got crazy busy. We've been doing a ton of stuff for the last kind of six to eight weeks. But now fall is back. It's kind of time to maybe spend a little bit more time in the office. And with that, TGN's back. And we have kind of a big announcement in kind of considering the future of the show and how we'd keep it running and kind of blending mixed schedules and making sure that everybody's happy with the setup. We've partnered with Hodinky and we're now officially brought to you by the site. It's a a new partnership and something that we're super excited about. So the the great team at Hodenkey, which of course Jason and I work very closely with, um, we're interested in in bringing TGN on as kind of an advertising partner, and moving forward, we couldn't be happier about it. And the only real change that you're going to see or hear for the show is we're gonna move to Thursdays, which is a better fit for the overall schedule. So we used to be every other Tuesday, we're now going to be every other Thursday. And we'll stick to that like we have up until our summer break. And then we're also going to have the occasional ad on the show. Currently we don't have any ads, but when it comes up, we'll make sure that it's super obvious. If you've listened to the Fantastic Potinky Radio episodes, the ads are going to be very similar in kind of style and setup to that. So
Unknown Yeah, I'm excited. I I think this really dovetails nicely with kind of the work you and I have been doing, you know, piecemeal for the past uh several years. Um you know I've been with Hodinki for quite a while and you joined last year and I think we you know so much of what we do and and write about uh ends up on Hodinky and we end up talking about it, and I think that said, uh what I'm happy about is that they gave us full independence to um despite the fact that we're part of the network um just business as usual. We'll just keep talking about you know adventure, travel, diving and gear and watches. And um I think that's it it's kind of a uh a really nice relationship going forward. I think uh I think listeners will be thrilled and we will have more listeners
Unknown hopefully, which I I'm really excited about. Yeah, same here. And I hope this means that we can maybe actualize on some plans to do, you know, more events, maybe show up to some stuff.
Unknown Yeah, and we can both apologize to our uh our existing listeners for uh our sort of extended hiatus for the past, I don't know, six weeks or so. Um, you know, it's funny, I was getting sort of uh some some feedback from people occasionally you know, in places like comments on Hodinky articles and on uh Instagram comments where people would say, Hey guys, you know, summer's over, time to start recording again and I I know we uh we delayed our our restart a little bit, but hopefully uh we'll be back and and hit the ground running here. And I I w I just want to add too that you know going forward we would love to um get feedback from from listeners uh as to what we can do to improve the show, what you like, what you don't like, what you'd like us to do more of. You know, we're open, and I think this is a kind of a logical time to not do a reboot. I think we're just gonna keep on keep on keeping on, but uh it's kind of a logical place for for to ask for for feedback as we kind of kick off a new chapter here. So please by all means write to thegraynato at gmail dot com or you can certainly comment on on Instagram or or wherever you like. And I guess now you can even comment in the show notes on on Hodinki. Yeah
Unknown . To all of you who responded to the last call for feedback when we took the summer break, I really appreciate all the emails, uh both of support and of constructive criticism and all that So Jason, let's see if I can uh let's see if I can do this right off the dome. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Grey NATO, brought to you by Hodinky. It's a loose discussion of travel, adventure, diving, gear, and most certainly watches. This is episode sixty-six, and we thank you for listening. That's official. Yeah, that's great. Alright, so while I think we're going to in the future, you know, stick to kind of broader like actual topics for shows. That was part of the feedback that we got um over the break was that people really enjoyed kind of locked in topics that we would chat about. Yeah. This is not going to be that. We've been uh you know, essentially not doing the show and really so busy we've only been half kind of communicating on Slack for the last six weeks. So this is just gonna be like a simple catch up and so people can kinda understand where we were and and what was still going on and and the fact that we didn't just abandon the show and and that sort of thing. Yeah
Unknown . So what have you been up to? I mean it's funny you you know you said we really haven't been communicating much on Slack and I I feel like uh I sort of have been been observing what you've been up to just through you know, through Instagram and through the occasional uh Nouveau or Hodinky article that you've done. But it looks like um more cars, more cameras, um uh travel
Unknown I had a really good run. If I remember it was a lot of travel. It was a really busy time for travel. I I adored it. It was great. The the last kind of car thing I talked about would have been the Bentley Bentaga in Portland. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So since then, um pretty impressive run. I'll do a little just a few minutes on each because there's quite a few. But I had uh I went to the global launch for the Aston Martin DBS, which is a 715 horsepower V12 kind of more wild version of a DB11. Yeah. And uh that car was um uh just just uh that car is just like absolutely incredible. Uh and we're we were in uh southern Germany right on the edge of Austria, right near the Eagle's nest. Oh yeah. And uh so the roads were incredible and the driving was wild. The car is very wild. I mean, it's a lot of power for the rear wheels, it makes a great noise, like it communicates really well in Germany, so you'd be driving like a something of a low-level maniac uh between, say, two small German towns. You'd get to the town slow way down, you know, back down to the speed limit, get to like a crosswalk, and it's a it's a like a fire-spitting V-12. So, of course, like you see some kids, you put it in neutral and you revit. Yeah. And like or like in Vancouver, that's not gonna make you any friends. Yeah. In Germany, people are clapping, you're getting thumbs up, like I mean like it's a bright red, like a glowing red uh DBS. So that was a a really fantastic trip and an amazing car. And then I had uh I had a handful of cars on loan here in Vancouver. It was really, really nice way to fill you know some of the time at home with a little bit of added excitement. So I had the Ferrari GTC4 Luso, which is the V12 four-seater. Yeah. Kind of a hatchback, mini wagon, shooting brake sort of idea. Yeah. Uh I mean, there's not much like I mean you look at it, it it's incre like just an amazing car, super comfortable, really fast. Uh V twelves that Rev to eighty five hundred are always good. And it you know, you go through a tunnel, it sounds kind of like an old F1 car. Wow. Really fun. And you could put you could put I put four adults like I put three adults in it plus me. Had a glass roof that people really loved. And that car was uh an absolute treat. It it actually like fit into my garage so I could actually get it uh down the ramp. Oh. And uh and and into uh into my underground parking. So that's great. I had the new M5, the 2018 M5. I th I bet you the of like for cars and TGN listeners, like a lot of um a lot of them know the M5 I think that kind of fits better than a Ferrari or even an Aston into the kind of general milieu but the I think that this is the this for me I think is very much a return to like the E thirty nine generation. Huh. So it's a very stoic looking car. It's very uh like I honestly I like it was in this kind of bright brightish blue. Yeah. And um and I'm kind of blacked out wheels. And even then, I mean if if you didn't know M fives, if you didn't know the current generation M five or the last gen, I feel like you wouldn't necessarily know it wasn't just a five series, like a five forty five or a five forty that has like nice wheels. Yeah. And then of course you start it up and it's a 4.4 liter twin turbo V8. It rumbles like a like a muscle car. And actually driving it, that car is the way it drives is the exact opposite of looking like a casual sedan. Yeah. It's just insane. It's 600 horsepower. It's insanely fast. I put both of my uh kids, I have two little girls, I put both of them in the backseat. Um in in their their car seats and everything because it's a big car has plenty of room and then I put a GoPro in the back as well and just kind of launched it around. Yeah. And uh it was great. We had uh a blast with that car, super fun. Um and my parents were in town when I had that car and kinda neither of my parents had ever been in it like a fairly quick car, so I got to give them a ride as well. And we put s a fair amount of kilometers on it. That's a really, really good car. That that's a good car to have with the family visit
Unknown ing. I mean, you know it was perfect.. Four door sedan I mean it's better than having a big seat. McLaren or something when you've got you know family
Unknown in town. Mm-hmm. And then yeah, the next car that I had, moving as quickly as I can through these, the next car that I had it would definitely have not have been great for my parents or my kids because uh not only did I sign an agreement that nobody under eighteen would get in the car. Oh wow there's no way you could have foot fit a child seat in the race buckets. This is I had a hurrican the the Lamborghini Hurrican Perfromante Spider. Huh. Jeez. And I don't really like I've written my piece for it. It's on Nouveau and I can link to all these. It's fine, but I don't really have words for the way that car drove. Huh. Because like I think people have expectations for Lamborghini that like they look good and they make a great noise and they're fast, but otherwise they're not that dynamic. And this car drove like an absolute razor blade. Huh. It has this incredibly trick arrow setup called a la, which I'll see if I can find a video explaining it because I don't think people actually want me to explain the fact that like it uses a special type I guess I am explaining it uses a special type of carbon fiber that allows them to essentially make tunnels and then they will actually draw air in from various parts of the vehicle and send it through the the wing. Um the wing is fixed but there's little um flaps that open or close to shape how the air moves through the wing. Oh wow. So if you're braking or turning, it funnels a ton of air over the wing to increase down force. And if you're turning hard enough, it will actually stall the outside wheels. Oh wow. So you get additional grip from that. It's also doing the exact same thing at the front with the front splitter. And then if you're just going for straight line speed, you're going down the back straight as some racetrack, it actually fully stalls the wing and removes it from the down force equation of the car. It's super trick. The car is super loud and really exciting and really easy to drive like much too fast for the road. Yeah. Um, I don't fit in it. Like my hip to heel length was probably three inches too long for the car. And that's with the seat all the way back and all the way down. And then, you know, to make a car to look like like the car looks amazing and it photographs beautifully, but to make the car look like that, it has to have a very s uh steeply raked windshield. Yeah. So with the top up, there's enough headroom. I couldn't wear a helmet, but there is enough headroom. Yeah. But I can't see stoplights. Oh. Yeah. Uh you I have to like duck forward. So I just drove it mostly with the top down. I could just see stoplights like through where the roof would have been. Yeah. You know, the combination of the drop top and a V a naturally aspirated V10 that revs to 8250 or something, 8500, something like that, and a really good DCT uh transmission and you know really fantastic tires and great steering. That car is full on bonkers. Just really good. Uh I like that car a lot. I had it and I only had that car for like a day 'cause I took it home to park it and it could not go into my garage even with the nose lift system. Oh. Yeah. So it had a nose lift that added, I don't know, twenty uh twenty millimeters, maybe two centimeters or something to the front, maybe a bit more than that. And it still I had a spotter and it still I still couldn't get it into the uh over the you know where the ramp becomes the floor basically it's too too low. Jeez. So what did you do? You had to park it on the street? No, I just took it back. Oh. Yeah. I had been out all day shooting it. I had the photos I needed. I mean they're like I don't need more time. I had done several hundred kilometers in the car. So sure. Yeah. And I'll get into this other side of it. But uh you know, I went down to LA for this uh event that Hodenkey did at the United Talent Agency's pop-up space. And so I was there for the week. And whenever I go to LA, I always send a few emails and try and get press loaners. And I got pretty lucky this time. So for the first half of that week or so, I had a McLaren 720S, which is has has to be the fastest car in the world right now over a twisty bit of road. Huh. Uh, or very close to. And then in the last half of the week, I had the new uh Ferrari Portofino. Uh so I had uh yeah, I had two amazing cars and I had good access to Angeles Crest, had had a really amazing morning in the seven twenty, and then on the weekend went back with the Ferrari and took it up Angeles uh Crest as well, grabbed some coffee at Newcombs. It was um pretty much like the pr it's the perfect way to experience a car. Uh Angeles Forest and Angeles Crested, which is just north of uh of uh LA. When I had the McLaren out uh the one morning I, convinced uh Ben Klymer of Hodenkey and Anuria Costa, also Hodenkey, and then also Brett Curry, uh friend of the show, and just all around great guy. If you're not following Brett, you should be following Brett to kind of meet up in uh Flint Ridge, La Canada, there's like a shell station at the bottom of Angelus Forest, and that's kind of the starting point. And so uh I had the McLaren, Ben had a singer nine eleven, uh Enry had a classic nine eleven, and Brett rocked up in his new GTI, which was also a really lovely color and a great car. And uh so we we went up into the hills that way. And yeah, you you want to kind of especially for photos and uh when the 720 piece eventually goes live, I'm behind because I've had so many great cars, it's a great problem to have. But when the McLaren piece finally goes live, the photos turned out really well. So you kinda want to be there within twenty minutes of sunrise. Yeah. So that you can get up to one of the big parking lots where people go and do burnouts and sit with their cars. But this is like a Wednesday morning. We didn't see another car. Oh wow. Nice. Um so went up, got the photos we needed, drove around a little bit, and then came back. You know, we were working that day so it couldn't be super late and the the the trip there is minutes and the trip back is hour or more because you hit traffic um on on the back route. So that was good. And then when I when I had the Ferrari I did basically the same thing. I I started early and and took my time. I you know, drove out and you can take kind of the full run from or not the full run of the road, but kind of the the run that the casual or the normal run is, you know, from that gas station up to Newcombs and turn around and come back down the hill. I went a little bit further than that and got lots of great photos of the Ferrari. But yeah, you you definitely want to if you're making if I'm making a recommendation, you know, you go to LA, maybe you get a a car or something on Toro, like a fun car. You you want to gas up at the bottom of the highway and and then head up while the sun is still coming up and then drive until you're bored of driving and turn turn around and come back. I mean, uh, technically you can take the route all the way to its other side. I I've never driven it that far. I've gone uh, you know, several miles past Newcombs and then turned around. And yeah, so an amazing time in in LA and I can go more into the Hodenky UTA thing in in in a bit. Uh but to wrap this up, I got I I've saved kind of the craziest for last. I got to drive. I had about an hour in a Bugatti Charon. Wow. Same trip? All three cars in the same trip? Oh wow. No, this is two days after I got back. It was a pr it was a press and like buyer preview for Vancouver. Jeez. Wow. Um so they had the car, they had a Tehran in town for the luxury supercar weekend and then they it stayed in town to do these kind of two or three days of demos with a uh Bugatti test driver out of uh North Van. Um and so that's for anyone who doesn't know that's I'm gonna talk in Canadian dollars, but it's uh three point one million dollars is where you start. The one I drove was around three four. Um so you're looking at you know, somewhere in the high twos for USD. I think it's two point five euro is the starting point for Europe. And um fourteen hundred and seventy-nine horsepower. I don't remember the torque figure at the moment. I believe it's around about twelve hundred. Wow. I mean, like I've driven I drove a Veyron. I had kind of the same rough experience in a Veyron where I I went out with um I mean I went out with the factory driver Andy Wallace who if you follow that s kind of stuff is amazing in the Veyron and the the Veyron was was great, was really cool, but um the the Charon's next level, I mean it's 30% more horsepower. It's way more tied down as far as the front end feel and the steering. It's uh I mean still just beautiful. There's it's really all that's one just to kind of watch for my piece. I put a lot of work into the piece for Nouveau so that'll be out um probably before this episode comes out so I'll I'll link it if I can but really just an absolutely crazy crazy car that it even exists and the way that it can put on speed without adding any drama. Like it's not only vastly faster than something like the Hurricane Performance, but the Performance was kind of scary. Yeah. This it just kind of feels like something's pushing against your chest, and you look down and you're at like 4x the speed limit. Wow. It does like it makes some noise, but not a crazy amount of noise. You do like it, it's very comfortable. And then full throttle is just it's it's something else. Like you it makes your hands shake, it's great. Yeah, it's really great. So I've rambled for a while about cars. Uh you did a bunch of diving, that's what I know from your Instagram. Tell tell me about some of the diving. Yeah, I mean, uh sort of after we
Unknown uh we kind of took our hiatus, um I I late summer here for me tends to be um sort of the the start of of what I consider Great Lakes diving season uh simply because the the water warms up to the point where it's uh a little more tolerable than it is in the early summer. And so I I did a couple of uh Great Lakes trips. I did one um I think last time we spoke or one of the last episodes we did, I had talked about the trip over to Lake Huron to dive the Daniel Morel wreck with Becky Kagan shot and my brother Chris. And since then I did two other trips. I did a trip down to Milwaukee during a week when it was pretty pretty miserable, strange weather conditions. Uh we had a whole week, almost a whole week of uh high winds and high seas that kind of kept us uh off the boat, which was a little frustrating. Um we had some photography that we had to do uh underwater and and we were sort of sitting on our hands for a week, but finally got out for a day and and did a little bit of diving and um I finally got to try out my new uh my new dry suit, which um I think I had talked about in a past episode from uh Aquala or Aquala, which is uh a a brand out of Louisiana that was started by uh a friend Ty Alley who's a longtime friend of Doxa and um I had met him on the Mission thirty one trip that I did with uh Fabian Cousteau uh and Doxa back in um I don't remember what year it was, but um about five years ago or so. And Ty bought the the name of of Aquila, the company, which is a a very old dry suit maker from nineteen fifty. And he's got kind of three levels of of dry suit. Uh one is a very retro one that kind of twist ties shut like a plastic bag, um, which would be for really hardcore retro divers. And then he has sort of a middle sort of splits the difference um model that's kind of retro but but has some modern conveniences. And then um he custom made uh the Cordell, which is his kind of top of the line dry suit for me, um and I got to try it out. It uh it uses their multiply um rubber uh material so it looks very much like an old rubber dry suit but it uses the modern uh modern zips and uh or modern rear zipper and then the scitec uh valves on the for the venting and for the fill valve on the on the chest. And um so it was really fun to to try that out. It was it's a great suit. Um you know I've never I've always bought my dry suits uh kind of second hand so they're always a bit of a compromise and this one you know fit me really well and and the material I haven't I'd never dived in a um a rubber suit. I've always had you know shell suits and um this one was uh it was really really nice because it's very flexible it,'s easy to get on and off and and underwater it's uh it's very um uh it's very mobile. It allows you to kind of twist and turn and reach things and um so I I really, really liked it. Of course it dries. You know, it just doesn't get wet like uh like some shell suits that are made of uh cordura and things like that. So um that was fun. And then uh so we dove two wrecks on that trip. Uh one of them was uh one that I've done many times, which is the Prince Willem of V, which is a Dutch freighter that sank in the fifties. And but then before that we went out to the uh it's a sunken car ferry called the SS Milwaukee that sank in nineteen twenty nine. And it's it's a fascinating wreck. In fact it was featured on there used to be a show called Shipwreck Hunters, I think, or Shipwreck Detectives, I think, with uh Richie Kohler and and John Chatterchat.. Sure And they actually went there because it's a it's a really interesting wreck that has some mystery around it. And uh it's it had set off from from north of Milwaukee and was headed across Lake Michigan to to Michigan with a load of um passengers and boxcars, railroad cars. And at some point the the seas were were quite high. I think this was uh in autumn and you get those uh late summer uh fall storms and the the seagate gave in. The the seagate is on the back of a ferry, if you can picture it, the it kind of hinges down and seals against the back of the boat. And that and that crushed in um at some point during the storm and and the the the the ferry flooded and sank. Um and and it makes for a very interesting dive because you get boxcars, you get actual railroad boxcars that are sitting on the f the lake bed with the wreck on top of it. So you can dive under the wreck and you see the uh you know entire railroad boxcars underneath the the ship which landed on top of it. Um and it's just a huge wreck. I mean it's you know, I don't know, three or four hundred feet long and um about a hundred and thirty feet deep. So it's uh it it's it's a bit challenging, but it it makes for a very interesting very interesting dive. So um Yeah, sounds it. Um so we you know, we did that for we we actually only got out for one day and we kind of crammed in three dives uh on that day and did a bunch of photography and you know, had a had a proper adventure and then um uh about uh I think it was only about two weeks later, my wife and I did a a really fun road trip over to the other side of Lake Huron, which was actually uh on your side of the border over in Ontario. Uh there's a a peninsula that sticks up into Lake Huron called the Bruce Peninsula, and there's a a small town at the tip of it called Tobermory. And um apparently it's a a a real vacation spot for people from Toronto and and kind of that surrounding Yeah. Um and I had no idea that um naively that that the same weekend that we went, which was the American Labor Day, is also Canadian Labor Day, so it was absolutely jammed with people. Um but we rented a little cottage uh right on the water and uh we did uh gosh I think we did three days of diving. Um it's if you are into uh rec diving and um somewhat cold water. I really highly recommend making the the journey there because they're you know probably you know half a dozen to you know ten really high quality old wooden schooner and steamer wrecks that are in fairly shallow water there. So it makes for um really not terribly difficult uh wreck diving and the water was not that cold. It was I would say, I don't know, maybe pff uh s I think I saw sixty-five Fahrenheit, which is probably seventeen centigrade or thereabouts. And um I mean some of the wrecks there's there's what there's a shore dive that you just there's a a staircase that goes right into the water right off the just right off the road. I love that. And um it's just a a rock bottom, just kind of big sort of polished boulders and pebbles. Um and there are no less than four uh tugboats that are sunk there. Not intentionally, but they over over the history they they all sort of ended up there lying on the bottom and they do classes there because uh y you you literally sink down fifteen feet below the water, you know, five meters or or thereabouts, and you're you're on the wreck, and it goes down to a maximum of maybe thirty feet or ten meters. So it's really easy kind of cruising around. Um we went out on a boat a couple of days with a local dive shop there called Diver's Den and um they run a big operation there, several boats a day and and we went out with them two days and and dove uh uh a couple of other shallow wrecks that um are almost you know snorkelable they're so they're so shallow but they're you know big long wooden wrecks very well preserved um so that was really fun. And then the last day we were there we we did another shore dive off of uh uh there's a lighthouse called the um Big Tub Harbor is kind of a natural harbor and at the point uh sits uh uh eighteen hundreds um lighthouse. And we parked our car at the little parking lot there and humped our gear to the end of the point. And there's a little bench there, and we suited up and you're right right at the lighthouse. We just walked in and stepped off the edge and you go straight down and it's just this sort of wall dive with these overhangs and big tumbling boulders and um decent fish life. So it was uh it was uh a really uh a a great trip. It was a very long drive from from Minneapolis, of course. It took a couple of days to get there, a couple of days back. We took the ferry across Lake Michigan to get there, but uh um really was uh really was a worthwhile um getaway kind of at the end of the summer. We've been talking about doing that trip for for years and um it didn't disappoint. So yeah, it was good. I I had one bit of a snafu on that trip, uh uh equipment issue I had uh brought my Nikonos V underwater film camera to to do some photography and loaded it up with some black and white film 'cause I thought it would be really great to get a lot of great uh What what emulsion? Um I used uh I think on that one I had the yeah, I had Tri Axe. Oh okay. The you used four hundred for underwater or I brought another roll of thirty two hundred Ilford which I because of this issue, uh, I couldn't load up so I only managed to get a roll of film shot. But uh the I I was climbing back on the boat after one of the dives, and I had set the camera on the transom of the boat, climbed the ladder, sat down, reached over to get my camera on the lens was had these lenses are just a bayonet fit on the on the front of the camera body and it was it had come loose and was sitting on the tr on the transom next to the camera. So I I did get moisture inside and and I'm still debating whether Okay. And then I I came home and um you know, the film was the film was okay, um for the most part. And uh I you know, kind of tried my hand at processing at the kitchen sink and um, you know uh, I'm sure I didn't do a g as good a job as the labs would have done. Uh the photos are a little sort of mysterious and dark uh looking, but I think it kind of adds to the to the overall effect. So um For sure. Yeah, it was uh it was good. And then you know, just more recently I uh in fact today as we're recording this my story on Hodinki about uh free diving with the new Ulysse Narden uh diver chronometer went up on on the website. Um did a quick story about that, got to dive with uh with Fred Buell, who's a Belgian free diver, who if you aren't following him on Instagram, uh he's well worth it. He's a really interesting sort of Zen master of of free diving who does a lot of work with um sharks and and underwater photography. He's very much a purist. He doesn't use artificial light. He just says he just goes down with his fins and his mask and his camera. And um a lot of scientists and and uh scientific organizations uh use his or employ his uh skills to help with shark tagging because um he's obviously very good at it. He's somewhat fearless but uh free diving is a very good way to tag sharks because you don't spook them with the bubbles and and I had a good good chance to um kind of get to know Fred a little bit and we did uh a bit of free diving in the Mediterranean, which was a a real trip. I'm not a very accomplished free diver, but I think it's always kind of fun to do it and good skill to have for kind of the odd time when you drop something off the dock and you have to go get it. So For sure. So yeah It's just packed apartment buildings because there's so little space that everything ha kind of has to go up. Um but it was neat to be there. I've heard so much about it. And uh we were there for the the the timing was such that the yacht show was going on and it was just I uh it was huge. I mean it was just absolutely huge. Um it was in the marina and you know lots of big you know you kind of the the the watercraft version of the cars you've been driving. Um you know just, you know, $120 million super yachts with two helicopter pads and you know um just every possible amenity and and luxury that you could imagine. Um and we got to tour one and um I just walked the show. Like one of the one of the really big boats? Yeah. Oh sorry. Yeah, we got to uh so we got to tour um one of the the the big yachts. It was called the DAR and it was actually the the yacht that won the award for the best kind of best in show for this year. Um and it had just been purchased and the woman that uh from Venice who had done all of the interior design work gave us the tour of the inside and I mean I I Was it incredible? It was it it was uh beyond words. Uh you know, every every level, every circle, every every cabin, every room you go in, I mean there was a there was a wellness center with a massage um a massage room and then a its own sauna and um a weight room with you know all modern equipment. Um and to the level of detail, you know, it's uh to a certain degree it's akin to what uh you know what people appreciate about you know, haute horlogerie watches, um the the hand finishing and things, all of the materials, the the um the embroidery And the custom furniture that's made so it can rotate so you can have conversations in two different directions and you know all of this kind of stuff was uh it just blew my mind. Um but the rest the rest of the yacht show is uh it's a trade show. I mean it was tent after tent of companies selling everything from cigar humidors to sun awnings to ROVs and mini submarines and you know, just it it was was i uh really eye-opening, really an interesting experience
Unknown . That's wild. I know I I watched uh video the other day that was uh from the Monaco Yacht Show, it was a tour of a hundred and forty-five million dollar yacht. Yeah. And like like one, I can't like I you can't like when you actually consider that number, yeah, it's meaningless. Like I don't like I I can't I have no contextualization for it. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm watching this video of these guys walking around this yacht and like if they told me like oh we're in a hotel yeah like it had the boat had like a lobby yeah that had multiple that had like access to multiple floors. Yeah. Oh it's an elevator spiral staircase, everything's like you know where I mean like like there'd be like a a walkway and if you like leaned over the edge of the walkway you could look down into a lower floor of the this is and like the other thing that that I find this is gonna be like it's this is must be how I'm wired, maybe. I don't I'm it must be, but I'm watching that video or I'm listening to you talk about this, and all all my brain is telling me is this could sink so easily. Yeah. Yeah. The smallest mistake, and it's all underwater. Yeah, right. Yeah. Just run it a ground somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean like it could all like $145 million could just it could just sink
Unknown . Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's insane. Yeah. It was it was crazy. It was it was fun and then uh I had posted some photos on on Instagram while I was walking around because there were um there was a whole section of really high luxury cars. Um what's the Mercedes Tuner B Brarabus or Brabus. Uh yeah, Brabus. Brabus and uh there was a Shelby Cobra um Okay. Uh dealer, I guess. Mighty Um Oh okay. Restoration replica dealer. Ye,ah yeah. Yeah. Um so that was that was that was neat. And then I I snuck away in the afternoon after um kind of wandering the show. I I managed to get up to the the museum of ocean museum of oceanography, which is a place I've wanted to go to for years. It's it's quite famous. Uh Cousteau himself. Jacques Cousteau was the director of the museum from nineteen fifty seven until eighty eight, I think. So he was there a long time and it was founded by Prince Albert the First, who was, you know, the ruler of Monaco back in the early nineteen hundreds and kind of a pioneering uh sort of amateur scientist uh when it comes to oceanography, and he had a s a a mega yacht of his era, I guess, and sailed around the world and collected specimens and did all sorts of experiments and they had a lot of his uh fish that he had caught sort of preserved and formaldehyde still kind of in cases and big whale skeletons and some old dive gear and so um the building itself looked awesome the building itself is is was the highlight for me. It's it's it's built kind of into the cliffside, right above the sea, and it just looks like this big fortress and uh inside was was similarly uh impressive. So it was uh it was good. It was a it was a good trip. It was a very short trip and my flight got cancelled so I had to stay an extra day in a Paris airport hotel. But overall, you know, for four days um you know, freediving with Fred Buell and doing the oceanography museum and touring a uh mega yacht were uh uh made it all worth it
Unknown . So it was great. And you uh with the did you stay you stayed like right right next to Charles de Gaulle? Did you get a chance to kick down to Paris for a bit?
Unknown No, the flight, you know, by the time we got off the plane and and whatnot, it was late afternoon and and it uh we were a good hour from downtown, we were right near the airport. So I was I was pretty cute. But uh South of France, you know, South of France was was pretty great. You know, we we flew into Nice um and then stayed at the the Cap Dantibe uh Eden Rock Hotel, which is a very famous uh you know from the the sort of movie star set in the fifties and royalty and whatever. So it was uh it was great. Ulisse Narden uh treated us really well and I met some fun people, so it was uh it was really good Very cool man. Yeah. What about you? You've uh you've also been dabbling in little film shooting to
Unknown o. Yeah, no, I've been I've been putting roles out. It's been good. Um first up I want to make like a very I I should have asked if he wanted his full name said on the show. I'm just gonna assume some in on Nibbody's fine. Adam, if you're listening, I obviously I told I sent you an email. Adam, uh a listener was very kind, DM'd me to um to offer to send kind of a box of Canon photo equipment that was his grandfather's that he he just had in storage. Wow. And what arrived is like several lenses and essentially a factory fresh AE1 program. Wow. Adam, I cannot thank you enough. I've I've been uh I put two rolls through the AE1 program already. It literally feels brand new. It runs like new. It's incredible. The lenses you sent have been super fun, and I've been shooting a bunch with them. I even uh now have enough lenses to necessitate uh an adapter for the e-mount to go to my Sony. So I've been uh one of the lenses, Adam sent along is literally a factory fresh uh thirty-five to seventy millimeter F-28, which is this like it's all metal and super heavy and really gorgeous and has like l really lovely colored paint in the um in the scales and the the the listings. And uh Adam I'm I'm just having a blast with this stuff. Thank you so much for sending it. It was very sweet of you and it it will all get to use either uh from me or uh you know passed along to other photo enthusiasts. It's um it's uh fantastic. It's super super fun. But uh yeah so I've I've I've got a handful of uh new lenses, been shooting a ton. And then just uh just a couple days ago there was like a a photography swap meet in Vancouver. Oh nice. And so I packed up uh my daughter and we went down there and uh I got her she got like uh like a uh canon point and shoot from probably six or seven years ago. Oh wow for five dollars. Wow. That's awesome. So it's like you know like one of those tiny things that you would put around your wrist. You know, like b be beforforee ph poneshones, had good cameras, the kind of thing that everybody had. Yeah. Somewhere in their home to take pictures of family and stuff. But it's like a twelve megapixel, there's a power shot or something, with a battery and a charger. And like you go to one of these you go to one of these shows and it's rammed. There's so many people there. Yeah. She's the only kid in the place. Yeah. And like everybody's talking to her, like, hey, it's so nice to see a kid into photography. She's almost in tears because all these strangers are talking to her. Yeah. And then this guy sees her. He doesn't he's like chill. He doesn't say anything to her directly. Looks at me. He's like, She have a camera? I'm like, nah. And he's like, how about this? And he like digs around on his table and pulls out this thing. He's like five bucks. I was like, Yeah, five bucks. Wow. So we'd be doing that. And then I got lucky, you really had to look around, especially like um, you know, if you're hunting for something like I'm sure K Jason, you know this like a lot of knicker glass looks the same on a table. You really have to like read the front lens element of all of them to know really what you're looking at, unless it's kind of a very strange lens. Yeah. But I've I did I don't know seven, eight laps of this show and finally came across a fifty F one four. Wow. Uh which was a one, you know, obviously if you can find it slash afford it, the fifty F12L, the later generation of that lens, you're gonna look at closer to 800 bucks US for that. I was able to get this one, which is not as good, but it's gonna be a very good uh for my uses uh for like 80 canadian. Wow jeez and it looks essentially brand new and I've I've I've yet to use uh any I I have yet to use it on the AE1 but uh I have adapted it to the Sony and it's fantastic. I put up a ton of uh photos yesterday night of uh just some flowers around Vancouver that I shot with it. Uh really fun. Super, super obviously being a one four, like super, super bokey and uh yeah all all in all I'm I'm absolutely loving the whole film thing and uh and it's it's been nothing short of a blast. I'm now you know often carrying uh now a second camera. Uh because if I see something I'm like, ooh, I think that's more filmy. Oh yeah, right. I'll try and get a
Unknown film shot of it. So yeah, the swap meets are are always a kick. There's uh there's an annual tent sale that that one of the camera big camera stores here does and it's just people line up for an hour before it opens and then you know the the table where all the old lenses are is just everyone like runs to it and and you're lucky if you can find like a you know, the the good stuff you have to get there right away. All the you know the really fast lenses and the the the really kind of coveted sort of focal lengths are always, you know, gone in the first hour of the show. So it's uh
Unknown Absolutely it's a blast. This is this is great. Basically like I I know that we've talked both like we've both said t people should get into film if they have the time and the and the money to do so. Yeah. The the equipment is cheap. The film, the actual film part of it kind of isn't. Yeah. You know, for your thirty shots, I think I'm probably paying a little bit more than a dollar a photo. Yeah. All said and done. Yeah. Which is fine. For the fun, it's fine. Um, but it like it this can't be the way that I w operate all of my photos. Right. Obviously. Right. But then I I still think what what I'm learning again and again is like if you have a camera that has focus peaking, yeah, just buy really good old glass. It costs nothing. Yeah. Like this the fifty F one eight or I mean like a fifty F one eight is like they're f like I saw them for five dollars. Yeah. Right. And if you want the one four, you're closer to a hundred bucks. This is again like Canadian and swap meat prices. And then you go on you go on to you go on to something like eBay, you can find the fifty F one two L you know, an amazing a liter legitimately crazy good lens and y you know, they're less than a thousand dollars, whereas you if you wanted to get a legitimately crazy good modern Canon lens, yeah. It could be 3,500 bucks. Right. Yeah. I just think like $50 goes a real long way these days in vintage lenses. Whether you want to go M42 in like an Asahi Pentex 50 mil or something like adapt to FD or n or NICOR and you just don't have autofocus but really like with a bit of practice y the only time that I find it really annoying is when you're trying to get that one picture of like one of my kids. Yeah. Yeah. And they're little kids, they're n they're never not moving. They're practically vibrating all the time. Right. Yeah. And uh and so that that can be kind of tough. But o outside of that, I I think like for a lot of the type of photography where like you see something you that's not moving and you want to take a picture of it, a car, uh a watch or or or whatever, I think that's um I think that's something j that everybody should be considering. My brother just bought an A six thousand oh yeah. And uh and wrote me and as soon as he wrote me I was like don't buy any lenses. I got I got stuff here for you. He's coming to visit me in in a couple weeks on his way to uh Japan and I was like don't buy any don't buy any lenses. I got I got I got you. So I I picked him up a couple like adapters. Yeah. And uh and so I'll set 'em up with uh like a a Helios and uh uh probably a uh Canon fifty one eight. Well Japan is a
Unknown just Japan is a dangerous place if you're into cameras and if he he if he just got a camera and he's starting to get in get into that sort of thing. It's uh there's a spectacular kind of set of used camera stores in kind of the same area of Tokyo and it's like if he wanders in there you you you almost can't leave without you know buying
Unknown something spectacular. Oh, for sure. Yeah, I think that would be super tempting. It's m not l not unlike watches. You see these yeah stores where they have the you know, the little glass front areas and it's just like they couldn't there's no more square inch for watch or or or lens. Yeah, yeah. The uh the camera thing has been really great. It brings me so much uh so much happiness. I mean, like I I like it at a gear level, yeah. I like that it's not hugely expensive. I re what I actually kinda like about it too is like I was saying is is a lot of these things, like if you spend fifty dollars on something and then like you don't use it for a couple months, yeah, you're just gonna give it to someone. Right, right. So these things live like they live on, they have like because because they have no because they have no autofocus they're not tied to cameras that really aged out. Right. Like a film camera, like an AE one P is the same now as it was a while ago, but you look at something like that that canon that I bought for five dollars. Yeah. It's worth well five bucks. Yeah. Exactly. Right? Yeah. And and so it's it's really strange where these generations of technology start to reflect back on on like what's useful and what isn't and now digital digital became so ubiquitous so quickly yeah and then the quality is still is increasing. I mean now we have like since you and I last did an episode we have full frame mirrorless from Nikon and Canon. Yeah. And a new cooperation between Panasonic and Leica. Like we could go deep into that stuff. Yeah. I would love a chance to shoot any of it. Yeah. Um, but there's like like full frame mirrorless is definitely the next big wing. Yep. And what I like about that is it's all still fully adaptable to old lenses. Yeah. Yeah. And I like that like as like and the other thing to consider is a lot of these lenses that do have autofocus, you can adapt them using a more expensive adapter and maintain the AF. Yeah. It's usually not as fast as the the native focusing system. But man, it really is like a world where like now you can really kind of be agnostic to a lens system, especially if you don't need AF. Yeah. Ye
Unknown ah. So And and people certainly got along for decades without uh autofocus. So, you know, it's uh it's uh it's definitely doable. We should probably talk about watches a little bit, right? I mean I think we both picked up something since uh since we last spoke, uh kind of on the inexpensive side, but I think yours uh takes the cake for uh for super inexpensive.
Unknown I've got a couple um a couple cheap gold Cassios, which are maybe the most fun I've ever money I've ever spent on a walk. A couple? Oh, I didn't know about. Yeah, so I have uh one that the piece is already on Hodenkey. I can link to it. It's kind of a world timer with a gold bracelet. It's plastic. The case is plastic, the bracelet's metal. I'm still wearing it almost all the time. Like I just really like it. Wow. And uh I'm I'm started sleeping with a watch on because these digital watches they weigh nothing and they have a backlight. Huh. Um so I've I you know I don't sleep that well. I'm not that great of a sleeper these days. So I'm I'm I'm up kind of at various times during the night and I find that these um I find that these ones with the backlight are actually pretty handy. They don't they're not as bulky as like a dive watch that has a bunch of loom. I can like I can't really sleep with a big Seiko on. Yeah. So I have this one, which is the A500 WGA-9DF world timer, which I really love, and it was forty-five bucks. And I also have an F-91W, so the F-91 is very famous. It's like the entry-level Casio digital. Yeah. Super, super basic. But I bought this one because it's a gold toned case that kind of has like a fully matte finish on a black rubber strap. If this thing weighs like 20 grams, I'd be surprised. And the other thing I like about it is it has like the even previous generation backlight. So like the the the World Timer one doesn't have like indie glow. It has like an LED on the edge of the display that shines across it. Oh yeah. Which I like. But it's fairly bright. Yeah. But this um this F ninety one is even cheaper. Oh yeah. So it has a little LED on the edge of the display. It's just not that bright. So it's it's really this is a really nice watch like to check what time it is at two thirty in the morning when you're yeah, you know, kind of rolling around in bed and not like this I get tired of like you want to check the time on your phone. Yeah. And it just it's so bright. Yeah. It's bright enough to wake up, you know, wake up the person next to you in bed easily. And uh and so yeah, I like these F-90 ones. I I just kind of enjoying cheap Cassios right now and and uh the the one the piece with a world timer went up and if you dig the style, they make a steel one as well. I think it's a super handy watch, especially if you travel a lot and you don't want to carry something, a watch that you're concerned about or or don't want to bang up around if it depending on you know how you feel about wearing the
Unknown wat Leg from my recent trip and and I find that that's when having some loom or some sort of a time display in the middle of the night, you know, you wake up and it's so disorienting you don't know if especially this time of year here in Minnesota, it's it's dark till almost eight o'clock in the morning and I'm like, is it three A.M. or is it five thirty? 'Cause a big difference when you're jet lagged. Like it feels better if it's five thirty and um yeah. So a little a little trickling sort of backlight would be would be handy
Unknown . Yeah, I I I like 'em. I mean, like I I don't know like if you can have more fun for fifty bucks when it comes to watches, especially as a palette cleanser where I'm normally wearing a Rolex or or I'm I'm addicted to wearing the Doxa. It's on pretty much wear it all every day, all day. Yeah. And uh especially if I'm home and I don't need a second time zone. But these are really fun to switch up and uh and I've been wearing the F ninety one while running because you don't even feel it on your rim. Oh yeah. Yeah. And it has a chronograph, so I I know when to turn around. Yeah. But you picked up uh a vintage piece, right
Unknown ? I did, yeah. It was it was a bit of an impulse buy. In fact, I I think it was either while I was on my trip last week or or just before I left. Um our our good buddy over there, Retro Watch Guy, um based in Colorado, uh Jordan, yeah, he had put up um something on Instagram uh about this little aqua dive dive watch model, I think it's reference 566, and kind of a quirky, kind of squarish case, really beautiful dial, with a big lollipop sweep hand. And um it was in like perfect condition and it he even had the box, the papers, the receipt from the store where it was bought. You know, and that that kind of stuff usually doesn't matter to me, but it just it was it was just kind of the right price at the right time and I w I had been kind of chasing something else that was uh exponentially more expensive than that and sort of was a little disheartened when I came to the conclusion that I probably wasn't going to get that one. Um and then this came along and I was like, okay, this'll this'll kind of you know, uh softened the blow a little bit and uh it came the day after I got home and and it's just a fun little watch. I I haven't measured it, but um it's it's quite small and it's not uh it's not kind of a hardcore tool dive watch, but it's it's just the right sort of uh lightweight, fun little sports watch that looks good on a bunch of straps and um funny, I was looking at the the kind of faded out little flimsy paper receipt and it was it was originally bought in nineteen seventy five for fifty nine dollars with tax from a place uh just a few miles from where I grew up. So I thought it was really really kind of a neat uh neat little neat little score.
Unknown So that's great, man. It's a a really sweet little watch too, and Jordan's got lots of great stuff that's retro watch guy.com or retro watch guy on uh on Instagram. Yeah. He's got lots of fantastic stuff. I I showed you that uh chronograph that I missed. Yeah. Yeah. The gold one. Yeah. Yeah. Man, I shouldn't have slept on that. It was just c crazy like Wachman uh with bright colors and like a gold gold tone case. I would be wearing that constantly. Yeah. Uh w hopefully w you know one of those pops up uh sometime in the future. But speaking of vintage watches, I got to see a handful of great stuff uh went down for a week for that uh UTA pop-up with Hodenkey. Oh yeah. Um so I mean that was all over the site. It was all over my Instagram. So I don't know necessarily how much explanation is needed, but I did just want to say thank you to everyone who came out and you know chatted me up about TGN and came to say hi and stop by just to see the watches and be friendly. You know, we had essentially office hours for a week at this space. And it was this gorgeous space. We did a couple of meetups, we did a couple of podcasts and it came together really really well and you know I I got a chance to essentially wear a gold AP all week uh like a vintage gold uh royal oak, which was super fun like, way too much fun. And uh it it didn't though because you know you can't lie a royal oak flat. Yeah, right. Yeah. It couldn't fit in the display cases. So I came across it in the stock for the the shop that they were running along with the pop-up and I was like, Hey, what's up with this? And they're like, uh you can't fit it in the display case. And I was like, I'll wear it around. D do you guys a favor. And uh and so yeah, it was it was a really great time. The the meetups were super fun. A lot of great people showed up and uh we uh more than a handful of listeners uh that came uh, you know, just to say hi and offer some support and you know, wish that the show was coming back soon. So nice. Anytime we get a chance to meet up with anyone who's a listener is uh super fun and I I had a blast in uh in LA. I hope I hope Hodinke uh elects to do something like that again soon. Nice, very co
Unknown ol. Yeah it is fun to meet people in person and uh hope we get to do more of that. For sure. Well I think I think we're mostly caught up
Unknown wouldn't you say? I think so. Yeah. We could jump into final notes. Yeah, let's do it. Uh go ahead. Yeah, what's your first one? My first one is uh a movie called Mountains of Storms, which if you're uh adventure movie aficionado, you will have heard of and possibly seen, but it was basically a movie made about um Doug Tompkins and Yvonne Channard, along with a couple other guys, you know, traveled down to uh Patagonia to climb uh Mount Fitzroy. Oh yeah. And they made they made this movie about it. It's been considered kind of an underground cult classic, a little bit hard to find. And they're re-releasing the film and according to adventure-journal dot com, which a great site you should definitely be following, but according to them, after kind of a week of doing like live screenings at various Patagonia stores around North America, which you know they did in it Vancouver last night, and I just wasn't able to make it. Uh they will be releasing the film online on the ninth. I believe this episode of T GN comes out on the eleventh. So if you're listening to this, you should be able to I don't know if it's gonna be like a a buy the film or donate to uh a cause and get the film or just stream it online. I have no idea. Yeah. But uh once I know I will put it in the show notes as I'm very excited to see this movie. I think it's gonna be really cool. They put out a really simple, straightforward trailer. Yeah. We've talked a lot about Channard and Tompkins in the past, uh, you know, heroes, legends, all of that. And I I think it'll be really fun to be able to see that movie. Yeah
Unknown , and I think we've talked about it before, but I I think if uh as kind of a nice little uh precursor to that or even a follow-up to that, um the film and book, uh Hundred and Eighty Degrees South was Absolutely was inspired by this uh mountain of storms. Uh the the creator of that And so if you watch 180 degrees south, it uh it intersperses some some footage from Mountain of Storms and it even even the little bit of footage looks really cool. And those guys had when they set out on that trip back in the sixties, it was uh they called themselves conquerors of the useless, and I think uh you know,, it that was kind of that philosophy I think that Chinard still has. It's just that sort of, you know, devil may care, I'm doing what I want, kind of mentality that uh I don't know. I think even nowadays it's still it still rings so true with so many of kind of the heroes that that you and I talk about
Unknown a lot. Um Absolutely. And I mean the the Adventure Journal in their write up, you know, it this was all done in nineteen sixty eight. Yeah. So this is for the fiftieth anniversary of the film, but for the write up they said, you know, uh it's kind of one part Jacques Cousteau project, one part and endless summer and one part Wes Anderson. Which is kinda like Yeah, Okay, you're coming right at us with that. That's right that's right in the lane. So I'm I'm excited and and by the time you're listening to this, I believe you'll be able to find it online and even if there's a small cost, I still think it it's a great option for final notes. Yeah
Unknown . Um my first one today is a fairly short article. Uh it was on uh popular mechanics. Uh and it's uh it's called uh How the US is Recovering Oil from a Nuked Warship. So not a very imaginative title, but uh very uh tells you exactly what it's about. Uh For sure. And they would sort of anchor entire fleets of kind of retired warships uh in the in the waters around the atoll and then they were dropping these atomic bombs and seeing kind of what the effects were. Well, uh, you know, as luck would have it, uh some of these ships uh didn't entirely break apart or um and a lot of them were carrying hazardous material like, you know, oil and fuel and things like that. And one of them was it was a ship called the Prince Eugen, which was a uh a German uh warship that was uh captured during World War II and they used that as one of the target ships and during the the bombing uh I think they bombed it twice and it didn't sink it but it uh kind of turned turtle capsized and sank and it's in very shallow water there. Um but now of course after seventy some years the hull is starting to corrode to the point where I think it's a hundred and twenty-four thousand gallons or something of uh of heavy fuel oil is inside and it's starting to to leak out. So the Navy has undertaken this effort to uh get that oil out before it it leaks and just creates this environmental disaster. So this article kind of goes into uh you know what the Navy's doing with with the ship, how they're planning to uh to get the oil out using a a hot tapping uh technique with uh with divers and a support ship and uh so it's um kind of an interesting story. Short read, but there's uh there's an embedded video and uh some really kind of cool photos. Um so check that out. That's my that's my first offering tod
Unknown ay. Very cool. My next pick is a website that sells uh kind of a a range of products, it's the observer collection. And this is a website run by a gentleman that I believe we spoke about before, Robert Spangle, who's at Thousand Yard Style on Instagram. Oh, yeah. Robert and I were kind of DMing over the past little while, and then I met him while I was in LA uh for a piece for an upcoming project with Honinke. And uh the observer collection stuff is pretty interesting. It's all like Robert travels a ton. So it's all very finely tuned travel gear that has like a very specific aesthetic and very high quality. So the two things that I've experienced so far, the first one is called the Peacekeeper. Uh that's P-I-E-C E. Oh, yeah. Um, and it's uh two pieces. So he makes these uh really beautiful bags and with the off-cuts of some of the suede used with the bags, the bags are called tangos. Um with the offcuts, he uh applies a sticker backing and then you it's essentially two pieces of suede and you stick them on your laptop kind of where your wrists touch the laptop and it keeps your bracelet or the buckle on your NATO or whatever from kind of annoyingly rubbing against the metal or plastic, depending on your laptop. Yeah. And I always, you know, depending on the strap I'm wearing, I think a like a lot of people if I if I know I have a bunch of work to do at a laptop, I'll take it the watch off. But if you're at an airport, yeah or at some lounge, that's not a great idea, depending on where you are. Yeah. If you're at home, who cares? You take it off, you put it on your table to watch it like the watches at no risk. But if you're at a coffee shop or like I said, an airport lounge or something, like anyways, I I I I was kind of skeptical when you know I we were DMing and he said, Hey, I'll send you something, you look like you do a fair amount of travel., L likeike let me know what you think. And I didn't send. And he sent these things and it and and I've absolutely love them. They've been on my laptop now for probably a couple months. Huh. And my feedback is that they are great. They uh I have a 24 a mid-2014 uh MacBook Pro. He's tested it on several different types, but for mine, it does not impede the opening or closing of the lid. I would say you probably don't need both stickers because obviously you probably only have a watch on one wrist, but you might have bracelets or something on the other wrist depending on on your decisions there. Uh the reason I think that you stick both on is so that there's no asymmetry in pressure to the screen. Oh sure. But I've really liked these. They're twenty-one dollars. They're made from offcuts, so it's kind of like a non-waste project, which I really like as well. And if you're the type that, you know, works on a laptop frequently and finds that the the watch is kind of annoying. Maybe this is an option. So I'll I'll throw the link in the show notes, of course, but that's the Observer Collection Peacekeeper. Yeah. The other one is kind of a travel wallet, which I'm just starting to get into, but it's called the Papa Passport Wallet. And it has all these pockets that are specifically designed for like carrying different types of travel paperwork. Yeah. Whether it's like a Paris bus pass is a certain width or the tube pass is a certain certain width, or you know, there's some spot for cash or a notebook and a passport. There's a like a front pocket that allows you to carry a boarding pass but not have to take it out of the wallet to have it scanned. Oh yeah. It's again just kind of like he's taken something like feedback from dying doing so much travel and applied it to kind of a very niche project. Sure. But if you if you like the idea of having kind of a one one space in your bag for a pen, all of your kind of travel cards, cash, um, and the and then things like uh could be a small phone or uh boarding pass can slot in the front. Uh pretty cool. Made out of really gorgeous leather. I have a black one here. And this one's a little bit more expensive, but I think if you see the the handiwork, if you go to the website and kind of see the what goes into it, uh you'd get it. This is about 165 bucks. And uh really, really cool. Robert, thank you for uh setting me up with both of those. Both have been really handy as I've been traveling. So really really neat stuff with the observer collection. And yeah, that's my uh that's my other final note. Nice.
Unknown Well my last one, uh today is uh it's a beautiful book that um I bought uh a couple of weeks ago. It's called Rural Britannia, when British Sports Cars Saved a Nation. And you know, we talk about cars a lot on the show. Um, you know, I've got an old Land Rover, old British vehicle, and I've always had this sort of uh love of of old British sports cars. And so this book was an easy hook for me uh when I first kind of heard about it. It's it's a slightly kind of big chapters about kind of each of the big uh British car manufacturers, the big sports car makers of the you know forties, fifties, sixties, seventies for sure. Sure. AC, Aston Martin, Austin Healy, um MG, Mini, uh uh Triumph, Jag, etc. Um and it it's a it's a very deep dive, it's a very dense uh look at each brand uh to the point where I might have sort of gleaned over some of it because it was a little more information than I wanted. But if you're into that stuff, if you really nerd out on the ins and outs of who owned the company and why they changed ownership and what the strategy was for this type of breaks and et cetera, et cetera. This is the book for you, but if you're someone who just likes gorgeous studio photography of the most beautiful, in my opinion, beautiful old uh roadsters and sports cars. Uh it it's also just a spectacular book. And the color is the the cover, sorry, the the slip cover is just this beautiful course, British race in green with just a a simple uh Jag XK on the on the cover, I think XK one twenty. Um with a simple title. Just just beautiful minimalist design, um beautifully produced, and uh the book uh petrelicious I think sells it in their store but their shipping's a bit high. Um I found it on Amazon. It's about an eighty nine dollar book, so for a book of that quality it's not uh unreasonably expensive. Uh it's certainly up there. Um but uh yeah it's gorgeous. It is it's a really, really worthwhile book. So check that out.
Unknown And uh that's what I got for the week. Okay, so I think that's a show, and as always, thanks so much for listening. Hit the show notes for more details. You can follow us on Instagram at Jason Heaton and at JE Stacy and you can follow the show at the Grey NATO. Big thanks to Hodenkey for supporting the show and definitely go back and start listening to past episodes of Hodenkey Radio. There's some really fascinating guests there, and it's an entirely different format than TGN. If you have any questions for us, concerns, whatever, please write thegreatnado at gmail.com and please subscribe and review wherever you find your podcasts. Music Throughout is Siesta by Jazz Ar via the Free Music Archive
Unknown . And we leave you with this quote from the explorer David Livingstone, who said, I will go anywhere, provided it before.