Here’s another blog I posted a couple of years ago on the CSC blog, and this one is about a watch. Yeah, I make no excuses…I’m a watch guy. This one is one of my favorites.
Okay, it’s time for another watch story, and this one goes like this: 40+ years ago when I was a young Army officer in Korea, some of my guys purchased Japanese Orient watches (Orient was the brand name; it had nothing to do with our location in Asia). That was in the mid-1970s, I was just a young pup, and those were the good old days when you could buy a Rolex at the Post Exchange for $300.
Rolex, Schmolex. Who in their right mind, I remember thinking back then, would spend $300 for a watch? $300 for a Rolex. Ah, if I only knew. But that’s a tangential story. Back to the main attraction…
Anyway, I never heard of the Orient brand again until somebody posted a photo of a really cool Orient diver’s watch on the ADVRider.com “Shiny Things” thread. That lit up a long-lost memory neuron or two and I looked for Orient watches on Google. I didn’t want another diver’s watch, but I saw a really cool Orient watch on the OrientUSA website. It was a moonwatch (not like the Bulova Apollo 15 watch I posted about a week or so ago, but a watch that had a complication showing whether it was day or night). I know, the whole thing is kind of silly…I mean, other than the guy who sang Love Potion No. 9, who doesn’t know if it’s day or night? It was a men’s dress watch in rose gold (that’s a kind of pink-looking gold) with a brown leather alligator band. (At least, I think it’s alligator. Maybe it’s crocodile. Never could tell those two lizards apart, except if you see one later it’s most likely an alligator, and if you don’t see one again for a while, well, it’s probably a crocodile. Or so I’ve been told.)
I liked the looks of the Orient Moon Watch. A lot. I sent an email to Orient, they responded to my question and included a discount code in case I decided to order a watch. One thing led to another, and my new Orient arrived via UPS a few days later. I really like it. It’s a self-winding mechanical watch (as a mechanical engineer, that appeals greatly to me), like I said above it’s rose gold (which I like a lot), and it’s just cool. It’s beautiful, actually. When I shot the above photo, it told me the sun was out (it’s wasn’t, because it had been raining bigly out here, but you get the idea).
So the Orient watch proved to be a great buy. It’s very accurate, and it’s completely mechanical. No batteries, no solar gizmos, no hookup to an iPhone, and it works the way it is supposed to. A year or two ago on one of the CSC Baja trips, one of the guys on that ride (good buddy Patrick) made a point of showing me his self-winding mechanical Orient watch, which he purchased after I wrote about mine on the CSC blog. I guess the old adage is true…if you have a great product (and I think Orient does), the word gets around.
So that’s it for now. I’ve got to hit up Orient for my commission on Patrick’s watch, and I’m ready for the sunshine. Yesterday was supposed to be the last day of our So Cal rainstorm saga, and I’m hoping that’s going to be the case. I want to get out and ride. My motorcycles have been sitting in the garage for too long. It’s time to get some motorcycle stuff back up on the ExNotes blog!