The Informant: Zodiac Super SeawolfGMT Watch
When I’m on the go, a second hour hand helps me keep tabs on my kids.
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As a timezone-hopping dad frequently dealing with jet lag, this question haunts me: “It’s 10 p.m., do you know where your children are?” It’s a query so permanently etched into my brain by the archaic nightly news ritual, that when I see a clock at 10 the synapses involuntarily repeat it.
Now, I’m not worried out about my kids blowing a curfew just yet. They are still much too young for that and don’t get around town without a parental chauffeur. But according to my watch it’s 10 p.m. in France, where I’m pretty sure I am currently. At this minute I would love nothing more than to hear their voices before I slide into bed for a dreamless, circadian dysrhythmic slumber. But the clock on my wrist also says it’s only 4 p.m. back home in Eastern Standard Time. Out of school, the pair are probably having a snack in the car en route to baseball or tennis. Calling now will certainly draw both attention to my absence and the ire of my wife, so I’d best wait til after their dinner. Hopefully I can stay awake until then.
A watch that tells two or more times is a crucial part of my travel kit. Every few weeks or so, I’m apart from the little ones for work and more often than not it’s to somewhere multiple time zones away from home. So, on landing, I flip the hour hand to local time and leave the “GMT” hand locked on EST to keep me connected with them. That secondary hour hand lets me know when they are in an attempt to track the lives they are living while I’m not there. After all, 10 p.m. is relative.
Depending on where I’m heading, typically I alternate my wrist wear between a Rolex Explorer II (226570) and a Zodiac Super SeaWolf GMT. Both use a second hour hand to track an alternate time zone, but the Zodiac’s rotatable bezel lets you track a third if you find the need for keeping tabs on your family or job.
To some, work travel may sound cool (and sometimes it is), but two days on the ground in Italy or 18-hour trips to LA from New York are rough on the mind and body no matter what you’re doing when you get there. Even in sunny Spain, you could set your own watch with the arrival of my malaise. Pangs of melancholy begin to ring roughly with the first dinner bell away from my family.
But clocking their parallel journey through time makes me feel a little closer to them than the actual 4,000 miles of physical distance. That’s why I chose the complication. In that dedicated purpose, it has also become a physical reminder of them. So every time I look at it I feel joy, happy in the knowledge that it’s a little closer to time to come home.
Eventually the hour will arrive, I’ll walk down the aisle and sit for a bit. A few glances at my watch later, the wheels will grab the tarmac and I’ll bring the local hand back in sync with the GMT hand. From there I’m only about 30 minutes away from hugs no matter what time it is.
Zodiac Super SeaWolf GMT
An extra hand to monitor the time in another part of the world comes in handy for knowning when to call home.