jkerouac

The observatory at Greenwich has some fantastic watch history and that, plus the maritime museum, would be great for the whole family. My brother and I took the cruise to Greenwich that someone else mentioned and thoroughly enjoyed it. The British Museum, which someone already mentioned, has some a room or so of wonderful historic timepieces. The British Museum is outrageously fantastic. I didn't visit the watch department at Harrods (slapping my head for the omission), but the food court is enormous and sinful (also, be sure to check out the Lady Diana-Dodi Fayed shrine). Near Harrods (sorry, I don't remember the name or address but perhaps someone else can fill this in) there is a fantastic covered arcade with a large number of used watch dealers (I don

A few more gems from 007 movies: Goldfinger Bond:

These are the watches I travel with the most, but I usually take just two. 1) Chrono----Chopard Mille Miglia or Breitling Evo 2) Dressy Hand Wind-- Evo or AP Royal Oak or VC Overseas 3) Sporty automatic-- Omega Seamaster GMT or Planet Ocean

When I read this Wall Street Journal article I had to ask myself, "Perhaps the Chinese government could step in to improve the quality of our reps?" By SKY CANAVES BEIJING—An attack by Chinese provincial officials on foreign luxury brands, including Hermès, Hugo Boss and Tommy Hilfiger underscored the vulnerability of the luxury brands in one of their most important markets. Authorities in wealthy Zhejiang province, on the east coast near Shanghai, marked consumer's day on Monday by taking aim at the quality of imported designer fashions. In a statement posted on its Web site, the Zhejiang Administration of Industry and Commerce said that "International designer clothes, blindly worshipped by Chinese consumers and enjoying 'super national treatment' in the country, have once again proven unsuitable for China." The targeting of foreign designer brands for defective products is the latest wrinkle for foreign businesses in China. It comes as Google Inc. is preparing to shutter its Chinese language search business and as Hewlett-Packard Co. came under scrutiny from Beijing for problems in some of its laptops sold in China. According to the Zhejiang notice, 48 out of 85 samples of imported clothing from 30 international brands failed to meet Chinese product quality standards. The brands also included Versace, Dolce & Gabbana and Zara. The authorities say that they have impounded all of the clothes with the same model numbers as the samples that failed to meet the standards, but the rest of the companies' products aren't affected. It was unclear if any fines would be levied. The harsh tone of the attack appeared to be out of proportion to the actual infractions: half of the complaints were over usage labels, including laundry instructions that failed to meet Chinese requirements. Nevertheless, the statement was carried widely by China's official media. While the immediate financial impact of the sanctions against the luxury brands is likely to be limited, the negative publicity could be damaging. Foreign brands sell at a huge premium to local brands, justified in part by the perception of quality. The China market has taken on greater importance to the makers of luxury goods in recent years as sales in other major markets have declined. In an October forecast, consulting firm Bain & Co. said it expected luxury-goods sales in mainland China to increase by 12% last year, to

I've had mine (a panda version) for almost two years and it remains one of my favorite watches. But I, too, wanted to have the AR treatment and was disappointed to learn about the two-part crystal. One other flaw is that my sweep second hand sweeps a bit irregularly. I'd even describe the movement as a bit [censored]. I heard that this was somewhat common among the early reps of this watch. Is this still the case for people who purchased the Mille Miglia more recently?

I still have and wear mine on occasion. It still runs well, although it probably should be serviced to ensure a long and happy life. Cheers to all the vets.... and newcomers.

Nada. None. Zip. Zero. The money I might have spent on a few new reps went instead for some distinguished Canadian TLC for some of the reps already in my collection. Of course there are still a few weeks left. And there is always next year.

My eyes! My eyes!! I step away from the forum for a few weeks and this is one of the first threads I look at??!!??

Forever Noob, that's me. Perhaps not a very fresh Noob, perhaps even slightly past my "sell by" date, but a Noob nonetheless.

I haven't been around or posted very much the last few months, but this thread just reminded me that I am coming up on my 5-year anniversary with the boards. Five years ago this month my wife and I took a trip to Switzerland and Italy, and looking in all those boutique windows (including the Panerai showroom in Florence) I was sorely tempted to buy myself a nice watch--but I decided to wait until I could do more research at home. So I must have come across RWG 1 and TRC in the second half of October 2004. A few weeks later I bought my first rep from ABay (now know as Pam111, sometimes also referred to as Paulmart), a Speedmaster with a lovely Lemania movement that still keeps solid time and that I still wear, although mostly just on "chore" day or during outdoor recreation. On the whole I have had very few reliability problems, except with a few "what the heck" cheapies that I purchased. Right now I haven't purchased any watches in ab. a year, but I feel the itch, the curiosity starting to rebuild. For now, though, I'm rather busy with work and learning the guitar. Seagull Maritime Cheers to all.

Twenty-plus years ago I was in Houston for a home builders show. A big guy in a 10-gallon hat walked over to me in the parking lot of a Dennys (or similar) and offered to sell me a Rolex. The location of the sale itself was a tipoff -- if not, the extremely crooked 'R' in the name Rolex left little doubt. I can't remember whether I even held his watch in my own hand before saying "no thanks" and walking away. Next obvious rep sighting would have been in Tijuana. Nuff said. Similar quality to the Texan's.

Sorry Teacher. There's a small typo in the Web address, it's APbands.com, not APbans.com . Most people would figure this out on their own, but I hope my minor correction saves them the trouble.

I agree with most everything that has been said so far...... regarding seats, pedals, helmets, gloves, shorts, shoes etc. One additional point that needs to be made regarding street riding has to do with cadence. Have you ever noticed how many recreational riders pedal really, really slowly, and more advanced riders pedal really fast? In general, a faster cadence is better than a slower cadence, irregardless how fast or slow you are going. The reason is that pedalling faster takes pressure off the knees, helps build aerobic capacity, and (over time) extends how far you can go before the legs tire out. Of course, when you are going uphill or into a stiff wind it might not be possible to keep those pedals moving as fast as on a downhill or with a tailwind--but that's why we have shifters and gears to help us match our cadence to our speed, and to make the "work" of bicycling easier. Many riders (my wife, for example) don't shift barely enough, and they really short-change themselves in the process. If I recall, 80 rpm is a pretty good recreational cadence. You can get cyclocomputers that track your cadence so you can stay in your optimal "zone." But you can also watch others and experiment by seeing how fast you can pedal continuously and still feel comfortable. Before long it will become second nature to downshift when you slow down, and upshift when things speed up in order to maintain an otpimal cadence.

If I end up selling my other Pams, the 192 is the one I would keep. The Venus movement is awesome, and I can appreciate your wanting to show it off. Thanks for sharing pics of the strap, also. It looks as if it would match up really well with jeans. I have chocolate brown and black straps from Strap Culture that I alternate between, as well as the ti-stainless bracelet that came with the 192. But denim blue would be a nice change of pace as well. Cheers.

I'm aware of the watch I wear when I know that negotiations are coming up. For example, when contractors come to the house I want my watch to be completely inconspicuous, and probably won't even wear one. I want to be perceived as the struggling homeowner who will be agonizing over how to pay for the work being discussed. An exception was the last time I bought a new car -- I wore my Pam 192. Unfortunately the negotiator collected watches himself and oohed and aahed over mine. I felt like telling him, "Listen, this is a fake because I'm a cheap bastard, so you'd better give me your most agressive price!" But you wouldn't think you'd have to sweat this detail with the local shoemaker.

Unfortunately I have to attend to some family business on Saturday afternoon and will not be able to attend after all. Sorry. I hope to make it next time.

A Grail Watch should go to the Grail Watch Repairer. It's that simple. US <--> Canada shipping is fiarly straightforward.... slower than it ought to be, but reliable. Just follow The Zigmeister & Jennifer's time tested guidance on how to package and label your timepiece and you should be fine. I'd much rather ship to/from The Zigmeister than rely on any local watchmaker for important services.

Same for me. Of course we met in the bar area (I believe), as opposed to the general dining area, and I looked for the usual big Pams, etc. and tried to make my watch fairly noticeable (without being totally obnoxious about it). But it wasn't hard to miss the table that had 30 watches spread out. The other get-together that I went to, I arrived right at the posted starting time, and there was a guy in the lobby with a nice case that kind of looked like it might contain watches and he was kind of looking around as well, so I asked. In both cases the situation involved fairly decent sized restaurants, and even then it was not very difficult to find members of the cult.

<Copy of my response on a different thread> Still hangs on IE 8..... however, I just went to the IE 8 Page menu and selected Compatibility View and suddenly RWG is redrawing normally and quickly again. Understanding the Compatibility View List. I just tested on a second computer and Compatibililty View worked there as well. Perhaps other IE8 users can validate this experience.

Still hangs on IE 8..... however, I just went to the IE 8 Page menu and selected Compatibility View and suddenly RWG is redrawing normally and quickly again. Understanding the Compatibility View List. I don't have time to validate this on my other computers right now, but perhaps other IE 8 users can give it a try and see whether this solution works for them. Cheers./

Reservations, even? That's pretty fancy. Yes, I will almost certainly be there. Cheers.

On the first day the forum loaded very quickly. Then, yesterday I started experiencing the same problem as the other people here are describing, on three different computers (all running IE . Yes, using Firefox skirts the problem. But there is something seriously wrong when one of the add-on RWG modules takes forever to load or locks up IE 8. I've tried a number of different workarounds to try to fix this, but without success. IE remains the most commonly used browser around, so the logical solution would be to fix the RWG code rather than expect every visitor to install an alternate browser -- especially when I can't think of another Web site that I use that has this problem. How many people will give up on RWG or never even give it a try because their browsers choke?

Yesterday IE 8 worked great. Today, on three different computers running IE8 the forum ground to a halt-- it just hangs and takes forever to download all page elements. It would be interesting to know what features that were added between yesterday and today are causing this problem.

The "most online at one time" and "most logged on in the course of a day" records have to do with the addictive quality of the forum. People were feeling deprived while the forum was down and anxious for it to come back up. Congrats to the Admin, Moderators, and all the Members.