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…And it’s here, at the edge of this pool where I now stand, slack-jawed as Slater is towed out to its north end. There is a distant rumble from its far edge as a perfectly formed six-footer rises from the water’s glassy surface, conjured from the dusty earth using magic that Tolkien himself might struggle to articulate. The speed and smoothness at which it appears are startling, like special effects crossing the uncanny valley, leaving the viewer unable to discern fiction from reality. And just like that, Slater is already upright — he blasts onto the curled lip and snaps back, shooting an arc of spray into the sky. He does it again. And again. And again, for a full 45 seconds, his ride ending as he explodes from the wave’s immaculately shaped barrel, 20 yards from shore. It is, unquestionably, the singular ride that any surfer might spend a lifetime pursuing. But just as it ends, it repeats, running in the opposite direction of the pool once every few minutes, for the remainder of the day. It’s easy to see why it’s been dubbed “the smile machine” because everyone who emerges from the pool does so with a wide grin. Read more on ablogtowatch.com
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I’ve never been seasick before. But right now, I’m gripping the sides of a red and white buoy that’s heaving to and fro, at the mercy of a fresh two-meter swell rising out of the Pacific, and I desperately need to puke. All around me, raindrops scatter the surface of Potrero Bay as it rises and falls, but I don’t feel them under the thick 3.5mm hood of my wetsuit. “Are you OK?” my instructor Gauthier Ghilain asks, his concerned eyes piercing my fogged, low-volume mask. My stomach is in knots, preventing me from drawing deep breaths. The constant tossing of the buoy changes the positioning of the dive line, making it extremely disorienting to track underwater. I should be focusing on the horizon, but I glance at the Citizen Aqualand on my wrist instead, its depth-gauge history reading a current max dive depth of only around 40 feet — well short of the day’s targets. I’m stressed, and my overall comfort level is extremely low, resulting in a heart rate that’s far higher than it should be — particularly for the discipline of freediving, which demands total relaxation in order to fully activate the body’s secret “aquatic mode” that enables one to hold their breath without the limitations that come pre-programmed into our land-dwelling brains. Read more on ablogtowatch.com
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It started with a box. A big one. One of those kinds of shipping crates that comes nailed to a wooden pallet, inside of which is a series of increasingly smaller boxes, each with bits of straw and packing peanuts layered in between. And inside the smallest box of all would be a long lost golden artifact of perhaps Egyptian origin, completing its long journey from some distant corner of Mesopotamia. Inside this particular matryoshka though, was no priceless artifact but a watch — and a digital one at that. Read more on ablogtowatch.com
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It’s like a toggle on the horizon’s just been thrown. Down becomes up. Earth becomes sky, and my guts, a 900-pound sack of meat. We’re ninety feet off the ground, going no slower than two hundred and twenty-five miles per hour. As an invisible force begins playing tug-of-war with opposite sides of my skull, my spine compresses like an accordion wheezing out Bal-musette on a Parisian subway. I vaguely remember strapping a Hamilton Khaki X-Wind Chronograph on my left wrist, but I couldn’t turn my head to look at it if I tried. “Six G’s,” the pilot casually reports through the headset. He sounds bored. I force myself to breathe while my bones try to tear themselves from my body through the back of the cockpit. Read more on ablogtowatch.com
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Range Rover. Peacemaker. Seamaster. Excellent in both styling and nomenclature, Omega’s signature dive watch line is so classic in its execution and perfect in its naming, that in wearing one, it’s hard not to feel a little bit tied to the watch’s explicitly defined mastery of its own domain since the early 1930s. While the clean aesthetics of the traditional Seamaster 300m Professional offers an exceptional starting block for any style-savvy waterman, the Planet Ocean is where Omega’s 75 years of nautical exploration and technical innovation becomes much more obvious. The Seamaster Planet Ocean is built to be the paragon for waterproofness, classic style, and industry-leading chronometric performance for years to come. Read more on Airows.com
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Jacques Cousteau once famously likened diving a shipwreck to that of “entering a cathedral.” And right now, I’m about to find out why. Our guide is kneeling in roughly 40 feet of water on the stern deck of the USS Kittiwake — a WWII-era submarine rescue vessel scuttled just off the coast of Grand Cayman's Seven Mile Beach. He casually points downward at a dark, rectangular mouth, approximately four feet in diameter just below where he's waiting, and motions for us to follow. I’ve only been an officially certified diver for less than 12 hours, and have a semi-rational fear of confined spaces but I flash the ‘ok’ sign and kick toward the darkness. Read more on Huckberry.com
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It’s 4:15am, and I’m being jolted awake by the TAG Heuer on my wrist, as it buzzes with a surprising degree of urgency. I stumble from bed in the dark, reaching for my bibs and jersey which have been slung over the back of a chair. A few feet away, pre-ground coffee from last night sits patiently in the pour-over filter, awaiting hot water. I’m light years from many of the experiences of a pro cyclist, but this is one we’re able to share: the bleary-eyed start of every day, the prelude to a double-life waged in the pursuit of the privilege to ride among an extreme minority of the sport’s most elite. Read more on ablogtowatch.com
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Granted, Hemingway didn’t make himself “comfortable in the bush” with running water, satellite GPS navigation, or a memory foam mattress custom-fitted to a climate-controlled camper bunk, but that’s beside the point. There’s still something very visceral and savory about surrendering to forestry maps to feel the sinewy rhythm of unspoiled earth, churned asunder by 30-inch tires on trail that hasn’t seen vehicles since the Nixon era. And doing so, with everything you need in a custom off-road rig personally assembled for 30 days of complete self-sufficiency. Hemingway might have even tried overlanding, if he knew it was much more than scaling sandstone ledges and ripping donuts on BLM land. That's because pins on the map are more than just destinations, they're part of creating the drive experience inside and out. Read more on Huckberry.com
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Did you know Minneapolis has given us not only the Coen Brothers, but also Prince and Bob Dylan? It's also given us F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Mighty Ducks, and Zubaz pants, but we won't talk much about that last one. We're more interested in the Twin Cities because there's a new movement stirring the region's frosty Northern bones. We know, because we went there. We know because we met its artists and entrepreneurs, and its former and future champions – the folks writing the pages of tomorrow by embracing its storied yesterday. To do this, we explored its streets, paddled its rivers and drank plenty of its beers, and discovered the thriving undercurrent of a place that has shed its midwest skin and embraced the cold, to become – quite literally and figuratively – one of the coolest cities east of The Rockies. Explore the guide on Huckberry.com
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