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Aside from being a destination on my bucket list before I knew what bucket lists were, the Galapagos trip was the most disconnected I’ve been in over a decade. I went to work for myself in 2005—at most, I’ve had a day or two out of touch since then.
With no data on the boat, I was prepared for a solid eight days of zero contact.
Due to a crew member situation, we headed close to port so they could take a panga to town. That got us close enough to get connected to a 4G network. It was weird to hear text notifications from other passengers after just a few days of disconnecting.
I caved and switched off Airplane Mode. It was a “leave no trace” approach as I quickly checked on a few things at work—and how things were going with my mom.
Everything was fine. I put the phone back on Airplane Mode and left it that way until we hit Atlanta on the way home.
Also, being away from every flavor of social media was a plus. I’m not sure when I’ll get back on outside of Discord. We’ve been back for a little more than a month, and I’ve made a total of 2.5 Instagram posts (one was a repost for work) and a handful of micro.blog posts.
I’ve taken that energy to reconsider how and where I post stuff. (Plus, work and family life has been incredibly bonkers.)
On being “unquantified:” About two years ago, Laura gifted me a smartwatch for my birthday. Surprising to everyone, I went with a Garmin. The idea was, Garmin offered a fantastic fitness watch with pretty decent smartwatch functionality.
The obvious front runner was the Apple Watch. It’s the opposite, a brilliant smartwatch with decent fitness functions. Ultimately, I think it was the idea of one more thing to charge just every day that pushed to the Fenix 6 and its ability to go weeks without needing a charge.
Going into smartwatch country, I had a modest collection of mechanical watches. None of them had been worn for any reasonable length of time in nearly two years.
The Galapagos trip was an excuse to get off the gamified quantification of health stats. And it was a great experience. Looking at my watch to see the time without needing to press a button to light it up? Great. The faint glow of lumed hands and dial telling me that, yes, it was only 3:00 and that I should dig in and get another 90 minutes of sleep before the day began.
Right, so which did I wear? With the amount of snorkeling we’d be doing, I wanted to take a proper dive watch. My Helm Vanuatu hadn’t been on an adventure since I’ve owned it.
It’s a beast, and it was just the right watch for this trip.