A guy fashion crisis is when they stop making the shoes I’ve been wearing for the last 12 years. That is because “guy shopping” is buying the same thing in the same size as quickly as possible. But sometimes, I get wild.

My L.L. Bean field watch finally died after the most recent battery replacement. It had a good 15 or 20 years, not quite sure how long. I’ve been wearing earlier versions of the watch for decades. This one lasted longer because it had a flat mineral crystal. I’m pretty good at banging my watch against things and breaking the crystal.

This time, I decided to level up, but it took a while to find a watch that I really liked. This radical departure is a Seiko Kinetic Field Watch with a 5M82 movement. It was surprisingly hard to figure out if it had the features I wanted, like stopping the second hand (hacking), and not replacing the battery (Seiko Kinetic uses a spinning weight to charge a capacitor).

Oh, yes, I replaced the strap with a G10 NATO strap. And surprise, there is a dedicated tool for dealing with the spring bars (instead of using a screwdriver and scratching the watch case like I’ve done forever).