The Bitter End

01

Hublot Big Bang Meca-10

Hublot Big Bang Meca-10

Five days on the show floor… 45 hours, 63 appointments, miles of walking between meetings, conservatively well north of 1,000 watches viewed and handled, all book-ended by social obligations, dinners, and brand meetings. Interspersed throughout were (far too short) windows to rest my head and make a vague attempt at a reset to start the next day. In a way, wearing the Meca-10 throughout the buzz of Basel was a help—providing a vague sense of consistency and continuity. It also provided an entertaining countdown of sorts, as I knew that hitting the mark of three days of power reserve meant that it would be time to head back to the airport, back to New York, and back to some semblance of normality. As I boarded the plane home and reset the Meca-10 back to Eastern Time—the second time the Meca-10 required adjustment—I noted a clear lack of deviation from the atomic clock from which I’d originally set it. Stability is one of the bigger concerns when it comes to any piece with a significant power reserve, as the rate at which a spring unloads power when fully wound can be quite different from barely wound. Hublot has had much practice in this realm with pieces like the MP-05, whose power reserve is an astronomical 50 days, and it would seem at least some of the lessons learned have trickled their way down the food chain.