There Are Pandas, and Then There Are Pandas.
And this isn't either of them! The Pandas we're talking about here, are watches, not bears. And what got me thinking about them (again) was a link posted this morning by @cm.rook who pointed a few of us to the very attractive (and not terribly priced) Yema "Rallygraph" Panda which, in it's most traditional arrangement, looks like the one on the left, but can also be had in the version on the right: The model on the left is a true Panda, while the model on the right is called a reverse Panda. The reason for that distinction is clear--Panda bears, only come in the first arrangement. Now at this point, everyone should be thinking about the most well-know Panda, The Rolex Panda, which is actually a Daytona, and among Rolex Daytonas, the most famous of which is the Paul Newman Daytona, which was famous first, because it was Paul's, and second because it sold at auction for $17.8 million (US Dollars). The story of that auction is well-known so I'll only...
Nov 8, 2019
That said, I think I'm going to love these socks (which may be the weirdest phrase I've typed in years). When they drop again I may pick up another pack or two and just replace all my "day-to-day" socks with them.
Yes, in hand they feel a bit coarse. But on foot, they feel great. As a Hiker they are pretty thin/lightweight, but seem nicely padded in all the right places.
Yes, they seem to fit just a bit small-to-size. Works great for me, at 8.5 I'm usually stuck with socks that are for size 8-11 and just flop around. The Large in these fits perfectly but also feels like it could stretch more if necessary.
Glad you liked the socks! Happy hiking.
I think we went at exactly the right time too - reviews from a couple years ago suggested that the infrastructure wasn't always up to par (availability of bathrooms, in particular) but we never had a problem at all. On the flip side of that, the place is still pretty wild. Not a whole lot of guardrails or "keep away from the cliff edge you dumbass" signs, but they are starting to creep in a little bit.
There are so many stories... I hardly know where to begin. One of my favorites though was getting up at 3:30 am to make the trek down to the plane wreck on Solheimasandur. I wound up going alone, no-one else wanted to get up that early. Listening to Sólstafir's Ótta , while hiking during Ótta was a pretty introspective experience.
It's going to take me a while to go through the ~2k photos and all the driving timelapse I shot, but a friend insisted I sign up for Instagram before I went, so I posted a couple shots on there during the trip. https://www.instagram.com/sonomotophoto/