Soles & Souls, part 1

These are all the shoes we did not buy last weekend.

We started out very hopeful, but after seeing thirty different shoe types, extremely varying prices, and multiple (radically different) vendors, we ended up having more questions than we started out with.

Personally, I think it's all about the socks. So, new plan -- This Saturday: socks, this Sunday: shoes.

I'm not very patient when it comes to buying shoes, so I've been wearing the same tennis shoes for the past 1 1/2, maybe 2 years? While the shoes were perfect, the sales guy who sold them to us was....well, creepy. Old, balding, slightly sweaty, foot fetishy type of guy. Just saying, the entire time my mom and I were giving freaked-out looks to each other. But we got great shoes...I guess everything comes at a price.

So this time, planning to go back and get the same type of shoes from the same creepy guy, we walked in hesitantly, determined, eyes darting anxiously. But he wasn't there! yay. We did however meet a lovely girl named Heather who really knew a lot about the few styles of walking shoes she had. She really understood what we were looking for, and since she didn't have it, suggested we go to another, BIG sports store. (This was of course after my mom tried on a pair of painfully squeaky white old lady walking shoes and after Caity tired on men's golf shoes for God's sake...)

ANYWAYS. We headed over to this big store where we met...The Dude. He was just that. Not helpful, and was merely sent to babysit us after they saw we were taking pictures. When we asked him some questions, he responded with an "umm..," deer in the headlights look, obviously his second day on the job. So needless to say, we didn't find what we were looking for there.

But at the next place we met Kelly, The Footwear God. We told him what we were doing and he asked us all kinds of questions about terrain, skill level, backpack load, stride length, etc. until Caity and I both had splitting headaches and had to stop shopping. But we DO plan to go back. So it wasn't a total loss--we didn't find the shoes, but we found the place where we will get the shoes.

(we darted into one last place where WWIII was exploding. Customer and clerk yelling at each other the proper fit of uggs. We ran out when we heard:

"They're too tight!"

"Well they're going to stretch"

"But what if they don't"

"They will."

"But I can return them if I hate them?"

"If you hate them...?!")

And that concluded our first day of shoe shopping.

(by the way, this blog site has a mind of its own, so if the pictures are in funky places and there are huge spaces, we apologize!!)