shoes

I've been wearing New Balance walking shoes exclusively for a decade or so. In Illinois I put as much as 300 miles on a pair, never had to "break in" the new ones, and have stayed loyal to one particular model line as it changed. I get emails from New Balance Direct letting me know when the shoes are on sale (read: about to be discontinued) and when I see that, I'll buy a couple-three pairs at a steep discount. I'm just finishing up on my fourth pair of WW843WBs.

They have some life left in the, but barely. I usually leave them in the garage, and yesterday, I pulled them on when heading out the door to walk the dogs at the beach. For the entire walk it felt like I had a little wad of cotton at the front of the toes of my left foot. When I finished the walk, I took off the shoe and emptied the crushed remains of a rather large spider out of the shoe.

Yeah. Gak.

I did put them on again, but only after stabbing into the toe of the right show with the weed fork, as if the spider guts had reanimated and were out for revenge.

Anyway it's time for new shoes. I searched the web for any internet store that had the 843, and found one. Good price! And they had my size. This morning, however, I got an email that said they were sold out and would not be charging me, as well as offering me a 5% discount on any other product. Well, cool! They have the newer model, the 844, slightly cheaper than New Balance Direct, and with the discount, it is indeed a decent price for fairly expensive shoes.

As soon as I placed the order for the 844s, I got an email from the company telling me that oops! there was indeed another pair of 843s in my size, which would be shipped on Monday.

Whatever. I'd love to buy locally, but the general store in town doesn't stock the higher-end shoes, which is totally understandable. I've never found another style to be nearly as comfortable, though.

I guess I'll have two new pairs soon enough.

Edit: I received several emails and a phone call from this company confirming that I did indeed want both pairs of shoes. I will be doing business with them again. Holy hells bells! Customer service! Shoe-Store.net.