Pretty much every time I vacation in a warm place, I forget to bring any kind of hoodie or jacket and have to buy one there on a chilly evening.
Similarly, when I am guarding the dump/bail, I often over-commit to the swing side and let off the much more dangerous cut up the line. I see this develop in front of me one moment before it occurs in that sickening way that you might realize you are locking your keys in the car a split second before you actually do it, but too late to stop your arm from clicking the door closed. I see that I am out of position and lean in to chase, but the cut is made, and the throw is usually off before I set the mark.
Yet another disappointing recurrence is my ordering of custom kicks, waiting for their delivery with increasing anticipation and my crushed expectations when they finally arrive. I just did this a third time with Mi Adidas. Every shoe company has a program like this. First I ordered Nike ID Dunks years ago. They were shoddily assembled and poor quality materials. A couple years later I remade the mistake again with Puma's Mongolian Shoe BBQ.
Just today I got my CMFK 55's out of the box from China. This is what the website led me to expect:
Hot!And this is what I got:
Basically the same shoe, but everything is a touch off. The CMFK is a bit too small. The light blue is more smurf puke than robin's egg. The dark blue is more navy than royal. The tan is too dark. The eyelets are metal, not royal. Most bothersome, the assembly is poor. There is a large gap between the body of the shoe and the heel cap. The toe cap isn't actually a separate piece, but a false seam.Despite my long term love of nice kicks, I don't really have the vocabulary to explain why these are shoddy, but I see it in a second, and it disgusts me. Seams that should be sewn are glued. The synthetic upper is stiffer and shinier than typical material. The seams are clumsier. They look a bit like shoes you would expect to see on a Cabbage Patch Doll.
Today, I've given a lot of thought to why this happens. This could be so great, and instead it is such a kick in the gut. Seeing your dream shoe poorly executed is much worse than never seeing it.
I think it's a function of two causes. One, there's clearly more labor involved in this type of custom shoe and I'm always surprised that the price point is about the same. My Nike ID dunks were much cheaper than any LE dunks I'd purchased. Same price, more labor means they need to make up the margin somewhere, and it guess it's done on shoddy materials. Second, the lego- style swap assembly required to customize every component seems to mean that the overall assembly is substandard. The pieces don't fit as cleanly together as they would on a large scale run.
Ah well. I'll be rocking these. I mean, they are CMFK-55s, but I won't enjoy it like I could. Stay tuned here for me complaining about some crappy custom Reeboks in about 18 months.
In other news, Deirdre has shiny new tires. Jesse said I needed them. I don't really know why. It is probably a conspiracy with the local bike shop and he gets a cut.
At least once a week, I take a flight that takes off at 6:00 AM. This has me getting up at 3:45 AM a little more than suits my constitution, but I do see more sunrises than I would otherwise. Here's one my iPhone camera doesn't quite capture but I thought was pretty:
Next weekend, I am taking the Beacon Girls to the O'Hara Invite. I am very excited for them and also sick with worry about keeping an eye on the girls in the hotel.
There's been more running, SNERTZing and Tabata. I'll let you know when the Mets call me up.
1 comment:
I had a pair of NikeIDs - they were slick, but had the durability of those Nokes or Ryebiks Tim R. almost bought in Copenhagen.
Yr spot on w/ the manufacturing process vs. cost. I doubt they're putting extra shifts of fingerless child workers on the line to complete these, so they cut corners w/ glue and quick stamp pieces.
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