Boots

After we wrapped up bottling I decided I needed some new boots for the winery.  My current ones are really good but they are heavy and after standing for ten hours my legs and feet felt really heavy and tired.  I was thinking something lighter would be good for the longer days n the winery.  I could wear the heavy ones when I needed heavy water proofing and the extra toe protection and change out into tlighter ones when I didn’t.

This is no easy task.  I wear size 14.  It really limits what is available.  There are also some brands that just don’t fit well.  Nike runs small, I need a 15 so I don’t even bother looking at Nike.  In this round of buying I found out Merrell doesn’t work either the arch is placed weird.  Usually I just go on line and buy shoes.  That’s what the picture above was for.  I took pictures of everything I liked and then figured I’d check Amazon for size 14’s.  The funny side result is that shoes are the only thing I’ve bought from Amazon in the last 10 years so I get shoe sale emails from Amazon daily.  They think I have a fetish, the limits of data mining.

We had some time though last Saturday so I thought we’d run around and see if we got lucky.  Sports Authority was the first stop.  They had two pair of size 14’s.  One was the Merrel and it didn’t fit right.  The other was more of a fashion shoe and not a real hiker it had poor tread and no ankle support.

Next we went to Mel Cotton’s where I got my current heavy duty boots.  No luck, nothing in a 14.  REI was stop number three.  The sales guy was full of confidence.  “Of course we have lots of size 14’s, no problem”, he said.

“Great” I said, “Bring them out.”

“All of them?” He asked.

“Yes, all of them” I replied.

Ten minutes later he came out of the back with one pair of boots.  The same pair I had rejected as fashion boots at Sports Authority.

On to stop number four, Big 5.  There we had some more sales guy fun:  “What are you looking for?” he asked in his best sales guy voice.

“Hiker’s” I said.  “Light weight, waterproof would be nice but is not mandatory”.

“Well which style do you like.  What are you’re favorite brands?” He queries.

“No.  That’s not the way this works.” I say, “The way this works is you go in the back and find all the size 14’s you have and bring them out here.”.

He looked a little puzzled and hurt, not being able to use his best sales technic, but he complied and disappeared to the back for 10-15 minutes.  Stefania thought he might be hiding from me.  Eventually he came out with three pairs.  Score, huge score!  I tried on all three and bought two.  A pair of Hi Tech and a brand called Itica.  Kind of my general rule is if I find shoes that fit and I like I buy them, because you don’t know when that will happen again.