Friday, November 7, 2008

GREAT SKATE ADVENTURE '08...

Well, here I sit in the Denver airport. This time yesterday I was sitting in the Chicago airport. Let me fast forward a couple days. I ordered a new pair of skates online the other day and when I received them they were defective. Now I've got to send them back, so in the meantime I've decided to get another pair. Since I've got abnormally narrow feet I can never get anything that fits good. I've always got to settle or make do. There is one pair of skates on the market that fit me the best and let me say when I received them in the mail I didn't like what I saw when going over the workmanship. So, Thursday morning I decided to fly to Minneapolis thinking that's the "state of hockey" they should have some quality hockey shops. Well, to my dismay, they weren't any different then shopping for hockey equipment here in St. Louis. Nobody ever carries narrow skates. I never even left the Minneapolis airport. I called about 10 hockey stores only to get the same answer, "NO, don't have that size". I then had the idea to fly to Vancouver. There was a store that had my size there and decided to fly out. I was hoping to make it in time to catch the Canucks/Coyotes game, but my flight was delayed in Chicago. I did finally make it only to get a hotel room. I got up this morning and got my skates, and they do fit like they were made for me. I guess it's like bike shopping for bike parts. Skates are like a good component group. Next pair of skates I'm goint to pay the extra money for a custom fit pair of skates. If I can spent several thousand dollars on biking stuff, whats $650 for skates.

It's too bad it was raining in Vancouver, it looked like it would've been beautiful. You could see the mountains right across the bay through the low clouds. Mt. biking seems to be pretty big there too. I drove down one street and I saw like three bike shops along with all kinds of outdoorsy type shops. Think I'll try to visit again and stay more then 14 hours to take in the sights. All the architecture and buildings made it look like some Scandinavian country. You know mt. biking is big when the magazine shops in the airport carry three different mt. bike magazines along with the usual bicycling. I thought I was at Borders.