-^-for posterity-^-

borrowed a friend's motorcycle today and headed all over looking for a place that makes shoes.

i can't easily buy a shoe here that fits me and proper footwear is very important for teaching at the university. i normally wear shoes that i bought at home but those shoes are quickly fading in the rainy season's humidity. i needed something new.

i did what i always do when i'm looking for a place new. i drive around the town stopping to ask just about everyone where i could get shoes made.

conversations normally progress like this:

'where can i get shoes made?'

'what?'

'where can i get shoes made?'

'shoes?'

'yea'

'i don't know. hey, frank (though i've yet to meet a man named frank, i do like to use the name), where can this guy get shoes made?'

frank: 'i don't know. over there.'

he'll then point in a general direction which i will take. i ask another person. sometimes they point back to where frank is and i head in a slightly different direction. eventually, someone will say the name of a store but they're not sure where it is. then you head in a direction and ask where the store is. someone eventually knows where to go.

the store was perfect. they had a giant book with hundreds of pages of foot outlines and measurements. i picked out a style i liked and they put the book on the white tile floor. they opened to a page that was blank and i stood on the same binding that hundreds of people have stood on before. she outlined my foot very carefully and then measured around the ball of the foot and my arch. she wrote everything down and then the style of shoe i wanted.

four dollars and one week later i will have a new pair of shoes tailored perfectly to my feet.