Ihave to admit to being the Emelda Marcos of CRW when it comes to shoes. I have boxes of shoes, most of which I will never wear, that I got for a good deal. I had my Nashbar period when I bought every pair that was on sale for some fantastically discounted price. Occasionally some of the shoes I bought would even fit, but this was of secondary importance, if they were cheap, and reasonably close to my shoe size, they were mine. I had one pair that I could only wear with a modest amount of pain if I cut my toenails to the quick.
I realized I had a serious problem when I recently bought a pair of Detto Pietro cleated shoes at the Big Event. I probably already have a couple of pairs of these very shoes kicking around, which I would find if I ever bothered to take inventory, but the main motivation for my purchase was that they were $2 (that's $1 per shoe, for those of you that can't do the math). This was probably an even worse purchase than the 35 spoke wheel, but I was caught up in the heat of the moment.
Now, basically, from all the pairs of shoes I own, I wear about three pair. One is a pair of cycling shoes I bought from Osman at a Big Event a long time ago. They're pretty ratty now, but still comfortable, and my main commuting shoe. For weekend riding, I usually wear my Specialized shoes. I've had these for quite a few years as well, and thought they were history when the velcro wore out. But being a clever lad, I realized I could lash them together with an old set of toe straps and get another ten years or so out of them. In this case, it wasn't mere frugality, but the fact that they were very comfortable shoes. My other pair are a set of Sidis that I bought at the Big Event two years ago. This was an actual bargain, and they are very good shoes. So good, in fact, that I only wear them for serious events. I'm rather picky about what I consider a serious event, so they don't see much service.
So, I realized shortly after I purchased the $2 shoes (on the drive home, actually) that there was not the slightest chance that I would ever wear these shoes. The telling blow was the fact that they had shoelaces, and I am too lazy to deal with shoes that have to be laced. Now the Osman shoes have laces, but I found experimentally that if you didn't bother to lace them up, that they wouldn't in fact fall off (the beauty of toe clips). I'm fairly confident that the Detto Pietros would not function well at all sans laces. So, here we are, $2 down the tubes. Well, I guess I could wait till the next Big Event, maybe I could even sell them for $3. So I guess this can be considered a wise investment...
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