One of the ways we entertain ourselves while away is to have little missions. Yesterday, one of our longest missions finally came to its triumphant conclusion. I have a bit of foot trouble and there’s only one shoe I’ve ever found that feels good and doesn’t cause it to act up. The Asics Gel Evolution II. I also was cursed with freakishly wide feet, and normal tennis shoes just don’t fit right. And no, it’s not true what they say.

The thing about Asics is outside of the US they can be relatively hard to find. I was able to pick up a new pair in Australia with relative ease, but hadn’t seen them since. Around Malaysia I started to get pretty desperate, since we’re not exactly traveling with a closet full of shoes. Any time we were out and about, we always had our eye out for sporting goods stores where maybe I would get lucky and find them. A few times we came oh-so-close, actually finding the exact shoe. But alas, the size US 11 eluded us each time. Foreigners apparently have much smaller feet. Eight countries and over a month later we finally found them at a Foot Locker in Cape Town, South Africa. The highlight of the experience was the shoe salesman saying “I don’t mean to toot our own horn, but we have the best Asics selection around”, and then beaming like a proud father for the rest of our time with him. I’ve since been in a post-coital mission success bliss and can’t stop looking across the room at them.