Dear new running shoes, where are you?!

Dear shoes, where are you? I hope its not too uncomfortable in that little parcel you are in. I see from the first attempt to post you via DHL tracking 3 weeks ago that had an eventful time! You were sent by my parents to me, to replace the ones we have run 1000’s of miles in, and you went via UK, Europe, the USA, all the way to Sao Paulo, Brazil, where you were turned around and sent all the way home again because the shipping company didn’t tick one little box saying “personal effects”. We tried to save you the long and weary journey home but apparently the system said no, company policy, someone couldn’t just tick you, you needed to make another few thousand miles of journey for the golden pen to tick you a home. Sorry about that.

Anyway, my parents sent you off again earlier this week and we are tracking you from afar – I see that you got incorrectly sent to Madrid, how was that? Warm I should imagine? After that you have been back to Germany, and now are languishing in Cincinnati, USA. Again. This is your third time there, you must have made friends with the customs people there by now (though I still don’t understand why you had to be cleared in a country I didn’t send you too). It may or may not be of consolation to you that we are allegedly a global village, and this sort of thing happens based on a curious matrix of factors like cost, politics, and logistics, none of which really make sense.

Anyway – we have to run on now in the old ones with holes in the bottom, plus barefoot, for a little longer, then will take an overnight bus back to Manaus to find you. Barefoot is lovely but impossible on really hot asphalt after 10:00 am, and we do get bits of car (alternator brush wires) stuck in our feet now and then. You are special shoes which we can’t find here, and you are our only mode of transport for the next 2.000kms so you are worth investing in and we are desperate to see you! I hope the customs guys in Brazil see that you are covered in mud and grass and are not a new product for re-sale which they can tax at 60%, and send you on your merry way. Keep your pecker up, ciao…..