new shoeses

I'm a New Balance brand loyalist in need of new walking shoes for my upcoming long trek, but my boss insisted that the Skechers he wears are the bee's knees, so, after he'd badgered me enough, I consented to his ordering me a pair (I did pay him back for the shoes and shipping). They're 12.5 Extra-wides, which is a half inch down from the New Balance 13s I've been wearing since before last year's Jeju/Andong trip. 

The boss is out with COVID, but he called to say he'd gotten a flag from the Malltail delivery service (#1 delivery service to South Korea!), notifying him of a package's arrival. The boss gets Malltail deliveries at the office all the time, but he was sure that this package would be mine. Sure enough, I found the package at the office, and with the boss on the phone eager to hear my reaction, I took the shoes out of the box and their individual wrappings, pulled out the molded cardboard filling up the shoes' interior, and tried the walkers on, narrating what was happening so my boss could enjoy the moment. 

Thus far, all day in the office, I've found the shoes to be perfectly comfortable, but because they're relatively cheap and very light, I worry about how well they'll take the pounding of a 633K trail in varying weather. I kind of like the idea of not having any laces to worry about, but I'll need to get used to the brown color (no other colors were available at my size, and I normally go for dark blue or black). I'm going on a longish walk tonight to test the shoes out; I won't know how they perform over long periods in terms of wear and tear, but I'll have an idea of how comfortable they over over a period of three or so hours' walking.

No doubt I'll have more to report later.

UPDATE: I'm going to do something radical and sleep early tonight, then go for a walk from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m. tomorrow morning. My sore throat seems to have gone away, and I'm not experiencing any mounting cold symptoms, so I think it's just a passing sore throat. We'll see how things are in the morning.

ALSO: I'll be taking my previous pair of shoes with me on this trek as backup, just in case something should happen to the delicate-seeming Skechers after a few hundred kilometers.