Red Sox Stink / New Balance Rollerskates?!?!

By an incredible stroke of luck my favorite group of bad fielders were also in Atlanta this week for a 3 game series with the Braves. Friday night's game was a real doosy, it went to extra innings and the crowd was pumped. There were tons of Sox fans in the stadium chanting and talkin trash so when the hammer finally fell on the Red Sox in the fom of a three run blast the hometown faithful let their northern invaders have it. We got to witness some some entertaining antics from some old buddies we hadn't seen in a while and got to hang out with on old WH favorite Sal.



We missed Saturdays game (a win) as we spent the evening debating the perfect positioning of the trailer at the finish line of the road race. We did manage to catch the second half of Sundays game (another loss) and stuck around for the 4 man drumming / dancing crew at Turner Field.

Now I've got to tell you about one of the many characters to have stopped by our site. When we're not at races we set up in the parking lot of a strip mall that contains a NB store. I returned to the site on day 3 after grabbing some lunch and discovered my sidekick interacting with what looked to be a local fella. He had overalls on with a long sleeve shirt underneath with the sleeves rolled up neatly. He had a cap on and was sporting a beard. He had dark skin but it was hard to tell if he just had a good tan or if he was Mexican or something. He spoke quietly and intelligently even if what he was saying was absolutely re-donk-ulous and he sometimes followed up with a wry little smile which had me wondering if maybe he was fudging around with us.

He was wearing some sharp looking black dress shoes, one of which was off so he could try on a sneaker. It was around 87 degrees and we were hot in our shorts and T's but this guy seemed to be comfortable walking around town in a full farmers getup (minus the Brooks Brothers wingtips of course). It took a quick second but I soon realized that Boom had a live one on his hands.

"Do you guys sell rollerskates?"
"Rollerskates??? No we don't sell rollerskates."

He nods as if he had asked if we sold sneaker cleaner or something.

"Do you guys make any shoes made out of cork or wood, it helps absorb the salt?" He spoke very carefully so he could pronounce each sound of each word as clearly as possible.

"No, we don't make those either, just sneakers."

Nod

"Do you accept Mexican pecos? Is there a Cambio exchange around here" he looks around for a currency conversion shop nearby as he asks.

"No we don't, we don't sell the shoes here anyway."

"I had a pair of New Balance once. They were a gift from the United States Navy."

Boom and I exchange a confused glance.

He removes his other shoe and then removes both his socks in order to put on his new freebies. He looks down at his dirty socks in his hands and couldn't resist a quick sniff. He looks away and decides to sniff them again but longer this time. An idea seems to have popped in his head.

"Do you have a plastic bag? " he asks as he holds out the socks.

Boom brings over the garbage bag for him to drop them in but he refuses.

"No I need to keep these in a plastic bag. I'm going to give them to you guys. You can give them to your boss or manager, you know, for" he struggles to find the word, "for marketing purposes."

"For marketing purposes," Boom asks as he drops the bag off back in the trailer.

"Yes, I'm a long distance walker.....all outdoors.....no treadmill, no track. I do everything outdoors except when I go to sleep, I go to sleep indoors."

He's getting more and more excited about this idea of his. Brian brings him a small plastic bag and he puts the filthy socks in and wraps it up as if to preserve the natural essence for the research scientists back at the lab.

He went on about his walking style and how beneficial studying his socks would be for our company. Finally he said "or maybe you can just make them into a monkey," and smiled out of one corner of his mouth.

A few other quotes:

When inquriring about whether or not they had certain shoes in the store: "Do they have these inside? Do you have a communication device?"

When another person came over and said they would go inside the store to try on shoes: "You can try em on right here dum dum."

When he was dropping his socks into the bag: "Is there security, is there a camera here?"

When asked what size shoe he needed: "Let me try on a 10 squared."

And what has turned into the latest catch phrase on work days: "People don't expect this type of activty in a parking lot."

With that he was on his way. I hated to see him go and regretted that I missed a good part of his visit. He is well though, we saw him after work the next day as we were eathing on the patio of a restaurant walking down the street in the same overalls and dress shoes, no shirt underneath this time, looking as happy and cool as could be. I wondered if he was still on a little high thinking about the previous days all impotant sock contribution. I guessed that he was.