Atlanta, GA: Dirty dirty walls and 12 dollar socks

Miles since last blog: 19.0

Route

Well, those of you who have run marathons, or seen the movie 'run fatboy run,' know about the wall. Well, for some reason, the Dirty dirty, Atlanta, was a wall for me. Apparently long treks have walls too. Atlanta has for some reason been a checkpoint in my mind since the beginning of this trip and that may have been a factor for me. Also was a series of great hosts on Couchsurfing which led me to want to slow my momentum to hang out more and finally, I may have been just a touch burnt out.

After aborted runs, busy days filled with interviews and errands, getting hit by a car, heading down the wrong road for miles and general fatigue, I finally walked to a destination in Atlanta and hopefully took down my wall brick by painstaking brick, step by painstaking step.

Today the painstaking steps were a little less painful though. All day I couldn't help but think about Vincent Vega, John Travolta's character from 'Pulp Fiction.' At one point during the movie he lambasts a shake for being $5 then tastes it and decides, "it's pretty good, I don't know if it's worth $5, but it's pretty good" or something like that.

I was finally convinced to buy some new socks. $12 socks. It pains me even now to type this it seems so ludicrous to pay that much for socks, I mean, they're socks. Nevertheless, I tried them, and they are sort of, well, heavenly-ish. It helps that my 'trade-in' shoes were size double E (which is for extra width), even my weak left foot was fine today as far as blisters go. The shoes weren't all of it though, the socks seem durable.

Normally I get a hole in a sock after one or two outings. Even the most durable cotton or performance sock in the past has shed little bits of itself which under repeated motion and pressure ball up into little pebbles of cotton which tear at your foot during a long day and create blisters.

These socks seemed unphased by my journeys, as if because they were new and this was their first outing I was only letting them know what was in store for a normal day. They shrugged it off, thinking, "this is what we do, we're socks, we can't just fall apart now." I was impressed. It's only been one day, but I have 3 pairs now and I think this could be the beginning of a long and beautiful friendship. Is it too early to name them?