17 Hours Later

As I walked out of Colette Friday night, July 25th...I happened upon 3 young French dudes sitting on lawn chairs out front of the shop.

Immediately, I asked, "What shoes?" They responded, Busy-P AirForce 1s in the Lance Armstrong colorway.

Oh! I like those shoes. After first going home to get a jacket, I returned to take my place in line to spend the rest of the night on Rue St. Honore until drop time at 11am.

The nature of these kids who camp out for shoes in Paris is so much different from in the states. It's not brutal, in fact it's a really cool place if you want to make new friends. I met some cool cats: Christoph, Lessandre, Leonard, Thomas, Thomas, Rachid, Ben, (and more people whose French names I can't remember).

The shop even contributes to this jovial atmosphere. At closing time, one of the employees walks out of the store with his size run. Translation: He gives us a list with exactly how many of each size that he was for the shoe that we are waiting for. During the night, we each select which size each of us would like, with the order depending on who got there first. So all that's left to do is wait until morning.

We even all left as a group to eat dinner at KFC around 10pm before we returned to the nest, later. We all developed a rapport and friendship...In fact, friends of the campers would even come by and hangout even though they weren't buying the shoes.

At one point around 2am, while we were sitting in our lawn chairs/against the wall, an old frenchman walked by and tossed us 2€ coins because he thought we were bums.

The rest of the night was spent picture-taking (not really by me), conversing, quick napping, and fighting the Parisian cold (yes, even in July...Global Warming).

After waiting all night long and some more in the morning (17 hours in total), I was treated with this (after trading in some colorful notes of paper):



I was also given the much more comforting information that ALL of the Euros I spent would go to Mr. Armstrong's foundation, the LiveSTRONG Foundation. So I basically donated my entire night to the fight against cancer...

I wish I could post more pictures of the event, but they will have to wait until development. Because as my digital is broken, all I have is this:


...and on an unrelated note, Alleycat, you're still the coolest person I know.