First of all, I was going to ask for new shoes and pads on the front, whether he needed them or not, because we're gonna be riding hard(er) this month and wanted them to be the best... But Mark arrives in a rather hurried mood, and didn't speak much more than two words to me nearly the whole time he was here. I'd ask him, like I always do, "How do Bay's feet look? Is he getting too much grass?" "They're fine."
He usually pulls off all four and then either resets or makes new, so I didn't talk to him about new shoes immediately, I was still trying to assess his unusual mood. Well, this time, he picked up Bay's front, pulled the shoe and pad off, trimmed, filed and put the shoe right back on pretty much all in one motion. I guess that part's OK, last time Bay was pretty ouchy standing on one bare foot in front while he worked on the other one, maybe he was trying to avoid that. They aren't worn out, they'll be OK... anyway, here's the fronts.
And I know you can't see much with the pad there, but here's what they look like on the bottom:
The weird part came with the backs, he said he needed new ones in the back, they were worn out. I asked why they'd be worn out in the back before the front, and he said "Because I did new ones on the front last time, but not the back" OK - I hadn't remembered that.
But he pulls out two shoes that look different than he's worn before, and I said "Those are different"... He said... "Yeah, they have toe clips on them, he doesn't really need that, but it's all I've got". I looked then, in the back of his truck, and it was practically empty... no boxes of shoes of various sizes... nothing. They look OK - in fact, they look like they're rather beveled, almost like a NB shoe. And they are the right size I think, I was just struck by him being apparently completely out of supplies. What do you ladies think?
Here's his backs:
I just wonder, with his mood and lack of supplies, if he's got something going wrong with his business and if I ought to be worried. He had his son with him today too, which is unusual. He was in and out of here in record time, like he was in a big hurry.