Olympian Sports

I have to throw out a plug right now.

Yesterday was very frustrating.  I had money left over from Christmas that I still hadn't spent.  But I got an idea this week for something that I would want, so I was going to go out on Saturday and get it.

Notwithstanding is the fact that I got a last start yesterday, and it was raining cats and dogs, so the mall was borderline zoo-ish.  So I went to Midtown, because I wanted licensed apparel, so my first thought was "Jersey City".  What else would you think of first?  Sure its all wickedly over-priced but that's where you should be able to find such things.

I wanted the official on-field cap of the Washington Nationals.  Red hat with a giant white W on it.  Not some strange variant but the everyday home hat.  Huge rack of hats at Jersey City.  They did not have the red one.  They had some stupid black one with a red/blue DC on it that may be a special edition hat, but isn't the everyday red one.  Huge rack of hats, not the official one.

WTF!?!?!?!

There's another hat store just down from Jersey City.  I was dejected by this point, but its close so I looked anyway.  Same problem.  Lots and lots of hats.  Lots of variety in some things, but not an official on-field Washington Nationals hat.  About 27 different god damn variations on the blasted Yankees but no Washington Nationals.  (FYI - god damn Yankees)

I also looked in SportChek but that's 5 minutes of my life I'm not getting back.

So I'm sitting in my basement last night, feeling kinda morose about my lack of luck with this hat issue.  I still want one but now I'm looking at ordering online, and while I do that, its just not as satisfying as leaving a store clutching your purchase.  Then, like an epiphany, I had inspiration.  What about Olympian Sports?  Every time I go in there, it seems like they have about 100,000 pieces of licensed merchandise.  I have a whole Sunday; it'll cost me an hour, at most, to go check.  Worse case is no worse than how I was feeling last night.

So I go into Olympian Sports today just after lunch.  Up the stairs to where the bulk of the licensed stuff is.  Bang, there is a wall of hats.  20 seconds of analysis and I figure out where the MLB hats are.  (strange that a ball cap is synonymous with baseball, and its not even the largest category in the wall'o'hats)  My eyes immediately snap to the red hats and in about 5.3 seconds I find my whole grail - the red on-field Washington Nationals hat!  The search has concluded; I reach nirvana!

Wait!  What's this!?!  Right next to the red Washington Nationals hat is something that looks like a solid, royal blue Montreal Expos hat.  I blink.  It is a solid, royal blue Montreal Expos hat!  I thought this doesn't exist!?!

Exist or not as a new product, there it is.  Something I've been lusting at for almost 5 years is right there in my trembling hands.  First I lost (or thought I had) my blue Expos hat.  Then I found it behind a book shelf but my examination of it suggested it was dirty as hell.  (not surprising as I'd had it since I get it for my birthday when I was 18)  So having found it, I tried to clean it.  That didn't work and it no longer looked all that fresh.  So I wanted to buy a new one, but my searching said they didn't make it brand new anymore.

Now here in my quivering hands was the hat that I'd wanted for so long.  I debated whether to purchase it for, oh, about 2.3 seconds before concluding this was a no-brainer.  My faithfulness was further rewarded when each hat was about $2.50 off list price.  My breathless search was concluded successfully and I got a discount.  Could this have ended in any better way?

So now I have both hats that I wanted.  And I've reached a conclusion.  I am not pissing around anymore.  My first and only direction when I need something sporting good related is to go to Olympian Sports.  This has happened 3 times that I can remember in recent memory.  I wanted something, tried somewhere else first only to search out Olympian as a last resort.  They have not disappointed.  Thus my future policy will be to just go to Olympian and stop getting frustrated.

I recommend to anyone that reads this that they follow the same policy.