Need a new pair of shoes? Head down to the beach, if you’re in the Pacific Northwest…
Enough soggy Nike basketball shoes to outfit every high school team in the state are drifting through the Pacific Ocean toward Alaska after spilling from a container ship off Northern California.
There’s just one hitch to finding a free pair.
“Nike forgot to tie the laces, so you have to find mates,” said Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer who tracks sneakers, toys and other flotsam across the sea. “The effort’s worth it ’cause these Nikes have only been adrift a few months. All 33,000 are wearable!”
A beachcomber told Ebbesmeyer about the shoe spill after finding two new blue-and-white EZW men’s shoes washed up near Queets on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula on Jan. 9 and 16.
Unfortunately, they were sizes 10 1/2 and 8 1/2. Both were lefts.
(From the Anchorage Daily News, via Dad)