Said a la Matthew McConaghey, “alright alright alriiiiight…”
I have no idea why, but I was drawling like that all weekend long in Vancouver. I’m a weirdo. Nothing like saying things like that out loud in an exaggerated American accent while in a foreign country to win over the locals.
ANYHOW.
When we last left off on the #SeaKatyWheeze saga (Part I), I had planted my flag in the surface of the “NFW am I sleeping on the street” moon, and stuck to my guns(ish)… because I then proceeded to set my alarm for 3:00a. This is where east coast jet lag and a travel companion who regularly trains at 5:00a EST really comes in handy. 9:30p bedtime still resulted in 5+ hours of sleep.
Side note: We all have friends, but then there are “fly to another country to run 13 miles and wake up in the middle of the night to entertain your crazy gym clothes habit” friends. If you find one of them, thank her profusely and never let her go. KRYSTLE I LOVE YOU AND THANK YOU FOR PUTTING UP WITH MY LULU-LEMONHEADEDNESS ALL WEEKEND LONG.
At approximately 3:24a, Krystle and I found ourselves weaving through downtown Vancouver for the first time, Apple Maps in hand en route from our apartment toward the convention center. A not so quick gatorade stop at 7-Eleven later, we found ourselves at the VCC around 3:38a. Being a total Seawheeze n00b, we at first had no clue where the door was and mistakenly though the front of the line was the back. We were quickly reminded by the not-so-nice lady heading up the line that we were incorrect.
She would later reveal herself as one of the choice characters of people who are more in it for the “buy it all and sell it on eBay” or “I’m going to pay someone to hold my spot” deal, than the actual lululemon love.
Seriously. Call me naive, but I guess I’m now in the know. I knew about eBay sharks, but what I didn’t think about was people actually paying homeless folks to the tune of $150 to hold their spot in line, and then sketchy characters walking the line within 1-2 hours of opening offering up their spots in exchange for cash to people who were lined up more towards the back.
I shake my head in dismay. Again… as much as I care and dedicate hours a week to blog about lululemon weekly, we need to pause and remember at the end of the day, they’re still gym clothes. Nice, cute expensive, and adorable yes – but gym clothes nonetheless.
So, we started our lap and ended up in line down along the water. As he was walking by, clicker in hand, I asked the nice VCC security guy what our place in line was. 491. Optimistic as ever, I decided that the top 500 really wasn’t that bad. See 4am train of thought below:
Doing Twitter math. Figure 20% are dudes. Half of the remaining women in line are likely not my size. So I'm really 196th-ish #SeaWheeze
— AthletiKaty (@athletikaty) August 12, 2016
Then, the world got small. In my 4:23a fog, I met Shannon (the awesome author of last year’s SW recap for L&TB, 10 Faves & 2 Duds). In this fun little internet bubble, I felt like we’ve already known each other for a while and it was more of an ‘oh hey’ to a familiar friend instead of a “WHOA YOU’RE REAL this is so awesome to meet you!”
So, Shannon, I apologize for being a socially awkward dweeb so damn early in the morning. Even though I outwardly had the energetic equivalent of a pile of rocks, on the inside, I was super stoked to meet you. Oh, social skills. I have none.
Around 5:00a, the tale of the red Outrun Crops unfolded. They deserve a post of their own, though, so I will gloss over that part of the story for now. That all happened while Krystle had ventured off to Tim Horton’s a few blocks away, in desperate search of caffeine. It took her an hour.
Only one person was working this particular 24-hour location, and whoever that poor individual was ended up purely overwhelmed by the fact that they were the only place open in town. Timmy Ho’s in Vancouver take note: LOOK WHEN SEAWHEEZE IS AND STAFF ACCORDINGLY. I heard about a lot of people giving up and stepping out of line.If only they could have kept things moving along, think about how much more $$$ they could have raked in.
Maybe someone should call them a couple weeks in advance of next year and say HEY UH THIS IS GONNA HAPPEN TO YOU FOR THE 6TH CONSECUTIVE YEAR, so uh, maybe you should uh…. schedule some extra staff and f*ckin handle it. Thanks.
By the time Krystle came back with her elixir of the gods, Seawheeze volunteers were already walking along the line and handing out free timbits (that’s a Canadian munchkin, folks). Nom nom nom. She missed out on the red crops moment. SEE WHAT YOU DID, MR. HORTON?!
Around 5:30a, VCC personnel started to round up the street-sleepers and get them to deflate their v-bags (hot dog rolls, vaginas, whatever) and condense. This easily cut down the physical length the line had stretched by out by about 40%. Around 6:30a, the line started to move inside to wind back and forth a la Disney World, readying for the big 7:00a stampede. The steady movement was a source of excitement for us.
At 7a, the first wave of lulu lunatics (that’s a term of endearment) were let through the doors. I made it in at precisely 7:23a. BYE KRYSTLE, SEEYA WHEN I SEE YA.
By the time I got in, half the merch seemed to be off the racks and spread out all around earlier shoppers on the outskirts of the floor. I adopted the same mentality and grabbed every single thing in my size that I remotely liked, and stared down what all the other women were trying on to make sure that I didn’t miss anything that I may want to take home.
For the hour leading up to the big opening, lulu did a smart thing. They sent models out in SW gear to strike many poses along the length of the line, giving us a preview of what awaited us inside.There was this one jacket that I wanted, badly. Map map map map map print. What’s the one thing I didn’t see on the racks, but saw on women all over the place? The jacket. A quick seller.
Being the awkward turtle that I am, I wasn’t quite sure about how to troll around in my size area and hope someone threw one of those jackets back into the abyss. At one point, I was totally spacing, and a nice woman broke my daze, pointed to her ‘no’ pile and asked if I was interested in anything in there. I blinked about 3x in rapid succession in disbelief, because the jacket in question was peeking out from 3 items deep. She looked to be a little smaller than I am, so I cautiously held my breath as I thanked her, pulled the jacket from the pile and went for the hang tag.
Size 8.
GREAT SUCCESS!
I know I should have grabbed a few OG CRBs while they were still available, but I instead wanted to spend my money on fun bottoms. With 15+ CRBs at home, I figure I had enough solids to create plenty of outfits with whatever bottom half jazzery I could score at the showcase.
Fun fact: Exchange rates are great when you’re on the right side the coin. My $640 CAD total ended up popping up on my Apple Pay notification as $491. More great success!
All in all, I ended up taking home 7 items from the showcase (and 3 more pieces from Robson St). The JACKET <3, 3 pairs of Speed Shorts, 2 pairs of Run With the Sun Crops and 1 Energy Bra. Could have been worse. I liked the plain black/white fingerprint swirl, but with the heat wave white/black patterns in my closet from last spring, it didn’t make sense to bring more of a similar pattern into the fold.
3 fingerprint swirls, 3 maps and some words. Some words, as opposed to the zillions of words I just typed to recap this shopping experience.
I was so amped up by my first Seawheeze showcase experience, I didn’t stop to take as many pictures inside the showcase as I would have liked. Anyway, forget the whole “maybe I’ll leave the tags on and sell whatever I end up not liking that much” thing.
I’m keeping it all. Sorry, folks.