As promised in my previous post about Aquagear, “the neighborhood swim store,” I bought some items using my own money.

Previously, Aquagear was good enough to supply me with a swim towel in exchange for a review, which I did on the blog. I also reviewed their shipping, which wasn’t totally fair since I’m stationed overseas and at the whim of Uncle Sam shipping. Plus, the towel got held up in Snowpocalypse 2016 in the DC area, so I really couldn’t gauge their shipping.

But this time I can. See, the State Department records when a product comes into the mail facility, as long as that package has a tracking number, which my latest purchase did. So I was able to see how long it took my items to travel from Aquagear’s HQ in Florida to the mail facility in northern Virginia. The package left late afternoon on the 25th of March (3 hours after I placed the order!) and arrived in Virginia at 2am on the 29th. Not too shabby, especially since I paid nothing for shipping! After that, it’s all up to Uncle Sam to get the items to me in Kyrgyzstan, so I can’t judge Aquagear.

So, what did I buy? Goggles of course! Like I said in my previous review, I didn’t want to review goggles since those are so personal. Different face shapes, distances between eyes, nose sizes, all make for goggle-fitting being a very personal thing.

But what I will comment on is the wonderful people at Aquagear who actually still have my preferred goggles in stock! They are, of course, sold out everywhere, and the manufacturer improved them a few years ago and of course they’ve sucked ever since. I got bit on the butt some time ago when I thought I was ordering the goggles I’ve come to love, only to get delivered “Goggles v2.” Which no longer fit my face and whose sole purpose seems to be to torture me with a slow trickle of water that seeps into each eye cup just slow enough to make me think that yes, maybe, this one time, these POS goggles won’t leak.

So, boys and girls, dear reader(s), listen to Iron Mike now when he says: If you find a swim product you love, run, don’t walk, to the nearest swim retailer or, better yet, go to Aquagear online, and order a crap-ton* of the product! Otherwise, just when you feel invincible and ready to conquer any swimming obstacle, the manufacturer of your most-love-swim-product-ever will cease production and improve it for you.

That’s why I have four unworn pairs of Speedo Endurance square-leg trunks. One of these days…

*crap-ton is a unit of measure variable based on what is being measured. In swimming, for instance, a crap-ton of goggles, which you have to replace every few months, might equal a dozen, whereas a crap-ton of pull-buoys might mean two in reserve.