Quote:
Originally Posted by acrosome
And... actually one of the few places to find one nowadays (other than those making ludicrously expensive high-end bespoke products) is near military bases. Decent combat boots are expensive enough, and your average private poor enough, that troops actually do get them re-soled on occasion. The really high-tech ones like Rockys are difficult to re-sole, though, so even these guys are getting rare.
But no, it isn't an MOS. (Though parachute riggers can do some damned surprising things.) It's done by a civilian off-post, like a lot of laundries back in the day when we had to starch and press our uniforms; I have to assume that a lot of those are out of business, now, but they used to be everywhere back in the days of BDUs.
But anyway, I would say that if there is a place to find someone to re-sole a boot nowadays, it is near a large military base. The larger the better. Fort Hood will have one available, for sure, but even here at Fort Carson you see a guy in the lobby at the PX doing boot re-soling every now and then. |
Quote:
Originally Posted by evileeyore
Actually... most combat boots cannot be resoled. So... there really haven't been much of a call for (scroll back down real quick) cobblers near military bases in the US for a long time.
And boots have been so cheap at the px for so long, that I doubt anyone in the military would bother getting a pair repaired when they can get new ones for roughly the same price.
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Okay, to define exactly the time available to have boots re-soled, the characters arrived at Biggs Army Airfield at about 1400 hours Monday, the 6th of February 2017.
They were driven to a building at Fort Bliss where they received briefings and where the outfits they were to wear were available. It was there that minor additions and alterations were suggested, with anyone leaving to arrange it at about 1530 or so. And we left Fort Bliss at 0800 on Tuesday morning, meaning that any alterations would have had to be done during that Monday afternoon and the boots picked up either that night or while driving out of town Tuesday morning.
After the briefings, three characters, two PCs and an NPC, were allowed to go out to shop for stuff that wasn't in the issue kit and wasn't available through bureaucratic means to the DHS elements on the base, but still seemed important. The PC team leader stayed behind to arrange for various stuff that
was available at the base, as well as going over the briefing materials and communication details with the support personnel at the HQ. And one PC went out alone to shop and do mysterious things, at least partly just to see if he was being followed.
I imagine that the boots that Taylor received would have been something like these
Roper boots (minus the CCW design) or these
Mayura boots.
A penalty to Climbing would have been undesirable. A penalty to Stealth is pretty much unacceptable. If at all possible, Taylor would have wanted to avoid it. And El Paso has a long history of cobblers, shoe and boot repair, with the traditional ones called
zapateros.
There are three stores close to Fort Bliss. None of them, however, is open at 0800 in the morning and so the re-soling would only have been practical if they could have done it over those two free hours Monday evening, between 1530 and 1730. That would require that all other work be set aside to work on the boots.
Doesn't seem credible, especially as no one from Onyx Rain cared all that much about what Taylor wanted and they certainly weren't going to pay some ridiculous sum to get an emergency re-soling for him. And Taylor didn't have the money, he only got a total of $200 allowance to buy
everything not specifically issued by Onyx Rain or his team leader.
So, unless there is some brand of common cowboy-style motorcycle boots that comes without a Stealth penalty by default, the odds are that Taylor had to accept unsuitable footwear.