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Waking up in the dark at 1am on a Saturday morning, you can’t tell if it’s cloudy outside. But I can tell you that it definitely was cloudless inside. The footsites released the Yeezy 350 White Clouds at 7am EST therefore 1am HST, and I was shut out. Totally. Every site I went to, I got the message to hang tight and I would be let in when it was my turn. Obviously, my turn was never going to come around as the time passed with me still hanging tight.

Humbled by the footsite shutout, I dejectedly waited for more rejection from Yeezysupply. I hadn’t been able to buy from YS like ever (okay, there was that one checkout during Yeezy Day). But if I didn’t try then the shutout would be complete. So at 4am, I refreshed, saw the Cloud Yeezys, and started the checkout process.

Then there was that checkbox. What was that? It was definitely new, and it was my key to success. Because of this wrinkle of one additional check, bots were confused and couldn’t handle this anomaly. This opened the way for a very smooth checkout. It was glorious even.

After that the sky was full of clouds.

My Yeezy Reflective streak continues as I failed to get a reflective Citrin 350. And this was probably my best shot.

The regular, non-reflective Citrins dropped on Monday morning with mixed fanfare. Some like them, most don’t. But in usual Yeezy fashion, small and huge sizes sold out first. First there was the footsites of Footlocker, Eastbay, Champs, and Footaction (along with Finishline) at 1am HST. I couldn’t get past queue for most of the sites until much later. I did get into Champs right away and managed a checkout there, but like Footaction orders, I wasn’t sure if Champs would ship to Hawaii. Luckily they do.

Then hours later came Yeezy Supply and the Adidas app raffle. YS rolled out the same checkout process as the Clouds with that extra check at the beginning of checkout. Most bots factored this change in, but manual checkout was still smooth. Then the RF aka reflective changeup happened. About one hour after the non-reflective drop, YS puts up their infamous password page indicating that something is about to happen. Then surprisingly, Adidas starts up its waiting room for the Citrin RF.

I jumped in all queues, but YS was smart. Because queues were already triggered by the NRF Citrin drop, the RF checkouts would automatically face these queues. So you see where this is headed right? With all these stops in place, it was inevitable to see this.

I never really thought much about the colorway names of recent Yeezy Boost releases, but really their names are interesting. Take the upcoming Tephra 700 model releasing this week. What’s a tephra?

When a volcano erupts it will sometimes eject material such as rock fragments into the atmosphere. This material is known as tephra. Source.

And the Tephra coud be representative of volcanic tephra with it rocky color palette.

Previously, the last 700 release was the Vanta. Did you know that the color, Vanta black, supposedly is the darkest black ever? A special Vanta black compound absorbs 99% of the light shining on it making painted objects nearly impossible to determine its shape.

Yes, these Vanta 700 are comparatively dark compared to other Yeezy 700 colorways. Who knew you could be scientifically educated by Yeezy kicks?

There it goes, the last of my Yeezy 350 True Forms. Launched in Europe, I’m glad that many European retailers ship to the US, but it’s my American fault for not learning the European shoe sizes. Otherwise a True Form would have been a personal keeper  if I knew that size EUR 44 2/3 equaled a US 10.5. Instead I ended up with a size EUR44 which is a US 10 and since the 350 run small, it’s more like an uncomfortable 9.5 for me.

What a crazy morning going for the last Yeezy 350 regional drop, the Clays. I gotta hand it to Adidas for making this an equitable, attainable drop for the masses. Yeah, the release was more than four hours ago, and Adidas finally sold out, so there was lots of time (and opportunity) to snag a pair. Sure, the small and big sizes went first, but if you were fortunate to make it through the Waiting Room early enough, you could have gotten pretty much any size as sizes kept coming back in stock.

Scary moment before the drop as it looked like I was banned from the Adidas site. Closing all browsers and restarting my Mac luckily remedied this issue. Then the waiting began.

Ding ding! That Adidas bell notification has to be one of the simplest and most useful feature ever.

I got in about 45 minutes after launch and had a size 6 in my cart. Sadly, due to payment lag and slowdowns, I could not check out during my session time and was put back into the waiting room.  About one hour later, I finally escaped the waiting room, but by then, only common sizes remained. So I grabbed a personal pair just in case.

Hours later, I still couldn’t get back to purchasing as sizes gradually went out of stock.

And now the Clay drop is officially over at Adidas.com.

Seemingly the darker colored Yeezys just don’t resonate with the (younger) sneaker community. As a “seasoned” shoe head, I personally didn’t mind the 700 v1 Mauves, and I kinda like the 700 v2 Geodes. But even at release, they just didn’t move like other Yeezy drops. Even now, hours later, common sizes are readily available at Adidas, Yeezy Supply, and other retailers.

Now I don’t think these will be my next #rossfinds, but I do hope I can find a discounted pair for myself soon.

Using the last few Yeezy restocks as a baseline, I figured the Zebra stripped Yeezy Boost 350 would be easy to get. Not so.

I had no luck on the Adidas site even using multiple Chrome users. I didn’t even get past the waiting room for a chance to buy a pair. Now that Adidas has sold out, it seems like retailers like Foot Locker and Champs have fully opened up their inventory. But that shipping cost makes getting a pair a little less desireable. While I love the look, the fit isn’t great for me and neither is that $200+ price point.