The Thrill of the Hunt

The Tanger Outlet Center in Park City used to run an ad that said "It's the thrill of the hunt...more than amazing deals...Tan-ger Out-let Cen-ter...It's the thrill of the hunt!" Rob and I have a little tradition wherein we shop on Black Friday. While we usually find some great deals, I think that Tanger has nailed it. Going out on Black Friday is for the thrill of the hunt. We did it again this year, but this time was in California, where people are apparently nuts for a deal (but thankfully not as nuts as they are in New York...). We headed to the Outlet Mall at 10:00 pm on Thursday. Holy cow, there were a lot of people. The night had an inauspicious beginning when we were ticketed for stopping for 1 minute in a fire lane - that lame-o cop! Then while we spent 15 minutes in Ralph Lauren our car battery died from the lights being left on (remember Mom, this is not the car that has lights that turn off automatically...). It was all up hill from there, and really how could it not be? There was a gigantic line at Banana Republic.

Although we waited in line for almost an hour to get in to Banana Republic, I appreciated them for it. It was nice to be able to shop without the crush of people and tourists assaulting my olfactory senses with their less than ideal hygiene. I am constantly amazed at the people who travel to our little ole Camarillo Outlets. After Banana Republic was finished at 2 am, we were tired and ready to go. Would you believe that the line to get into the Gap was even longer than the Banana line? Thankfully we met some BYU grads in line at Banana who were so kindly willing to jump our car. Even at 2 am there were hoardes (not exaggerating) of people coming in to the mall. There was even a little tiff over the parking spot that we weren't even completely out of while we were jumping the car. The whole experience was amazing to say the least.

The best part was that we went to the Gap tonight (Saturday) - yeah, they were fully stocked with all the same deals they had the other night, just without the insanity. I felt pretty good about that.