A few weeks ago a I was loaned a high end mountain bike from a friend who'd be out of town for several months.Yeehaw! I hadn't ridden a mountain bike on proper single track for over twenty years.
(jeez! I just reread that sentence) Anyway the bike uses SPD clipless pedals.

 If i was going to enjoy a ride on the bike at all I'd need a pair of SPD cleated bike shoes. You guessed it. Not a single cycle shoe is manufactured here. Wamp, wamp, waaam. So i set out to find a pair at a thrift store. Which is a chicken-shit loophole to my resolution, yes. However buying second hand merchandise IS supporting local business AND keeping money here AND does not require a diesel powered shipping vessel to cart it across the Pacific.
   I checked all the Goodwill and Salvation Army stores. As well as Thrift Town and Community Thrift in the Mission. I rechecked them days later. My first ride was on a rapidly approaching Saturday and I had no shoes. "This is gonna suck." I thought.
  I went to a local bike shop to see if ,by the grace of god(or more simply, an spd shoe manufacturer), I had missed something in my web search. Oh the shoes were beautiful. Specialized. Shimano... Fold the tongue back and, MADE IN CHINA. Sheesh.
  Damn resolution. I'm trying to enjoy my life, right? 
But there are greater things at stake here. I could very easily have purchased a nice pair of those imported shoes and began stoke process for the upcoming ride. I was VERY tempted. But alas if this is the kind of suffering I have to do than it's not really suffering is it? And it's not really suffering anyway.
  There I was on a Friday afternoon, the eve of my great return to mountain bike, with out a very important piece of equipment. "This is gonna suck." So I did what any self respecting tradesman with no spd shoes would do. I made a pair.

  After stealthily measuring the geometry of cleat placement on a pair of Specialized bike shoes with a tape measure at a local bike retailer, I took an older pair of my Adidas and drilled out the bottom.(In retrospect this was a mistake because I won't be getting any NEW Adidas and I love them). I cut out some flat plastic in the shape of my insoles doubled them up and glued them into the bed of the shoe.  Set T-bolts from the inside out in the appropriate position. And layed the whole thing up with shoe goo. Voila!
   The Saturday morning ride was a blast! Ten miles plus of single track in the Santa Cruz mountains.