I did it.

Today I bought the Dromarti Sportivos, along with some shimano pedals that will accept the style of cleat that you fasten to this shoe. The pedals, shimano pd-m520's were used off of ebay, and came to $25 including shipping. I was going to spring for the m540's, but the spindles are more black than the 520's I bought. And technically, I didn't buy the sportivos as much as get in line for them. I got a receipt back from the company saying my order is number 66. I don't know if that worries me because they've only got 66 orders for all of their shoes (they've got 3 models and a bunch of sizes), or if that means that they've already sold 65 Sportivos in size 43 EUR, which would be pretty healthy. The weird pricing kink in all of this is that they won't charge me until the shoes ship, and they'll charge me in british pounds. The pound has been falling generally, but has regained some ground in recent weeks, so the final total will be dependent on how the pound moves in the next few weeks. If the transaction went through today, the shoes with shipping would have cost a hair over $230. They say the wait for the shoes to get in stock will be something like 2-4 weeks, I'm crossing my fingers that I'll get them in that time frame.

Then, watch out Philadelphia cyclists. You're about to look at your own shoes and frown.