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Mephisto’s Oriental Mystery — solved!

I bought a pair of Mephisto shoes today, and to go with their wayfaring imagery, the insoles are decked out with map-like symbols. Prominent is a map coordinate: N 38° 51.343′ E 94° 47.963′.

If you look at a map there, it’s a fairly empty mountainous place near the border of Qinghai and Gansu. It’s definitely not where the shoes are made, unless Mephisto have a stealth factory there.

There was something familiar about the coordinate, through. I thought I’d try flipping it to the western hemisphere:

It’s the Garmin headquarters in Olathe, KS! Every Garmin GPS I’ve ever owned has had the HQ as a default waypoint. I’m guessing a designer at Mephisto was looking to add something legitimately mappy to the graphics, and picked up their satnav to pull out a coordinate. Guessing that Olathe isn’t a very mysterious, rugged destination, they flipped the hemisphere to give it more eastern promise.

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