1 May 2010 Bye Bye, Boots

I couldn’t walk in them this morning. I laced them up, threw on my raincoat and headed outside to pick up breakfast food for the train ride home, and after just a couple of steps, I knew it was time for us to part ways.

I bought these boots in Charlottesville, Virginia, circa 2001 (I think) and they saw me through many hikes in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Lancaster County PA, Altoona, PA, the San Francisco Bay Area, and a trip in Western Ireland. But the Scottish Highlands were just too much for them. We did four medium-long hikes on this trip and after the first two, my feet felt like they’d been broken apart, badly resoldered, and then shoe-horned into a pair of cinder blocks.

The second two hikes I completed in my day-to-day walking shoes. But for the train ride home it made more sense to pack the smaller, lighter shoes and wear the clunkers.

Except that I couldn’t walk in them this morning at all.

So I hobbled back into the cottage, unpacked and donned my other shoes, and then took the boots of pain to the clothing recycling station that was conveniently located in the library parking lot near the main road.

Bye Bye, Boots. I hope you find some new feet. And I hope that the American sizing doesn’t befuddle some poor Scot who will also end up ditching you because you compressed her feet into cinder blocks.*

*The UK shoe sizing scheme is different from the US scheme. A UK size 7 corresponds to a US size 8.