The Tale of Two (Pair of) Shoes

A few weeks ago, Joe and I went to Quebec City to see the Ice Hotel. I thought I was very clever to make room in my bag to take my snow boots. I must admit, that I purchased these snow boots when I was living in Chicago (actually Joe bought them for me for V-Day that year), so that makes them approximately 9 years old. However, it never occurred to me that the rubber would dry out and be rendered useless. 30 minutes in to our city stroll, I looked down and realized that my shoes were cracking. I wore them all day anyway, but here's how they looked by the time I got home:



Joe was actually pretty annoyed and thought I should send them back, but I couldn't imagine them replacing a 9-year old pair of boots. I checked the Columbia website and it said they only warranty shoes for a year, but if something happened, you could ship the shoes to them and they would decide if they would replace them.

A couple of weeks later, we decided to fly to Amarillo and hike the Lighthouse Trail as part of our Grand Canyon preparation. I decided to wear my hiking boots, thinking that maybe I would wear them and they could even be my Grand Canyon boots, depending on how comfortable they were. Fortunately, Joe suggested me having my tennis shoes as a backup because here's what my shoes looked like at the end of the hike:



Sigh. These shoes were actually even older than my snow boots. I bought them in about 1999 when I went to Peru to visit Machu Picchu. So, that was it. I left those boots at the Holiday Inn Express in Borger, TX. And, when I got home, I trashed those snow boots, too. I'll be starting over in the boots department - as soon as this weekend!