I moved north, from the South in the fall of the year, with a pair of high fashion patent leather Go Go Boots – black; a financially poor, very excited newlywed girl with this single pair of fashionable boots. When the snows came - the boots went on the feet and off to town or hiking or whatever else I needed to wear boots for. Did I mention that they were very cold? Once the snow hit the patent leather it was the same as snow on socks or even colder. The cold goes right through to the skin. It made me whine and whimper within minutes whenever I went out in the snow.
One day my sister-in-law gave me her downhill ski gear. The entire package - skis, poles, and boots complete. Her foot/shoe size was 8 mine was 6 1/2. You have no idea how happy - over the top - excited I was when I got those boots. Now my feet will be warm. I can wear 3 pairs of socks because of the room in them. (Did I mention we did not have snow in Oklahoma? Well maybe we had it once in a while but it melted the next day and it was generally 32 degrees at the coldest. )
We planned a winter hiking outing.... my husband and I and another couple. I wore the downhill ski boots. D O W N H I L L S K I B O O T S. We hiked across a frozen lake to a place in the trees for a little picnic. We roasted some hot dogs, that we had packed in, over a fire. A storm started coming in so we needed to high tail it out of there. Half way across the lake I started to whine. I was exhausted. My husband - a Northern woodsman - turned to me and said, "We have to get out of here because of the storm coming in so let’s get going - NOW!” I made it back to the truck. I was sore all over for days.
We lived on a few acres on the side of a hill out in the country. I could put on the boots, snap on the skis, and take off out the back of the yard and swish across country to the top of the hill where the road met up - just so I could downhill ski to our drive way. I would do this exercise over and over and over and even though it was exhausting the reward was in the few minutes of downhill activity and the rush that I got out of it. The slope or grade of the hill was a total of a few feet - maybe 5 – from top to bottom. The distance of the hill from the top to the bottom, where the driveway met up, was a very long 100 yards. (I had never gotten a chance to ski growing up in Oklahoma.) So you get the point. Not much of a ski hill.
Now you would think that I would figure out that these boots were not the right kind of boot to wear except on the DOWN HILL SKI SLOPE which happened to be 30 miles away from where we lived - but I didn't get it. I never caught on. Did I mention that I was from O K L A H O M A?
The end of January, or so, my husband invited me to go along with him about town. It was a snowy, cold, wintery day so - yup - you guessed it.... I wore the boots. One of the stops was at the airport. I very loudly clomped into the airport office with my hubby so happy and proud of my warm feet. I crossed my legs and swung my foot admiring my boot as it rose and fell over and over. There I was the happy, goofy looking, little Okie with DOWNHILL SKI BOOTS on her feet when the airport guy, that my husband was visiting with, looks at me and asks me with a wrinkled puzzled brow like he was trying to figure out a very hard puzzle, " Do you ski?". "No", I replied with a “duh” in my voice. (You know – no, duh! I really couldn't - I knew that my recent cross country activity did not categorize me as a "skier".)
My husband gave me real traditional hiking boots that year for Valentine’s Day. I guess he got tired of waiting for me to catch on.
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