My red shoes

 

Dorothy had her ruby slippers. Finally, I have my red shoes, and I am many decades older than she was.

Buying shoes has always been a challenge for me. Like the rest of my body, my feet are long and narrow, requiring 12A shoes since I was a teen-ager. Many say that the unusual thing, given my height, is that I don’t need size 15 or more. Count me lucky.

Finding the narrow width was always the problem. Stores overflow with men’s shoes marked wide and extra wide. Sure, you can buy men’s A-width shoes if you are willing and able search hard for them, not be fussy about style, and pay a premium price. Sometimes I did pay that price.

But many times, especially for athletic shoes, I made do with shoes too wide for my feet. Tying them tight created folds of leather or fabric just in front of the laces. They rarely felt really comfortable no matter how hard I tried to pretend at first that they’ll be okay, thank you.

About 20 years ago I discovered that New Balance offered narrow shoes, and I paid the price for them. As with many things, it was worth it. There’s little that’s harder on one’s state of mind than an ill-fitting pair of shoes. Hurting feet can raise hell with the head.

Shoes suitable for riding a bike became an interest of mine when I bought my Specialized Cross Trail in 2015. I pretended I was young and agile enough to buy clip on pedals and shoes. In this arrangement, the shoes firmly attach to the pedals. Your shoes cannot slip off the pedals, nor can you lift them from the pedals. The advantage is that you can benefit from lift on the way back up, pulling the pedals up with a force somewhat less than the force you get from pushing them down, but nevertheless significant.

You get out of clip-on pedals by sharply kicking your heel outward away from your bike. This releases the shoe from the pedal so you can put your feet on the ground and keep yourself upright when you stop. It’s a tricky maneuver that takes some practice. It also requires an extra second or two before you do stop.

The shoes I bought for this two-wheeled, self-powered, integrated man/machine were black with red accents.

There are many stories of cyclists meeting the pavement because they had not freed at least one foot fast enough. Fortunately, that never happened to me. I am an extremely cautious rider. I anticipate problems like most people anticipate food.

But as the pain in my arthritic knees got worse, I lost confidence that I could kick my shoes free from the pedals in an emergency. So, a couple of years ago I got plain old flat pedals and returned to riding with athletic shoes. It was kind of come-down, but I was less likely to fall down.

When I bought a new Jamis step-through bike early this summer (another concession to age’s advance), I decided I’d buy some shoes primarily for riding. Don’t ask me why. It seemed appropriate. But I did not want to spend too much on them, so Maxine and I went to a shoe warehouse sort of place rather than to a New Balance store to see what I could find.

I found all-red, almost ruby-red, Pumas. Their black laces nearly wrap around the entire upper part of the shoe. Very cool.

They weren’t the first shoes I’d found that day that might have worked for me, and their fit is not perfect. But they were relatively inexpensive, and felt good on my feet. Perfect for cycling, I told myself and Maxine.

But did I dare? Red shoes on feet the age of mine? I liked the thought of it. Just a little bit daring, outside my retirement community’s norm of clunky white walking shoes. Maxine assured me they were great. I snapped a picture, and texted it to my daughters, and they said go for it. So, with the unneeded but appreciated assurances of those who could afford to be honest with me, I bought them.

Since getting my red shoes, I’ve noticed red on the feet of other men, all of whom are decades younger than I. Wearing red Pumas fools no one about my years, except maybe myself. I imagine they make my aching knees feel a little stronger. Plus, they work well on my bike, as I’d hoped. And they are almost as much fun as that bike  whether riding it or walking the pathways of our peaceful neighborhood.

On the existence of high winds

From time to time when I’ve driven the great stretches of lonely highway in America’s Southwest, I have been confronted by an official road sign advising me that, “High Winds May Exist.”

I am sure the sign is intended to warn me that, without warning, a gust of wind might blow my car where I do not want it to go, or even overturn it altogether. Semis and recreational vehicles are particularly vulnerable to such winds, but regular automobiles are, too, if the wind is really high.

I am never sure what I am supposed to do with the sign’s statement while managing my car at a 75 m.p.h. clip. Instead of making me more alert to what’s going on around me, the notice that “High Winds May Exist” sends me into a philosophical rabbit warren.

For one thing, high winds do exist. Yes, the philosopher will demand definitions of “high” and “wind” and “exist” in order to fully trust the truth claim of the assertion. But common language usage leaves no doubt that high winds certainly do exist. Just ask anyone who’s been through a hurricane.

But the statement painted in plain letters on that isolated sign tends to sow a tiny seed of doubt: if high winds may exist, one must consider the possibility that they may not exist. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and using the right tricks of the philosopher’s trade, it is possible to argue that high winds do not exit.

After all, who has ever seen the wind, any wind, low or high? You can see evidence of what seems to be a high wind’s existence, but that doesn’t prove that high winds exist, however you define existence. You might conclude there’s no such thing as a high wind at all.

Of course, my existential concern when I see that sign is supposed to be whether a high wind exists or is about to exist right where my car is. It’s not the theoretical existence of high winds that should concern me, but the actual presence of high winds on this road at this moment. I am, I believe, being advised to be very alert. But it’s hard to think about the here and now when my mind is adrift in a metaphysical whirlwind.

Thus, something we all agree to be true is challenged by a carefully contrived statement that sows doubt without directly confronting the agreed-upon truth. It’s easy to distract people from the realities around or near them just by asking a question or suggesting an alternative to something they, for good reason, take for granted. Politicians do it all the time, and the nation slides into a metaphysical warren from which there is no escape for anyone but a rabbit.