shadowspar

Hey, I neglected to mention one of the key side excursions that I made during Penguicon -- a trip to REI to pick up a pair of trail shoes that'll drain easily and dry quickly after a dunk in the water.

Up here in the Sault (and through a fair swath of Northern Ontario), we have an amazing wilderness hiking trail -- namely, the Voyageur Trail. I don't think the word 'low-impact' is used anywhere, but that's very much the spirit in which the trail's built. There are very few man-made improvements anywhere, and most importantly, no bridges. The trail builders either send you across on a fallen log (dodgy), a beaver dam (muddy), or just bring you to a ford and let you have a go. Thus, the obvious need for something like these:

Last Monday, I took them for a a very brief run along the banks of the creek near my house. It's been flooding lately, so things were fairly soft and muddy, but the teeth on these bit so convincingly that the idea of slipping didn't even occur to me. I didn't have my running socks on, so I elected not to see how quickly they'd drain or dry out.

I'm definitely going to have to see about working an early morning trail run into my routine a couple of times a week. I'm not a big fan of gratuitous capitalism or anything, but when I pair of shoes encourages me to go out for a run, who am I to argue?