9 January 2007
Ice Grip Thingees for my Shoes
Posted by nate under: Uncategorized .
Ah shoot. I was going to write an entire blog on a purchase I made at Fleet Farm today and now I can’t remember what the things I bought are called. I’ll keep writing in hopes that it comes back to me.
My daughter Lydia and I had a pretty manly trip to my new favorite box store, Fleet Farm. Are shopping list included an axe handle (the one I was using split – due to either my brute strength or its antiquity – you decide), air filters for the furnace, new snow pants for my wee shredder (the fact that they were pink only slightly deters from the manly factor – Lydia wouldn’t even try on the intimidating black ones i picked out for her), and lastly, in the words I used with the kind lady in the sporting goods section, ’something to put on my shoes for when i’m on ice so that i don’t slip’ sometimes the words escape me. She kind of laughed in her sporty orange vest and said, ‘oh you mean…’ and then used the words that for the life of me I can’t remember now.
Yes!!! I remember! Ice Cleats. See, I knew if I just kept at it it would come back to me. Not unlike playing a song.
So, I got these amazing things called ice cleats. If I had remembered to buy batteries I would actually have posted a picture of them. But hey, once the ice cleats are in the cart, you’ve only got one thing on your mind and starts with check and ends with out.
Ice cleats are a wierd little rubber web that you stretch over the soul of your shoe. They’ve got 6 (you’ll never believe what they’re called) CLEATS (were I not in the know I’d refer to them as pokey things or spikes) that allow you to walk on (frozen) water without slipping. It’s so simple and so freakin’ cool.
So, as soon as Jodi got home, I put on my running shoes and all kinds of long underwear, and went for a run on Ottertail lake. It was surreal. I just ran around the lake. This big massive threat to my tail bone had become my playground.
The ‘man vs. nature’ thing is really prevalent around here. You really got to wonder how many of the outdoorsman around here give a rat’s behind about the outdoors. I regularly see – and when my conscience succeeds pick up – all kinds of trash when I’m out running or biking and it makes me sick. Even now on the frozen lake I wander across beer cans and empty cases of Premium.
I ran out and back with my ultra cool Ice Cleats and on the return I could see my footprints and I had too epiphanies (liturgical calendar appropriate)
1) Okay, I admit it, I only had one epiphany and it’s lame, so skip down to number two to read epiphany number one, which this isn’t and it is.
2) The sentimental sap that wrote the ‘Footprints’ poem probably didn’t live in the midwest or he/she would’ve had it take place on a frozen lake with the marks left by ice cleats replacing the footprints on the sand. Which would’ve been way cooler and not nearly as ‘I like to ride horses, give to the children, and take moonlit walks on the beach with my personal lord and savior’-esque.
So please, get yourself some ice grippy thingees for your souls before they slip into sin and ass jarring pain.
Keep it on the straight narrow, Nate.