SENIOR FEET: REINVENTING SHOE SALES

My senior feet are on a mission: long walks over rugged trails.

Call it hiking if you must, but ‘long walk’ works too.

Hiking has intent. My intention is breaking a good sweat out in parts of nature that need particular shoes.

Maybe ‘hiking boots?’

After taking the Eleven Falls Trail at Silver Falls State Park, my senior feet needed attention.

My senior brain said, ‘new shoes.’

I’d heard it before. Too often.

I’ve been in an on-again/off-again relationship with a sturdy pair of Keens clod hoppers.

They were the right shoe, the wrong shoe, then the right shoe again.

I fall in love with a pair of shoes until they turn on me. Then I give them another chance.

This time I came home with the shoes caked in mud, black toenails, and a seething hatred at the shoe industry for not producing the perfect shoe for any occasion.

I’m alone here? Not hardly. Gone are the baby boomer days of one pair of shoes: black low-cut Converse.

Were there other shoe choices as kids? Nope. Then we grew up. Some of us got fat and the weight pressing down flattened our feet out.

Sound familiar?

But that was after the running craze, the jogging craze, that swept through through the Seventies, and everyone who was anyone ran at least one marathon. (3:32 at Seaside here.)

Thanks, Pre.

A New Shoe For Senior Feet

My shoe history includes Army boots, mill worker boots, basketball shoes, wrestling shoes, football cleats, cowboy boots, slip-ons, lace-ups, and Romeos.

Mistakes have been made every step.

I fall in love with the wrong shoe every time. “This is the best shoe my foot has ever been in,” turns to, “what was I thinking.”

It takes about two weeks, then I wear the shoes for the next three years.

After Silver Falls I hunted down new shoes, careful to avoid the one shoe store my wife likes.

I went to an outdoor adventure store, a manly hunting store, and found loads of shoes with my name on them.

Ordinarily, this is when I make my buy: Alone, uniformed, in pain.

Like any addiction, I needed relief. And now.

But, somehow I didn’t break and bow down to adventure shoes or hunting shoes. It was a close call.

I looked at them, held them, answered the sales people’s question, “Let me know if you need help?”

Did I need help? More than they knew. But what kind of help? I needed wife help. She gives me a gold star sticker whenever I do big boy stuff, but I was on my own.

What to do? I swung by my house and picked up the Keens still muddy a week off the trail and headed to the store my wife can’t resist.

When I’ve been there with her, it’s also a store that’s done right by me, and that’s saying something.

Where Is When The Shoe Fits

When The Shoe Fits on Progress Ridge was my destination for foot nirvana.

My dogs were looking for a new dog house.

The salesman was a man I’d met before and bought a pair of HOKAs from.

He had a job to do and I was an easy mark.

I told him my footie sob story and he listened, as expected.

A clever sales pro would have seen a customer ready to buy whatever they suggested.

But that’s not what happened.

He gave my dirty Keens a twist and a flex and said they weren’t broken down.

Then the big news: My black toenails came from operator error, which means I hadn’t tied my shoes right before the big walk.

So there I was getting a shoe-tying lesson at sixty-eight years old.

Just. In. Time.

2

I left the store wearing a new pair of inserts with a metatarsal bar inside my mud shoes.

Not new shoes, not another pair of disappointments, discards, not three more years of the same.

From whentheshoefits.com:

Considering the pounding our feet take every day, year after year, it is not surprising so many of us struggle with foot and ankle problems at various times in our lives, especially as we grow older.  

When the Shoe Fits grew out of an understanding of this trending reality. Our business philosophy is firmly rooted in the sincere desire to provide personalized attention to and evaluation of your unique footwear needs, and answers to any additional questions you may have.

On boomerpdx I’ve written about tradesmen reinventing contractor services.

In the same vein I’ve written about companies who understand our struggle to find the right solutions for our problems.

The Shoe Fits staff found a customer carrying dirty shoes to show the wear pattern and they outfitted him with a better solutions than he expected.

If you go in for a pair of shoes, no matter your condition, you will leave with a deeper understanding of your feet, foot problems, and how to make progress.

Let the healing begin with When The Shoe Fits.

My senior feet say, “It’s time to take a walk.”

Will it be a pounding walk? What other kind is there, dancer.

How about a five mile spin around Cook Park with the dogs?

Call it Healing And Howling.