We sought advice before we left for London in 26 August 2010. What to take, what to anticipate, how to pack. Perhaps the best piece of advice that came from our seeking was Jim Wardwell's advice to take two pair of comfortable shoes. Why two? Because experience told him that one pair was bound to get wet in the well-know English rain and I would need a second pair as a dry backup.
He gave good advice. I took two pair of comfortable footwear to see me through an inclement English autumn. One pair was my New Balance cross-trainers, useful for running, walking, and just kicking around. I own several pair of what we call "school shoes" or dress shoes for wearing to the office or to church on Sunday. But none of these actually fit the "comfortable" category when the walking, as I imagined it, would involve lots of city streets and sidewalks, the occasional journey to outlying towns and villages, and perhaps a hike or two somewhere in the country.
More recently -- over the recent Thanksgiving holiday my youngest son asked me if I had finished with my travel blog. He may have used the word abandoned.
No, I responded, perhaps too quickly, I have plenty of material I want to write about. I want to get back to the Busan Journal.
For complex reasons, however, I have let the blog suffer what I hope is not a career ending hiatus. As with the comfortable shoe story left unfinished above, I fully expect to return to the blog project, this travel account, my impressions of a year away from home. In making the adjustment back to my sedentary life of teaching in the little New York village I have lived in for 27 years, I have discovered that my paying job keeps getting in the way. Adjustment, like the blog, is incomplete, in process.
Well, now the semester is over, the papers are read, the grades have been agonized over and entered into the computer. During this Christmas break, I plan to resume my blog, to finish my China story and to write a few pieces dealing with my impressions of Korea. I may also, before too much more time has elapsed, write a few pieces about this year of travels generally and, I think now, even compare London with Busan.
As with the blog, I must return to the story I began with. The end of the comfortable shoe story is simply this: following the good Wardwell's advice, I bought a pair of Merrill's before we left for London and I wore them every day. They are by far the most comfortable and durable shoes I have ever owned.
The heels of these shoes showed very little wear after four months of tramping about London. Bearing in mind that I generally abuse the heels of my shoes, that I wore my cross-trainers only twice, and that we either walked or took public transport for our daily touring, the durability of my shoes, including heels, was remarkable.
So remarkable, in fact, that I took the same comfortable shoes to Korea and wore them for nearly five months, again without benefit of a car. In Busan we did get caught out in the rain on several occasions, and I came home with sopping feet. But the shoes dried quickly. If I loosened the laces and pulled the tongue forward, they always dried over night. I actually needed my back-up footwear on very few occasions.
I am still wearing the globe-trotting Merrill's, although they have developed a few worn spots in the usual places.
For those of you who have traveled with me from my first posts back in September 2010, thank you. I have a few more bits to write and post, so I hope you will come along. My intention is to post more regularly and avoid the kind of gap that exists between this post and the last. That is, I hope to be a better person. Starting now.
As for my trusty Merrill's, I will likely wear them until either the shoes or the comfort level disintegrate. But I did buy a new pair last week, which will serve for the time being as my back-up pair. It is my hope to raise their status to first pair the next time I am in London or Busan.
