Before the downhill, there was a peak

Luckily, before I launched a personal assault on my feet, Delta and I snuck off with a few friends for a weekend of camping in the Catskills. Unbelievably, it didn't rain. Infact, though I'm hesitant to say it out loud, it was perfect. Absolutely perfect.


A long, golden day hiking in the mountains, two lovely evenings sipping wine by a campfire, and bowlfuls of Delta's famous chilli. Absolutely perfect.

My feet must hate me

My feet have been through a bit of an emotional roller coaster this week, the poor chicas.

It all started last weekend, when Delta and I decided to head to Paragon to pick up a new pair of hiking boots. Nothing wrong with the ones I currently own, of course, except they just aren't cut out for the heavy backpacking thing, so I have to take it up a notch. And let's face it, the truth is we just love getting sucked into the heaven which is Paragon.

So I tried on a few pairs, but none of them felt right. They just all seemed a little bit narrow. Are hiking boots getting narrower?! So I asked the sales guy. "What's up with these boots, I swear I'm a size 6 but they don't seem to fit?!"
He glanced at my foot. "Oh! With a bunion like that, you're going to need Wide boots. I'll go get you some."
"Oh, ok, show me what you -
- Wait a minute. BUNION???"
He squirmed.
"I mean, erm, bump," he said softly.
I looked at him stonily till he bowed off to get the wide boots.
I turned to Delta in horror.
"I have a bunion??! And what the hell is a bunion anyway?!" It sounded like a disease. Like a third arm or fifteenth finger - just something that I definitely didn't want.

Delta looked down at my foot.
"Well, there is something crooked about your big toe," he said sheepishly.
That was it. The nail in my coffin. I had a bunion on my foot, whatever it was, and I had to get rid of it at all cost.

So I rushed home (with wide hiking boots), and immersed myself in a feverish bout of googling. Bunions. Bunion cures. Bunion treatments. Bunion surgery. And I found out everything there is to know about this evil infliction. And I saw pictures (damn you, google images) that quite convinced me I had to do an emergency correction to my anatomy.

The next morning, I rushed to the local pharmacy, and stocked myself with every kind of bunion-combatting accessory they had, and assaulted my poor foot in an assortment of toe separating devices. I splayed my toes in a way that would make a duck envious.

"Buy shoes with substantial arch support," every website had read. So I rushed to the shoe stores and equipped myself with three new pairs of shoes. All of them had arch support. But the first pair, on the first day, inflicted upon me a plague of blisters.

So yesterday, my feet which had been perfectly fine till that fateful day in Paragon a week ago, now limped home with separated toes and stinging blisters.

Blisters which, by the way, Delta had to burst this afternoon with a needle heated on our gas flame. Yes, I was horrified. I thought I might almost pass out from the concept, but as it turned out, I couldn't feel a thing. I guess they aren't as sensitive as, say, the eyeballs or something.

All the same, covered as they are in bandaids today, my heart goes out to their little feelings. It might be a while yet before they forgive me.