I scored these GBX hikers for $12.99 USD at Savers, a chain similar to the Goodwill Industries stores, only with better prices and less uppity people taking donations. I was needing a pair of workboots since my old ones have just gotten too small. Because they're intended to be used as work boots, things I can drop lumber on without severing a toe, walk around on wet concrete (on the off chance it ever rains again in Central Texas) without slipping, like that. I didn't care if they were used, just in good condition, not smelly or weird. These fit the bill, or so I thought.

Turns out they weigh like twenty pounds and after an hour or so it feels like I'm dragging concrete blocks around on my feet. I know you're wondering why I didn't snap to that fact in the store, and I have no answer for that. All I can figure I must have been thinking at the time was, I was looking for "sturdy", and that's how I translated "each shoe weighs about the same as a brick, bricks are sturdy, they hold up houses, heck, buildings in the Boston and Philadelphia and other place have been standing for four hundred years now, so these must therefore be good shoes!" At least they're not uncomfortable. If I don't have to walk much. If I don't have to walk much I really don't need shoes. As much as I love stylish shoes, shoes are not purely decorative, and I do demand that they be functional.

So it's back to Savers for these guys, since I no longer seem able to muster up any garage sale spirit. Maybe in the dead of "Winter", if it drops below a hunnert I will find the spirit to sit on my front lawn amid a pile of my old junk and brush up on my Spanish. And maybe some guy with really big calf muscles will pick these shoes up and I won't feel guilty pawning them off on someone.