Relative Something

A few days into our stay at the lake we are beginning to get the hang of not stepping out first thing every morning to tend to our animals. Thanks to our friends, Pam and John, we lounge around like a couple of retirees at the lake while they are taking care of life on the ranch. Yesterday, I responded to an innocent query about tricks for cleaning up under the overhang at mealtimes. It’s almost embarrassing, the amount of detail I can provide to describe my technique as an Equine Fecal Relocation Engineer.

Alas, I get to focus my attention on all the excitement happening in Europe. Between the Tour de France cycling and the Euro 2024 football/soccer tourney, I can almost fill an entire day entranced by spectator sports. Luckily, I stepped out for a breath of fresh air after England’s overtime victory and got invited to join in another pickleball game. That gave me an excuse to miss the Spain v. Georgia match and got me off the couch before the day disappeared into night.

I only had enough shoe left to complete two games before needing to retire. The surface of our old tennis court is pretty rough and my shoes might be as old as the court. These Adidas have served me well for decades, so they don’t owe me any money. After many, many games of futsal on the basketball floor at the health club, I retired these shoes to the lake place for any pickup soccer games or activity on the tennis court.

Yesterday, they suffered a fatal flaw that even my duct tape patch technique that covered the toe won’t fix.

Game over.

Time to switch to the next oldest pair stashed up here for just this situation. You can never have enough old shoes stowed away as backups at the lake. It’s where I keep shoes that are past their “best if used by” date but not yet tattered enough to trash.

The left shoe shown in the photo above has now officially earned its credentials for being tossed in the trash. The right shoe may still qualify to be kept in storage for emergencies in case the next failure happens on the other foot.

It feels like we are on vacation when this is the only level of concern demanding my attention in a day.

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