Hiking Clothes

When I first visited Salzburg in 1990, I was so impressed to see elder women (though probably younger than I am now!) riding bicycles here, there and ever, dressed in skirts or drindls. Just out to the market for the groceries they put in the front basket and off to visit a friend. No one was counting miles or dressed in bike gear or even wearing a helmet. No one was part of a club of bike enthusiasts subscribed to the Biker’s Magazine, no one was comparing bikes and prices or debating about cleated shoes/ pedals. No one joined a bike coalition to pressure city hall for more bike-friendly roads. The bike paths were already in place and people used them as a matter of simple daily life. Biking was not a “thing”—it was simply a way to get from here to there and back again.

 

But in my country, everything has to be a “thing.” Special gear, special schedules, special vocabulary, clubs, magazines, the whole deal. Be it birdwatching or folk dancing or pickleball, biking or roller-blading or kayaking, downloading aps and upgrading phones, everything has a little industry built around it. Gone is the simple pleasure of just doing it, the simple conversations about the pleasure of doing it, the simple act of doing it all without elaborate and expensive gear. 

 

So although I enjoy biking, I’m not a “biker.” I never purchased a single item of biker’s clothing, from the corporate logo’ed shirts and shorts to the gloves and certainly not the cleats. Yes, I wear a helmet, but occasionally (sshh! don’t tell) ride without one (especially in Salzburg) and have lived to tell the tale. 

 

So on this walk (and on the bike trip soon to come), I’m wearing my normal clothes— my city shoes, jeans, shirt and blue raincoat and it has been just fine. I probably could have brought my seldom-used pair of rain-pants—they’re light and would have been useful these last three days of walking in the rain. Today, my jeans got quite wet and added weight and coldness to yet another walk through the lovely countryside. We stopped for lunch at Elaine’s Tea House in Feizer and sitting there in my cold, wet jeans, got the funny idea of taking them off in the bathroom and holding them under the hot-air hand dryer. Which I did! As my wife predicted, it didn’t make much of an impact, so just walked the final two miles to the town of Austwick with them cold and wet and that was just fine. Settle in our room, stuff newspaper in our shoes to dry them, hang the jeans on the bathroom heated towel rack and all is well.

 

So ends officially our four days of walking and a bit sad to see it end. I think I could keep up like this for a few weeks or a month. My legs are certainly getting stronger (we walked 9.5 miles yesterday), my connection with sheep and cows deepened, my acceptance of different weathers enlarged and my spirit fed by life in the open air. As the title of a movie I saw once on a plane says: 

 

Happy. Thank you. More please.