Three Pairs of Shoes but Only Two Can Make the Playoffs

It's time to start thinking about shoes. Like, how many pairs of shoes do you take on a trip that features one night in Atlanta, one night in New York, fourteen nights on a sailboat, two nights in a guest house on Trinidad and two nights in a nature reserve?

Susan Fornoff is thinking about it too. She is the new Travel Editor at the Morning Birdwrap and she's a she. She replaced John Flinn, a he. Flinn subscribed to the Rick Steves (also a he) school, which says take one pair of shoes that can serve every purpose, and that's it. Travel light on your feet and take extra socks.

(Of course, where does Rick Steves ever go? Paris. A cafe in Slovenia. Spain. And he's got a film crew and production staff.)

Anyway, Susan Fornoff isn't buying the theory. She feels a woman needs options. She ran a column recently asking people to report in on how many shoes they take when they travel, and what the best shoes are, and how many pairs you really need. The answers were interesting.

It was not as you might think -- women weren't any more or less shoe-profligate than men. But they did seem to think about it a lot more. Men said things like "Take the Merrell's with the rubber bottoms and a pair of sandals," while women were more like "You'll need a pair of low black flats that are comfortable to tour a museum in, and one pair of low heels in case you get invited to a restaurant where they are necessary, and perhaps tennis shoes, but in a neutral color, and then you have to deal with cobblestones."

It will surprise no one to know The Great Plotnik is leaning towards the first approach. He knows he's taking his Tevas for the boat, though the Finch says most of the time you're barefoot on the boat, and she ought to know, since it's her boat.

But you can't wear Tevas in New York City in March, nor in Saint Plotniko when your plane departs at 6AM. So he's thinking about his old red basketball shoes, but he is pretty sure the Duck will NOT go for that. The fallback will probably be his old brown Eccos, that he THINKS -- he doesn't remember exactly -- worked fine for trekking to Macchu Picchu. There's no Macchu Picchu in the Windward Caribbean Islands, though there are mountains and lots of hiking trails.

Plot will bring his snorkel and mask. How long has it been since he's even seen that snorkel and mask? He remembers he bought them not long after his snorkel journey to the Great Barrier Reef, where the sea water was twice as salty as normal sea water and his rented mask leaked and made him gag so badly he had to spend most of his time on the surface instead of diving. Oh, and the buffet.

Did Plotnik ever mention the buffet on the great catamaran out of Cairns, Australia, where every single snorkler was so seasick they were puking their guts out and then they brought out the trays of shrimp?

"Roight, no worries, mate, jus' put your 'ead over the railin' there and let it spew...that's roight. Now, then, 'ow 'bout a good plate o' shrimp and a nice pint?"

But Plottie had a mustache then, and the mustache made any mask leak. And there were all those jellyfish.

Weren't we talking about shoes?