Hanging tough with Schopenhauer and Goldilocks

I think it was Schopenhauer who once said "Life without pain has no meaning."  That being the case, the life of the aging skater is chock full of meaning.  Each trip out on the ice results in at least some body part complaining.  This brings me to the subject of your typical ice rink rental skates.  My love/hate relationship with rental skates is part of the enlightenment I've attained since rediscovering skating last November.  Our rink offers two kinds of rental figure skates.  First, we have the brown boots which are quite stiff and provide good blade feel and support but of course refuse to yield one iota to the shape of the feet insinuated into them.  After a couple of sessions in those I bought a Silipos gel tube long enough to cut in half--a bit of tube for each ankle--bliss, or so I thought.  In practice, yes the gel tubes do hold the chaffing and rubbing to a dull roar but are not a perfect solution.  In a fit of experimentation I started to augment the gel tubes with small bits of packing foam in an attempt to isolate my ankles and toes from the unyielding grip of the boots.  Maybe I just have big ankle bones.  Did you know that the "Malleoli" are either of the two rounded protuberances on each side of the ankle, the inner formed by a projection of the tibia and the outer by a projection of the fibula?  Neither did I until after removing those brown skates at the end of a two hour session and discovering that one of my gel tube sleeves had slipped above the inner malleoli on my right foot!  (That would be the end of tibia for those careful readers in the audience--there might be a test at the end of this post...)

With the next set of lessons beginning a few days later, the skin had still not healed, so I decided to try option two--the ever so stylish grey line of boots.  These boots turned out to be as soft as my favorite pair of bedroom slippers.  They offered about the same amount of foot support and blade feel as well, but hey they were soooo comfy!  And this brings us to Goldilocks.  Like her I'm hoping that the boots I have on order (oh, why won't they arrive?!) will not be too stiff or too floppy but just right.  I talked to the guy at the pro shop and he indicated that the boots were "sort of" on their way but for some reason (no doubt a severe disturbance in the Cosmos) the ice rink's address doesn't show up properly on UPS's address system.  It seems my boots went to an address somewhere else in town.  I've been assured that UPS is "working on it".  I just hope that the family at that alternate address likes figure skating.  Meanwhile, last night I dreamt about Goldilocks.  She was wearing an olive drab UPS uniform.  Everything was muted and blurry.  I couldn't hear what she was saying but her lips seemed to be mouthing the words "What can Brown do for you?"  My answer?  "Deliver me from the horrors of rental skates, I beseech thee."  But sadly, as of today, my golden muse has still not delivered the goods.  I guess for the next few sessions it's just me and old Schopy...