Four legs good

Yesterday I was out with the Rongotea Coffee Drinkers Who Walk and I took my birthday-present Black Diamond Trail Pro sticks along. We went by the Manawatu River bank and up to Summerhill so I practised on the flat and up and down some short steep paths. 

It was the first time in my life I used walking sticks and, why am I so surprised, they work!

Initially I held the sticks out in front of me but I rapidly learned to take shorter steps and stab the sticks rather close so that I walked past them. In that way, my arms pushed my feet along. 

More sophisticated hikers have explained how walking poles subtract up to a third of the forces from our knees. This is good, my sore knees report.

To think I'd been umming and ahhing, half thinking they're a fad. 

Now I'm dreaming up lots of other uses for them....washing line, blackberry hook, scarey monster fending tool, splint for unimaginable injuries, tap-dancing cane... 

Alice and Rosie don't find four legs at all remarkable, of course.