Nude Feet! It's A Start

I did something I thought I'd never do.

I made the decision as an act of carefree abandon.

We were getting ready to go to the beach and I decided to go to the beach with neither shoes nor socks. Yep, bare feet. I haven't gone anywhere in bare feet since I became disabled. My feet don't look like they once used to since I got out of the hospital and into the wheelchair. So, I bought a whack of black socks and wear them constantly in my wheelchair.

But today it was hot.

And sunny.

And I hate wearing anything on my feet. At home the first thing after coming in the apartment I strip them off and it always feels great. I'd been watching television reports on the weather from reporters down on the boardwalk and behind them people were practically naked. Well, I wasn't going to go that far, but I figure, what the hell, they're just feet.

We covered my tootsies in sunblock because they'd become 'vampire feet' never seeing the sun and we were worried that they'd burst into flames or they'd burn horribly. But we passed a cross over them and we felt relatively safe that way. So we went to the beach, me flashing skin.

It was lovely.

Just lovely.

Everyone was in a great mood and no one even noticed my tootsies on display. It was actually quite freeing to feel wind and sun on my feet.

Later that day, and I swear I'm not making this up, we were coming out of the Manulife Center on our way over to Yonge Street to walk home. Suddenly there was a massive cheer and we saw a huge crowd of bicyclists riding down Yonge street and all of them were absolutely stark naked. All of them. They were cheering 'Ride Nude!!!' I stopped at the corner and watched, grinning.

Not because they were nude.

But because they were having so much fun.

They were old.

They were young.

They were thin.

They were fat.

They were joyous.

They were celebratory.

I sat there with my nude feet feeling quite like a radical myself. One of the bikers shouted as he rolled past, 'Every body is beautiful!!!' And the crowd roared. Almost like for a minute everyone believed it. I cheered too. Joe and I turned south and saw the bikers continue on their way down the street. Everyone coming North was smiling, looking at the pictures on their phones and chatting about what they'd just seen.

It amazed me that seeing all those bodies flying by on two wheels, as I sat on four, that though it was startling to see a couple of hundred naked people on bikes go by, it wasn't shocking and oddly, in this context their nudity wasn't particularly explicit because though they were nude they weren't nudes - if that makes any sense at all.

So me and my nude feet had quite the day today.

Who knows what they may get up to tomorrow.

PS, this link will take you to a short video about Naked Bike Ride Day, which was today, here in Toronto. I've put the link here separately so I can put a warning that the video has naked people in it.