Columbia Men's Ibex Rain Pant

Excellent product !
I work as a fine-dining waiter and I commute via bicycle 10.3 miles to work. I got to test these rain pants on the way home today. Some huge raindrops let me know it was about to open up, so I stopped and slipped the pants on over my size 12 shoes. Then I put each foot into a plastic shopping bag and tied those snugly around my ankles - done deal! I'm weatherproof from the waist down! Then the rain deluged on me for a few miles. Since I have to change shirts in any case after that kind of ride I just let it rain on my upper body (July in South Florida... I need the wetness up top to stay cool anyway). When I got home I removed the pants, THEN the bags that covered my shoes, and viola(!!!), I was completely dry... total success. The next time I use these pants I'll put the bags over my feet first and then put the pants on secondly. I bought the size that "fits" me perfectly (per their chart here), and I gambled that they would allow space for my regular pants - again, that worked perfectly. I was very comfortable and didn't look baggy or dorky. The cuffs of the pants have a snap to cinch them tighter around the ankles and they give two places to snap it for a tight or tighter grip around the ankles - I didn't bother using that though. The "pockets" are not pockets at all but rather 8-inch slashes with about an inch of overlap. I did use these to reach through and access my pant's pockets and it was an easy manuever to do. The slash "pockets" also have a snap on them in the middle of the slash to minimize weather penetration. Since I was riding a bike (IE sitting down), the direction of the overlap worked FOR me. In other words, I can't attest to how well the pockets would weatherproof while walking - but hey... I ain't walking! I picked the black color and it looks somewhat classy if that's possible (NOT dorky looking). Eventually I will wipe-out on my bike and shred a knee or something on these pants. When that happens I'm going to turn them inside-out, tape them up with duct tape and hit the road again. Since I don't like buying things twice I fully anticipate keeping these things in good shape and NEVER needing to buy another one. I checked MULTIPLE websites and MULTIPLE types of rainpants and settled on these "Columbia Men's Ibex Rain Pant" based on my perception of effectiveness and secondarily on their looks. I believe I made a terrifically good guess on that and am happy with my decision. I found this exact item on several websites but chose Altrec.com due to better price for the exact same item. Altrec.com had shipping info something to the effect that items are shipped within a week or so - not so cool but the price was best here. About a week later they notified me by email that it had indeed been shipped... from WAY in the Pacific northwest... coming to the DEEP southeast here in South Florida. They got here via Express (US) Mail VERY quickly; about 3 days after the email. So it took about 8 days from the order date to get here - so Altrec.com's word was good - no complaints on that. I wish I had a review like this to go on when I was shopping around, hence the long story regarding rain pants.