“I’m hard on shoes.
It’s not uncommon for me to go through half a dozen pairs of shoes, or more, each year. I maintain an active lifestyle, hiking, playing, camping, and working. Water wears out a shoe quicker than anything else. A few trips in and out of the creeks, puddles, and swamps, and they just come unglued.
If I do not happen to dissolve my shoes in water, then I wear out the soles on gravel. It has always amazed me that tire companies can manufacture a tire and warranty the tread for some 50,000 miles, yet I can wear out the sole on any ordinary shoe in less than a year. How come we cannot buy a shoe with a 50,000 mile warranty?
Really, I have never been quite satisfied with conventional shoes, and it’s not just because I wear them out so easily. Mostly it is because I do a lot of camping, and ordinary shoes have a lot of drawbacks for this type of lifestyle. For one thing, I tend to rot my feet out each summer. Shoes are like incubators, holding in the dirt and sweat at warm temperatures, and culturing all kinds of fungus and bacteria.
Walking through a little bit of water once or twice a day just compounds the problem, making it nearly impossible to dry out the shoes. My feet even rot when I take care of them, washing and drying my crusty socks each day…”
