Duct and cover.
In keeping with Red Green's dictum (and in light of the fact that his show will be ending after fifteen years....), "If women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy," I thought I'd offer my discoveries as to the practical limits of duct tape as regards boot repair.
First, a brief preamble: As a goodly chunk of the United States knows, the NFL's (National Football League; yes, yes, that's American football, not "soccer," which everybody else in the universe calls "football") 40th Super Bowl game was played in Detroit, Michigan, in whose exurban environs Your Correspondent resides; as possibly only Metro Detroiters know or care, Old Man Winter made his first significant appearance this season vis-à-vis precipitation the weekend of said Super Bowl (Saturday, 4 February -- Sunday, 5 February; the game itself was played this past Sunday), possibly because the Big Color Commentator in the Sky wished to remind the general public of what early February in Michigan is supposed to look like.
As a consequence, I was obliged to wear my boots this past Saturday, for the first time in over a month. (Ponder a moment, if you will, the absurdity of that statement: up till now, I went most of the winter of 2005-06 shod in ordinary footwear. In Michigan. You want to tell me that there's no such thing as global warming..?) My Red Wing boots, which I've had since my junior or senior year in high school, which puts their age at nigh on twenty-five years.
My Red Wings started developing tiny holes about two or three years ago, but they weren't significant until the end of last winter. Again, as this winter had up till now been rather scanty in terms of accumulated snowfall, this did not pose a significant problem. What with various and sundry other necessities making their claims upon my limited financial resources, I was unable to purchase a new pair of boots as I'd intended; I was hoping that the need wouldn't be dire this winter, so that I could pick up a pair in the summer or fall. (My next pair of boots are so totally going to be Red Wings. This might get me a black eye in "Hockeytown," but, for my money, the only Red Wings worth a damn are the ones that you wear on your feet.)
As with so many of my other hopes, this one was, shall we say, unrealized.
So this past Saturday, during my peregrinations about the northern metro Detroit suburbs, my feet got very, very wet, thanks to the holes in my boots.
I thought to myself, "Self, I just bet that some duct tape will fix them up!" I mean, duct tape can do anything, right? Even remove warts.
So we come at last to my discoveries about the limitations of duct tape, which I now humbly offer in hopes that you, Gentle Reader, may profit from my experience.
First, a brief preamble: As a goodly chunk of the United States knows, the NFL's (National Football League; yes, yes, that's American football, not "soccer," which everybody else in the universe calls "football") 40th Super Bowl game was played in Detroit, Michigan, in whose exurban environs Your Correspondent resides; as possibly only Metro Detroiters know or care, Old Man Winter made his first significant appearance this season vis-à-vis precipitation the weekend of said Super Bowl (Saturday, 4 February -- Sunday, 5 February; the game itself was played this past Sunday), possibly because the Big Color Commentator in the Sky wished to remind the general public of what early February in Michigan is supposed to look like.
As a consequence, I was obliged to wear my boots this past Saturday, for the first time in over a month. (Ponder a moment, if you will, the absurdity of that statement: up till now, I went most of the winter of 2005-06 shod in ordinary footwear. In Michigan. You want to tell me that there's no such thing as global warming..?) My Red Wing boots, which I've had since my junior or senior year in high school, which puts their age at nigh on twenty-five years.
My Red Wings started developing tiny holes about two or three years ago, but they weren't significant until the end of last winter. Again, as this winter had up till now been rather scanty in terms of accumulated snowfall, this did not pose a significant problem. What with various and sundry other necessities making their claims upon my limited financial resources, I was unable to purchase a new pair of boots as I'd intended; I was hoping that the need wouldn't be dire this winter, so that I could pick up a pair in the summer or fall. (My next pair of boots are so totally going to be Red Wings. This might get me a black eye in "Hockeytown," but, for my money, the only Red Wings worth a damn are the ones that you wear on your feet.)
As with so many of my other hopes, this one was, shall we say, unrealized.
So this past Saturday, during my peregrinations about the northern metro Detroit suburbs, my feet got very, very wet, thanks to the holes in my boots.
I thought to myself, "Self, I just bet that some duct tape will fix them up!" I mean, duct tape can do anything, right? Even remove warts.
So we come at last to my discoveries about the limitations of duct tape, which I now humbly offer in hopes that you, Gentle Reader, may profit from my experience.
- Don't try to apply duct tape to wet leather.
- If repairing a crack in the sole(s) of your footwear, keep in mind that duct tape, when fresh at least, is very, very slippery when you walk on some surfaces, such as small pile, office-type carpeting, wet tiled floors or snow and ice. Dry snow is especially treacherous when you traipse across it wearing boots with duct tape on their soles.
- If you must use duct tape as a MacGyver for your footwear, you might consider enlisting the aid of an associate to help you apply said duct tape while your feet are inside your boots or shoes. Otherwise you run the risk of cinching the tape too tightly and thus cramping your tootsies even more than they were when they burst from the sides of your footwear in the first damn place.