I'm not sure what. Not walking, apparently.

I'm not sure that this is really an essay worth writing, but I think it's a little bit amusing, like the information essay, so I am. Writing it, I mean.

For this road trip, I decided to travel light: a single carry on and one pair of shoes, a pair of comfortable, casual, brown suede shoes. I've worn them many times, but not recently.

I noticed a slight…stickiness under foot on the first leg of my journey. I attributed this to something under the seat in front of me, spilled soda, perhaps.

It wasn't until I was walking through the terminal in San Francisco that the actual culprit became evident: the stickiness wasn't on the soles of my shoes, it was the soles of my shoes, disintigrating further with every step.

[Photo]
[Flickr]

The soles of my shoes

They lasted a week, but barely. Even now I can feel the last remnants of the soles clinging stickily to the carpet on this 737. I have no explanation. They've been sitting quietly in my closet for a year or two. That closet is not, to the best of my knowledge, a source of toxic rubber solvents.

Perhaps my knowledge isn't very good. Perhaps I should check the rest of my shoes when I get home.

Comments:

Eww. Hope you figure out what's going on!

Posted by Misty on 09 Oct 2006 @ 01:44pm UTC #

I had a similar problem myself a while back. I wore a pair of boots into work one weekend.

http://public.fotki.com/CoatesFamily/public/tony/boot_failure/

They were good boots, but I hadn't worn them for quite a while. While I was in the office, the heels disintegrated! It was like walking around on high heels for the rest of the day (based on my theoretical understanding alone, of course).

Cheers, Tony.

Posted by Anthony B. Coates on 12 Oct 2006 @ 05:29pm UTC #
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