Nikes, glue gun and clothes dryer...

My wife and I walk an awful lot, in fact I should say a great lot. We cover between 2 and 2,300 miles each year, so it has a wonderful impact on our fitness but a disastrous on our walking shoes as we go through them as there’s no tomorrow. 

To make the matter worst, sneaker manufacturers have, in recent years, realized that making the actual sole super-thin has a huge influence on accelerating replacement. That’s where I come with my usual, unorthodox solutions. I remember the days I was a runner in the 1970s and that company named “Shoe Goo” that sold tubes of glue-like material to replenish the worn out areas in the soles of running shoes. 

I thought that I could to the same by building up the same around these areas by using my glue gun. The idea was excellent and the results acceptable if not so durable. Little did I know that it would trigger the law of unintended consequences! 

That was until, on two occasions, as our shoes were drenched following a severe rainstorm, that my wife put them inside her clothes dryer with devastating consequences. That quick-drying routine always worked well with normal shoes, but the ones that had received hot glue turned out differently.

The first time around, we couldn’t quite understand what had happened as the inside drum of the dryer was filled with dark streaks we couldn’t remove. Since we were afraid of dirtying our clothes, I jumped to the conclusion that something inside the dryer motor was causing the streak problem, we got rid of it and bought a new one. 

This past Monday, the same situation happened again and this time I finally understood that the low-melting temperature of the glue-gun plastic used for these repairs was spraying the entire drum and with the heat, was turning into these awful dark streaks that were stuck to the drum and so hard to remove at room temperature. 

The net result was that I had to remove each one by hand using a combination of credit card and metal spatula after soaking the stained surface with vinegar and that for three hours. An expensive and time-consuming lesson learned the hard way, and that will make me focus more on sole durability after walking comfort, next time we buy a new pair of shoes!