by Graham Averill

It’s important to have a nemesis. Someone or something that you battle throughout a significant portion of your life. Superman has Lex Luthor. Batman has the Joker. George W. has the environment. A nemesis gives you direction. It gives you purpose. Your own personal nemesis could be the woman two cubicles down from you who enjoys flirting with your husband and is secretly after your job. Or your nemesis could be something less confrontational, like “the Wiggles.”

I have two nemeses. Phil Collins, for reasons I won’t go into here, and shoelaces. I know; how sad is it that my arch-enemy is an inanimate object that most people conquer before entering kindergarten? What can I say? The damned things just won’t stay tied. Ever. Especially on my hiking boots. It doesn’t matter what I do-I double knot them, I burn the ends, I pray to St. Crispin, the patron saint of shoemakers-nothing works. Within 15 minutes of hiking on the trail, I have to kneel down to tie my boots again. For a while, I thought I just didn’t know how to tie shoes. Like I got some flawed intel when I was four and I’ve been doing it wrong my whole life. But as it turns out, I’m not the only one that has trouble with hiking boot shoelaces. I asked friends, I asked neighbors, I asked children, and everyone agrees: shoelaces suck.

“Which is strange,” one friend said. “Tying your laces is the most interaction you have with your shoes. You’d think the shoe companies would put more thought into that part of their product.”

Seriously, you pay 90 bucks for a pair of boots, is it too much to ask that the damned things stay tied? These shoe companies spend millions every year researching how to make their products lighter, tougher, more attractive, and generally more foot friendly, you think somewhere along the line, they’d earmark some money for lace research. They’ve figured out a way to put gel in the soles. They’ve figured out a way to make the inner mold around your foot. They’ve figured out a way to make the soles light up when you walk, but they can’t make a lace that actually stays tied.

Some shoe companies are skirting the issue altogether. Salomon has developed a sort of cinch tie thing for their Adventure Racing Shoes. Keen has something similar, and Nike has begun hiding their shoelaces beneath a zipper. But none of these innovations compare with the original non-shoelace shoe: KangaROOS. I’m sure you remember these babies from grade school? They were the high tops for kids with Velcro instead of laces and a tiny zipper pocket on the side of the shoe just big enough for your lunch ticket. On the tough streets of Kennesaw, we just called them “Roos.” They were the Bee’s Knees back in the day, and right now, I can’t think of a more perfect hiking shoe. The Velcro straps are military issue so they’ll never come undone and I can put some trail mix in the little zipper pocket. It’s perfect. Nemesis defeated.

Now if I can just figure out a way to get rid of Phil Collins.

Graham Averill wears sandals. He can be reached at graham@blueridgeoutdoors.com.