mlroseplant

I stopped off after work yesterday to pick up my son, who was auditioning for a regional honor band. There were hundreds of high school kids at this audition, along with hundreds of parents. It was one of those deals where they expected the kids to dress nicely. Maybe not formal concert black, but they needed to wear something a little nicer than normal. When I finally found the place, and was trying to figure out where to find my son, the first thing I noticed was a mom in 4 inch chunky-heeled boots. Then I saw another mom in 3 inch heeled boots. In the 15-20 minutes I was there, I saw many high school girls in heels, mostly sandals (in spite of the season), and all of them were this modern style of super chunky, big heels, most of them with platforms. The way I figure it, girls these days buy heels for a high school formal dance, and then recycle these for occasions such as yesterday. What one does not see much of at all these days is just a normal, conservative black pump, something every girl my age who had any occasion to dress up would have owned from age 15 on. Nowadays, it's either boots or sandals. We are in a strange time. "They" say that heels are dead with Gen Z. I can tell you that this is not strictly true. I'm hoping that this is like the 90s, and that shoes will eventually get less huge.

I may be in a holding pattern with my training for a while. I had planned to take a couple of days off from walking just because I needed some rest, but then the snow hit. On the last day of November, I had some extra time, so I thought I would walk a mile in something a little bit high, like 10 cm, just to keep myself from going downhill too much. The snow was over, and I wasn't in a hurry, so I thought, "Why not? It will be fun!" I thought I might even leave a few footprints here and there that would raise eyebrows. I pulled on my knee high boots, put on my coat and scarf, and headed outside. I got about 20 meters down the street and looked at the continuous sheet of packed snow and ice ahead of me, thought of my smooth, slick bottomed boots, thought of my less-than-youthful age, and then actually said out loud, "This is a BAD idea." I turned around and went back inside. I took the next day off, too. On the third day, I did walk, but I chose lugged rubber soled boots with 8 cm block heels. One never knows what the weather will bring, but at least for the next couple of weeks, I'm not going to be pushing any crazy steep heeled boundaries. Even the garage floor is kind of slick.

Them days are over, friend. You can't afford to be too much of a lazy ass these days, or you'll probably be the subject of a one-man layoff pretty quick!

A lot of it depends upon what you wish to do in heels. As is the experience with most here, I started low and went gradually higher. I spent a lot of time wearing 3 - 3 1/2" before I got to where I was truly ready for anything higher. Not that I didn't go higher sooner, but it's always a shock to catch a glimpse of yourself in a storefront window, and think, "Who is that idiot, and why is he walking so funny?" "Oh, that's me." We would rather avoid those moments, so practice in lower heels is advisable. It also depends upon how durable you want to be. Do you want to wear 5 inch heels to Disney World, on multiple days? I'm sure there is somebody out there who can do it, but it would be a select few in the world, kind of like there's only a few Olympic caliber athletes in the world. Do you care what you look like when you walk? I can "walk" just fine in 5 inch heels, but I wouldn't want anybody to see me. I am living proof that it is possible to be able to wear heels that are quite steep for long periods of time, and over long distances, but I didn't get there very quickly at all. It took years. Some people can do it in much less time that me, but that's been my own personal experience.

I have a number of honorable mentions, but they are too numerous to be interesting to anybody but me. Many of my shoes failed after 30 or 40 miles. I've had that happen a lot. All of the shoes that I have gotten rid of for one reason or other over the years must have added up to quite a bit of mileage, because when I add up the distance I've walked in the examples catalogued above, that number is less than half of the total distance I've walked in the last 13 years. That mileage had to come from somewhere. It must have been all those shoes I broke, and all those shoes that I no longer care to wear. And then there are shoes that I have rediscovered, like my Miu Miu navy blue wooden sandals. According to my records, I bought these about five years ago, they sat on my shelf for two years, I took them out for one short walk, and then they sat on my shelf for two more years. This year, I took them out, and I guess I have decided I like them now, because I've put over 20 miles on them in the last two months. I know that one of the reasons I like them better now is because I had them reheeled. The stock heel tips were so obnoxiously loud that I'm sure I could be heard from several hundred meters away. I'm sure that inside buildings with hard floors, people had to stop their conversations until after I had passed. Now, with new rubber tips, they are far from silent, but they are pleasant sounding. I am toying with the idea of removing the back straps and making them into mules. I know I would like the way that would look a lot better, but what with this massive amount of snow we've received over the last two days, that has become a next year problem.

Our family has always done all of our own painting. In fact, I should have repainted at least the south side of my house this year, but I didn't instead. Every time I think I would like to hire it done, the price motivates me!

Hey, at least somebody is still wearing heels besides us!

Thank you, and I'll let you know that I'm probably taking the last two days of the month off. I barely made it under the wire before this snowstorm hit, which is supposed to last until 6 a.m. tomorrow. Maybe I will take some footprint pictures if the correct situation presents itself. Good luck with your editor. Hopefully, we'll both be back at the 12 cm thing soon.

I have only worked with actual plasterers twice in my career, and one of those was a restoration project, where they wanted period correct everything. All while having modern communications and HVAC systems, HA! If you can believe this, on larger jobs drywalling and mudding and taping are two completely separate operations, and never the twain shall meet. The drywallers are part of the carpenters union, and the tapers are in with the painters union! Both of them can be a pain in my butt.

The last time I was in such an establishment was 1991, and the definition of "stripper heels" was quite different back then. Leave it to me to be more interested in the shoes than the other bits. What dancers wore at that time was what we would consider quite normal, almost boring shoes. Pretty much pumps with four inch heels. Platforms were not a thing at the time, at least not around here. Sometime between 1991 and now heel heights that seem normal increased dramatically, and platforms for exotic dancers got ridiculously thick. To me, "stripper heels" have never really been all that steep, because after all, one has to be able to at least pretend to dance in them, and for the better part of the entire night at that! I can give a very good example of where "the formula" doesn't work quite right. I have over the years owned a few different pairs of a Michael Kors shoe called Oksana. If you buy them in USW 8 1/2, you get 5 1/8" heels (with 1" platform). If you go up to size 9, the heels suddenly become 5 1/2". That's a full centimeter difference in half a size bigger. Because they are Kors less expensive line, they obviously didn't make a different heel for every single size. I'm guessing 8 1/2 was the cutoff for one length of heel, and 9 was the beginning of the next. ________________________ In other news, most of the reason that I have not been practicing toward the goal of 12 cm heels recently is because I have been working toward the goal of walking 60 high heeled miles in a single calendar month. I have come really close a couple of times, but I've never actually exceeded 60 until now. Here is a picture of me (wearing boots, no less) right after I finished walking the last high heeled mile. Although with the new system of proportional measurement, I'd technically have to call these mid-heels, as they are 1/8" (3 mm) short of being actually "high."

That's basically 2, 3, and 4 inch in my imperial mind. Part of the reason why I came up with the 94% calculation is because the Italian Heels chart did not quite make sense to me. In particular, why in size 40 do I have to have a full 11 cm to equal a 10 cm in size 38, but I only need 12.7 cm to equal 12? The proportions are all a little bit off. Therefore, I came up with my own. It may be that an 11 cm heel is what you get when you order a 10 cm heel in size 40 from them, but the math doesn't quite math. Oh yes, it absolutely does! To be fair, it has taken me over a decade to get to that point, but I didn't exactly take the short route when it came to training. If I were in the main office far away from any construction job site, I might consider wearing heels to work, but the far more likely scenario is that I'd be in the field office, the temporary office that is right there on the job site. Those folks often wear tennis shoes or casual loafers to work, and then have work boots and all the PPE there for the occasions where they might have to step foot on the actual job site. If I could guarantee that wearing heels in such a situation wouldn't negatively affect my job somehow, I'd do it, but I certainly can't guarantee that. Even the female superintendents and other supervisors would have a hard time wearing heels to the job without negative consequences. I did it in inches. USW size 9 is 9 7/8", which is the actual measurement of my size 9 foot. This is also typically given as an equivalent for EU size 40. Size 7 (or 38) is somewhere around 9 5/16". Looking at it again, the charts disagree with each other slightly, and depending upon how you round certain numbers, I came up with something like 94.3%, which I rounded down to 94. It seems some charts list size 9 as being 10" long. Your mileage may vary. Also why would I divide by 94% to convert something bigger to something smaller? I have the size 9 (40) in my hand. I can measure it. I do not have the size 7 (38) in my hand. Therefore, I need to multiply by 0.94 (or 0.95) to find out the information I need.

I had some spare time yesterday, and wondered if I could come up with a formula that makes it easy to convert my size 40 into size 38 proportions. What I came up with is 94%. In other words, take my actual heel height, measured in person on size 40, multiply it by 94%, get the proportional heel height for size 38. It seems to work reasonably well, but it now requires that I rethink my entire categorization of heel heights. For example, I've always thought of 10 cm as being the minimum to be considered a "high" heel. Looks like I'm now going to have to up that to 10.7 cm, or almost 4 1/4". Interestingly, I have an oddly large number of shoes with that incline. It all make sense, now. It's probably an upscaling of a 4 inch heel from size 7 (38). I suppose it fits my new standard anyway--a 10 cm heel in size 40, which I now have to discount to 9.4 cm, feels remarkably mid-heelish these days. Here is my mental categorization, translated to size 38: Less than 5 cm is a flat, 7.5 cm is the lowest mid-heel, 10 cm is the lowest high heel. I'll go with 12 cm and above as being Very High, since I can't walk in them properly! I am trying to decide whether I'm going to convert to full-on metric the next time I do a shoe inventory. I'm kind of inclined (no pun intended) to do that, but since I do this for my personal entertainment anyway, why should I? Inside my weary head, I still think in inches, though I'm a whiz at translating to cm quickly, thanks in large part to my immigrant wife.

It's interesting that you refer to the plywood, et al., as being 8 x 4. At least in my locale, we would never refer to it that way. It's 4 x 8 here. Plasterboard we typically call sheet rock, though I think that's a brand name. Drywall is the generic U.S. term. I'm sure if I traveled 500 miles in any direction this would change slightly, but here in central Iowa, the person who installs said material is a drywaller, but we turn the brand name into a verb to describe the process of installation. Example of a conversation you might actually hear on a construction site: "Are you gonna rock that wall right now? "Uhhh, I was planning on it, yeah." "You know the fire alarm guys haven't finished that yet?" "Well, what if we just rock one side for now?" "They can prolly make that work. I'll let 'em know."

Well anyway, the point is that some of us have jobs that will allow the wearing of heels at work, and some of us do not. It has nothing to do with our professional qualifications or opportunities. It's more to do with circumstances. I doubt I would wear heels to work, even if I were in the "office." Though were I in the office, I would sure long to.

They are not. I purposefully diverted the off-topic conversation to here, where I don't care what we talk about. Do you know one of the meanest things you can do that is basically harmless if you don't count other people's wasted time and frustration? Throw a good sized handful of 12 mm bolts into a box of 1/2" bolts. I don't quite understand how the metric foot works--why not just use the SI unit? I do confess that when it comes to heel height, I think of 10 cm/100 mm as being four inch heels, and 150 mm as being six inch, even though it's not exact. So I suppose I get the rough approximation extrapolated to 300 mm/12 inch. What I don't understand is in what context is it used that way?

On a typical weekday, I spend anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, but averaging 45 minutes, walking in heels of 8 to 11 cm, depending upon the weather and my mood. I then effectively spend the next 12 hours in work boots, by the time you add in lunch and commuting each way. With my feet the way they are, I always bring a second pair of socks, which I change at lunch. If I do not do this, I am miserable all afternoon. If I had to go 16 hours in boots, I'd go through three pairs of socks a day. Unless I have somewhere to go after work, such as church choir rehearsal or the occasional special event, I have various slip-on sandals that I use as house slippers, but all are 7 cm or less. That is why I wonder what my life would be like if I could wear heels to work every day, such as the red patent Via Spiga shoes I wore Sunday.

@Puffer I'm a 16ths of an inch guy myself. Sometimes I catch some flack for it, because most guys round to 8ths of an inch. I think this is part of the reason why my stuff tends to look better than average. But see, if we just went to millimeters, that's even a little bit finer than 16ths, but doesn't give you a headache like looking at a rule that's marked in 32nds. Then everybody's work might look a little better.

I did something yesterday that I haven't done in a long time--I spent the entire day in 10 cm heels. Stilettos, at that. I put them on for church, and never bothered to change out of my Sunday clothes until about 7 p.m., so I was in the heels for about 9 hours. I didn't do anything particularly impressive in them, but it's been a very long time since I've had the chance to wear heels all day. What if every day were like that?

I haven't been practicing in my super high heels much this month, but I did wear what are effectively 100 mm stiletto boots for a 1,6 km walk yesterday. @Shyheels, though I will probably use both systems of measurement for my own thread, I've pretty much decided to go ahead and use SI units for general discussion. It's just easier that way, though I admit, "four inch heel" has a ring to it, but that's obviously my upbringing.

It is now time to reveal my most durable shoes. They hold this title by a wide margin. I would never have guessed that these would hold the record, especially given their shaky start in history. They are True Religion brand, model name unknown. I got them in June of 2019, and have walked a total of 314 miles (506 km) in them, and counting. The last time I wore them was 5 days ago, when I walked 2.1 miles. They have been reheeled 5 times, and resoled once. The heel is 4 1/2 inches (114 mm) tall, with a 1/2 inch (13 mm) platform. The heel is 3/4" (19mm) wide at the base. How I got here is a complete mystery. I bought an orange pair of these back in 2013, the first year I really started heeling in public. I soon got rid of them because a) I couldn't imagine a situation where I would ever dare to wear orange shoes, much less orange high heeled sandals, in public, and b) they were very tight, and once I got them on, were super high to me at the time. I think I made it once around the block in them, and decided they weren't for me. Much much later, I found a brown pair, and decided to give them another go. By this time, I was much more experienced, and I really liked them. Then I lost a heel tip on a walk one day, didn't notice it right away, and it completely ruined the heel. Then I bought this black pair to replace the ruined pair. I actually lost the OEM heel tip on this pair also, but I noticed it before any damage occurred. Fast forward a few years, and I began to notice that although I don't feel they are the most attractive shoes in the world, I often picked them over others to walk in, and I've also done several farmer's markets in them, which involves a minimum of 5 hours of standing. When I got to 200 miles, I figured they were not long for this world, so when I had the chance, I bought a brown pair and an orange pair to eventually replace them. I've put about 50 miles on the brown pair and just a few miles on the orange pair, but the black pair refuses to wear out. Whatever composite wood material these soles and heels are made of is evidently very stiff, but is not at all resistant to abrasion should you lose a heel tip. Without the rubber heel tip, they're done in a matter of a few blocks. I believe that the inherent stiffness of the material has allowed them to be so durable, coupled with the fact that the upper is 100% leather, including the liner and the sock. There is wear, to be sure, but not complete deterioration like you get with man made liners and socks. I do not believe that there is a metal shank, nor is there need for one. I suppose if they do fail someday, the whole shoe is going to crack in half. I am really curious to see if they'll make it to 500 miles.

Well y'all @Shyheels @higherheels, I think about this stuff way too much. For the purposes of this thread at this time, I will pare it down to the bare minimum. Since childhood, I have always been hard on heels, whether it was athletic shoes, work boots, or dress shoes. I would always wear the heels out in the middle (indicating that my weight is balanced in the middle of my feet as it should be), but they would wear out very quickly. As I began to wear higher and higher heels, this natural tendency continued, causing a lot of wear to heel tips, and in the worst case, causing shanks to break, turning the shoes into landfill material. A few years ago I started to study walking, specifically in heels, in an attempt to make myself look more presentable and more graceful. I have amalgamated knowledge from many different places, but the one thing that seems to be universal among those who can (by my estimation) walk in heels well, but is often unspoken is this: Yes, you want to walk heel-to-toe (of course), but you don't want to "heel strike." This is a runner's term that I've borrowed to describe what I believe is a mistake that some people make in heels. The heel is meant to be nothing more than a guide to get you smoothly through the next step for that instant until the forefoot can touch down. It is not meant to bear the whole force of your stride. In other words, think of placing the heel down, rather than slamming it down aggressively. Then, it's just a glide to the forefoot, and hopefully in that millisecond the tall heel will deform very little, stress to the shank will be greatly reduced, and yes, the heel tips will last substantially longer. This is more difficult to explain in written words than I thought it would be. Please let me know if something needs clarification.

At least you've got firewood now. Except for a few days when we had a bit of a cold snap, the weather has been on the warmer side for here. It is supposed to become more seasonal next week, just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday. The temperature as I write this at 4 a.m. is 5º. In a week, it will be more like -5 at this time. My body has aged strangely. I am pretty much colder than all of my colleagues, who are 99% male. I wear long johns from October to April, albeit it capri length cotton leggings for most of that time. Though I love to wear shorts, the season where I can comfortably do so is pretty short. [rim shot]. This has its advantages come summer, when I handle the heat much more easily than almost everybody. Evidently, my feet did not get the memo that I'm a cold person. Today, much like yesterday, and the day before, my walking outfit will consist of jeans, t-shirt, long sleeved t-shirt, capri length leggings under the jeans, medium weight jacket, hat, lightweight gloves, and sandals. The dog walkers I usually encounter at that hour are dressed less warmly than me, but I'm the only one in sandals at that temperature, the range of which goes down to 0º, as long as it's not very windy. If it is windy, 6-8º is just fine. Below 0º, I will go to clogs if there's no snow on the ground. I would gladly trade some of my foot warmth for some extra body warmth, but I don't really have a choice in the matter.

I thought I must include my most durable stilettos in this thread, even though the total mileage is not all that impressive. My Shoedazzle rainbow mules are among the most comfortable truly high heels that I own. Even though they measure every bit of 4 5/8" without a platform, they feel very natural to walk in, and I have caught myself walking further than I intended more than once. As I have said on several occasions in the past, I don't normally wear stilettos for actual walking because I don't really find it all that fun, having to watch out exactly where I'm stepping every second. Nevertheless, I've managed 32 miles in these particular stilettos, and at some point I'll probably put a few more on. Part of the reason why I chose these for longer distance walking is because I wanted to do an experiment a couple of years ago to see if in fact I could make a pair of heel tips last a decent amount of time with a gentler style of walking. The answer to the question was yes. I was able to squeeze 16 miles out of a set of tips when my previous average was 8. For comparison, a thicker heel will last me four times that distance. While these shoes are easy to walk in, they do have their drawbacks. The nylon mesh fabric that the uppers are made of does tend to rub the feet raw if you're walking any real distance, so I need to make sure I use bandaids if I'm going for an actual walk. With a little bit of forethought and preparation, these are two mile shoes.

I am familiar with that video, though I haven't followed her in years. She also did a review of the Louboutin Merci Allen 130, which is the model I would buy if I could. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like they make any of that stuff anymore. There is another video where Ms. Winter walks for an extended distance in Hot Chicks as an experiment. I don't know if any of these videos are still up, but I distinctly remember those two for sure.

Different lady. Here is some video of of the Dutch woman on Instagram. They are much shorter videos, and tend to be centered around artwork. I'm not sure what kind of a deal she's got going with Fuss shoes, but she does occasionally show up on their promotional material, and ver1astyle does seem to own a lot of Fuss shoes lately. I rather like the shoes in the video from your example. Almost round toed. It seems like a lot of extreme heeled shoes have a super long pointy toe, which I find objectionable. With both women, what they do is rather amazing, but certainly stretches the definition of the word "walk." I personally would like to be able to get across the street before several hours pass. And I would like to eventually be able to do it in 12 cm, maybe 13. I think 15 may be impossible. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DND-eA_IJzv/?igsh=cjhxZ2tpdGU5NmQ4