Latest hiking sandals

One more pair of sandals made. I have tried everything and this is the culmination of every test. This has all the elements of a good hiking sandal.

This style of sandal is stable uphill or down and on side slopes. Huaraches hurt between the toe and are not stable. Huaraches also require a lot of retying and tightening. Theses do not.

Most tab sandals like these have a closed heel. An open heel is better for hiking because I get pebbles stuck under my feet and it's easiest to roll them out the back. Other sandals I made like this with a closed heel caused chafing on the heel. It can be hard to get the heel stiff enough to prevent chafing.

The soles are Vibram Newporters. They wear long and have good traction on wet rocks. The traction on trails is pretty good. Sometimes pebbles get stuck in the tread, as does mud and dog poop. But the tread is best of all the products available to me.

There is 1/4 inch of "cloud" cushioning between the sole and the upper leather. Padding lets me hike fast without having to run. Minimalism is fun but it is not fast. I can handle the sharpest rocks with this combination.

The surface is suede. Suede can be slippery when wet. But the lacing is stable so this should not be an issue.

The whole upper is leather because leather is easier to work with and leaves no rough edges to chafe like nylon webbing can. Being sandals, it should not be a problem to get them wet. They'll dry fast enough and my feet can breathe.

The only issue is lack of protection for socks in areas with foxtails and stickers. I may see if I can make a sock cover for that situation.

I took them for a walk. They're great. I really like them. I look forward to hiking in them next weekend.

I'm almost out of shoemaking supplies and I'm thinking that these sandals are as far as I want to go with it. I think I'm done making shoes for a while.

Feeling great

I'm feeling great these days. I try to convey this to The Man, but it's just hard to describe. I feel like Super Woman. Eating all this grass-fed and pastured beef, butter and chicken, lots of liver and no grains or sugar or vegetable oils makes me feel like a completely other animal. I'm not the same person at all.

I have been taking a core fitness class twice a week. We do things like squats, sit-ups and push-ups. In the 50 minute class only about 20 minutes of it are the hard strength things. So it's not too bad. I do everything the wimpiest way possible so far. Knee push-ups and knee planks, for example. It really helps though. It has made me feel so much stronger while hiking. I feel great.

I continue to lose weight slowly. I can wear my PCT 2009 hiking pants again. I can wear lots of stuff I buried in the closet again. This diet is great. Lose weight and put big hunks of butter on your mashed celery root and sweet potatoes. Eat roast duck until you are ready to puke and lose weight.

What I do now is I drink a "bulletproof" coffee that is made with melted butter, coconut oil and unsweetened chocolate, emulsified in the blender, for breakfast. Then I eat canned fish for lunch around 1 or 2. Sardines or salmon usually. Then I eat dinner. I like to make meat of some sort with a starchy root or tuber and some veggies and plenty of butter. The Man tends to make lighter fare like skinless chicken and steamed veggies. I just put a ton of butter on it. The bulletproof coffee with the fish is kind of austere but I don't feel hungry. The total calories for the day is probably pretty low. But I feel great all day, energized, focused and not hungry.

I just ordered a bunch of pemmican from US Wellness Meats. I looked at making it myself but it looks too difficult. Pemmican is just beef tallow and dried meat mixed together. Theirs is not completely dry so you have to keep it refrigerated or frozen. Sounds like you can carry it for a few days in a backpack, so I figure this will make great backpacking food. You can eat it as is or melt it into a soup for dinner. Some people spread it on crackers. Apparently it takes a bit to get used to the taste. It was quite expensive. I hope that I like the taste.

Finally my hiking huaraches are dialed in

At long last my homemade hiking huaraches work.

I found these little buckles at Art from Scrap. I was able to loop one end of the buckle into the side strap piece with the leather lacing. It's at the inside, which would seem like a problem but actually isn't. Then I wrap the lacing around my ankle a few times, loop it through the front toe strap for security and buckle it in. No adjusting, no having it come untied. The buckle never touches my skin so it does not chafe and it's in the right place to give the sandal good lateral security. Feels really secure and comfortable.

I could actually cut off a lot of that extra lacing and simply slip the lacing under the front toe strap and then buckle and make these really simple. I had to order these laces and have not wanted to cut them yet in case I made a mistake and wanted them long again. Perhaps I will order another pair so I'll have a back-up in case I make a mistake.

Here's a close-up of the buckle:

These are not exactly minimalist huaraches. I purposefully used 1/4" of cushioning so that they would be more comfortable for hiking and for faster walking. In regular minimal huaraches I have to run to keep up with my friends and that gets annoying. To me the big benefit of the huaraches is no raised up heel and not having my toes be all cramped. Nobody makes shoes wide enough at the toes.

The other thing I have done is purchase a pair of Zemgear ninja booties. I usually wear my huaraches with socks when I am hiking because my skin chafes very easily at the side straps and sometimes between the toe. But socks pick up too many stickers and foxtails. The Zemgear booties are like thick spandex socks. They do add a bit more stiffness to the sole, but the idea would be to use them for backpacking. Our backpacking trails have a LOT of foxtails.

Here they are with my Zemgear nija tabis. They are sort of like thick spandex socks. There is a plastic sole on the bottom. I should have bought the indoor "wellness" version. Next time I will. So far they feel really cold when it is cold out. I hope they aren't too hot when it's warm out. I will need to see if I can wear socks with the tabi. Otherwise, they are comfortable with the sandals, feel secure like hiking boots and the plastic sole really doesn't bother me when coupled with the sandals. I even tried it with Dirty Girl gaiters and it works great. Can't wait to try these on a real hike.

How my diet is going

I haven't posted for a while. I am still following my low-carb primal diet. I have been upping my carbs a little bit with more sweet potatoes every now and then, maybe some bowls of frozen blackberries once in a while. Otherwise, I mostly eat meat and liver, chicken, eggs and fish, duck a couple of times, leafy greens, roots and other vegetables all cooked in butter or duck fat or ghee. I went a long time without losing weight but I think recently I may have started losing again.

The best part is how I feel. I feel amazing. I have never felt like this before. I feel calm with a radiant happiness inside me. I feel strong. I don't need to eat all the time and yet I have continuous energy that doesn't wane. I can go hiking on an empty stomach and eat after the hike.

Lately I've been making a special coffee for breakfast. I make espresso that has extra water in it, melt some ghee, coconut oil and baking chocolate in a mug. About a teaspoon of coconut oil and a little more than a tablespoon of ghee. Just a small amount of chocolate. I pour it all into a pre-heated blender and blend it for about 20 seconds. The chocolate helps keep the butter suspended and preserves the bitter flavor without adding sweetness. It's pretty good. I drink one of those for breakfast and eat my first meal sometime between 11 and 2. Lately I've been having sardines for lunch.

But back to how healthy I feel. It occurred to me that we started a national experiment in processed, industrial food way back in the 20s. My grandparents were the first to experience it. They had olio, which was a margarine, instead of butter. As we've gone on through the decades, our food supply has gotten more and more industrialized and manufactured. People eat a lot of sugar, a lot of fake fats and a lot of fake food that's been super-heated (ultra-pasturized) and otherwise compromised. They shun animal products for fake low-fat products.

In my grandparent's time, hardly anyone had type II diabetes. Now it's pretty common in people my parent's age. Both generations got it as adults. Now people who would be in my grandparent's great grandchildren's generation get it as children. There's a thing you see in animals where sometimes bad traits are induced in the 2nd or third generation by what a grandparent generation is exposed to. I think we are seeing that now in humans. Soon we will have a generation that is incapable of reproduction.

I think people have no idea how health really feels like. I certainly didn't. I thought I was healthy because I was able to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. I feel infinitely more healthy compared to how I felt on the trail. It is hard to convey. I will never listen to a modern doctor's dietary advice ever again. They are all wrong. They are all influenced by industries, by the drug industry and by the agricultural industry. We should all be eating saturated animal fat, meat and green vegetables. Stuff you can't make in a lab. Those animals should be raised to eat the foods and live the lives they were also meant to. We were never meant to live this way. This is why we get sicker every generation.

My hope is that we as a society eventually can't reproduce and this helps us realize the terrible mistake we've made with our industrial culture that is killing the planet with toxins and pollution and over-consumption. And those of us who have found the secret to true health can show the rest the way out. Maybe someday we will be able to live in a land with prairies of bison again instead of acres of oil-fed corn and soy that kills people and whole ecosystems.

My personal food pyramid

I modified a paleo food pyramid to reflect what I actually eat. I suppose the sweet potatoes are missing from the picture. I actually don't eat that much of nuts or fruit, either, but you get the idea. It really works to eat this way. I feel great, I've lost weight, my mental outlook is amazing, inflammation and pain left over from hiking the PCT is gone. I don't think I have ever felt as healthy as I do now. The key to it is the bottom layer of the pyramid. It's actually the most important.

Static cling in my hair

I think I fixed the static cling problem I've been having with my hair. Either that or the weather has improved. I'm not totally sure. My hair is really long, to my tailbone for the longest fairy-tale strands. I wear a lot of nylon, mostly my down jacket or fleece jacket being the main sources of it. This plus winter plus having fine dry hair means the static cling has been a huge problem. This is what seems to work: After I wash my hair, I squirt some oil into my hand. I have some old Neutragena massage oil, but jojoba or coconut or other oil would probably work just as well or maybe even better. The trouble with coconut oil is it's solid at this time of year so it's hard to use. The oil is in a pump bottle like you would use for lotion. I give myself about 3/4 a pump. I run this through my wet hair concentrating on the lower 2/3 of my hair and more toward the ends. Then I wrap my hair in a towel while I get dressed. Then I comb it like usual. I even use a nasty plastic comb. If I could find a good wooden or bone one (at a store, I don't want to buy a comb online) I would use that instead. It doesn't make my hair oily at all. It makes it nice and soft. I've also been giving my hair a bit of spray-on detangler for good measure. I was using that alone and it did nothing at all to control the static cling by itself so it's probably not needed at all. It wasn't until I started using the oil that the static cling got under control. Also, I've tried putting the oil on dry hair and slightly damp hair, but I really get the best results--"best" meaning that it doesn't look oily--when my hair is wet. Even with the oil in my hair, my hair stays clean for many days. I don't put the oil anywhere near my scalp, so it's not like it would have much effect anyway. I can go 4 days between washing, maybe more, since my diet change (low in carbs and high in animal fat) and the onset of winter. Sometimes my hair looks a little bad near my temples and I'll just wash right there and not the rest of it. With such long hair, it's good not to have so much cold wet hair when it's winter. I don't blow dry my hair. I'm not a girly-girl. I don't wear make-up. I rarely wear a dress. I wear no jewelry except for a ring. I don't even like babies. But hair is my one vanity.

Santa brought me a toy

I got an ipod touch for Christmas. I'm not a gadget person, but I absolutely love this gadget. I don't even have any music on it. The reason I have no music on it is because my computer is "too" old and it won't let me update itunes to a new enough version. I hate Apple for that. Planned obsolescence irritates me greatly. My computer works fine and I have no desire for a new one. So forget the stinkin' music. My ipod does so many other things that are great without being a music playing device. It's got an instrument tuner so I can tune my fiddle at the jam session. It's got a concertina that I can play when I'm just doodling around. I can record tunes at the jam session so I can learn them later. Take notes, make shopping lists, whatever. Send mail, surf the net. Take pictures and upload them to flickr. I downloaded the Kindle, but I have no kindle books yet. A friend was showing me an Audubon app that helps you identify birds. I may get that. Those are the kinds of things I do with it, but it can do just about everything I'd ever want to do. I love this little thing.