 I know a while back I promised that I'd do a mix. Here I am doing the video I never thought I'd be doing. It's about shoes. Oh my goodness, shoes. Okay, so part of the reason I want to make this is I've got enormously wide feet and finding shoes is really difficult for me. So what I decided to do is I looked around to find out about shoes that have wide toe boxes and as you can see, this delightful thing is well it's a nine triple E. Now let's get it over the wall over here. You can see it's a pretty wide shoe. It's a decent shoe, it's nothing great. Skechers, I've worn Skechers sneakers for a while finding dress shoes that are a little trickier but here you go, Skechers nine triple E sneaker and I've worn them for a while. Really nothing remarkable and they worked well enough but what I wanted to find was something that would look a little dressier and have a wide toe box because like I say, I've got enormously wide feet which I am not going to show you. No, so lucky you, you don't have to look at my feet. So I did some research and what I found out is there's something called minimalist shoes and what they feature is a very wide toe box. That's this part of the shoe up here. You know surprising where your toes go. A lot of modern shoes come down fairly narrow. If you look at say Nike's are fairly narrow and you can see this is not. You can also see I'm struggling with where do I, where do I hold the shoe? I don't know, here, here, here, I don't know. I'll get better at this as I keep going. I doubt I'll do another one on shoes but you never know, I may need to hold something up and I'm really good at holding it in front of my face. I'm probably not good enough at getting it close but here you go. Anyway, here it is. So I did some research and I found out there's something called minimalist shoes and in addition, so minimalist shoes are different from a typical shoe in a couple of ways and I kind of liked the idea of it when I heard about these differences and unfortunately what I got when I was researching it was a whole lot of weird claims and instead of like here's what the shoe will do for you. So here are some of the differences. Here's a regular normal shoe here. I'll turn around so you can see it's a sketch. One of the things you're gonna see is that the heel is higher than the toe. So the heel is nice and thick and the toe area is thinner. So the cushion on the sole. Let's see if I can hold this so you can see. And they call this difference in thickness drop and minimal issues are zero drop which means there's no difference between the heel and the toe. So it's, well, they're flat. This has a bit of a heel, not much. I don't know, I guess maybe a quarter or half inch but not much. The other thing it has, it has a wide toe box like this does because I have to because my feet are that wide. And the other thing it has is you'll notice that the cushioning on these is pretty thick. So the minimal issue has none of that which I kind of like, I've got strong feet and they never seem to hurt that much. And in fact, one of the wacky claims is it'll make your foot stronger and you'll have less foot pain and oh my goodness, it'll radio up into your knees and your back. I can't say as I've noticed much of a difference. I've been wearing these minimal issues. So here they are, got them on Amazon from a company called Witten it looks like. And it's a nice shoe and you can see it's pretty thin. The sole I'd say it's about, let's see if I can, I don't know, you can't tell but it's a thin sole and as you can see the heel and the toe are on the same level as zero drop. But the thing that's crazy about the shoe is I really flex this one, I can get a little bend right there which probably wasn't good for the shoe but so what? This I can like ball it up. Get a nice shoe ball in there. And the flexibility turns out to be something I've really been enjoying because the sole of the shoe is so thin, you can really feel the grounded. I kind of like having that extra sensory feedback. I kind of like it. It's kind of a tactile seeking sensory thing and I can be very tactile seeking but that's just how I am. So anyway, this with it's much thinner sole I feel everything on the ground which is not real exciting when you're stepping on a rock but you get used to it pretty quick. You get used to it pretty quick. Anyway, what I really like about it is that I feel all that stuff and it's flexible and there's just not a whole lot to it. It's like being barefoot all the time. Minimalist barefoot shoes and I like that because over the course of the summer I like to spend most of my time barefoot or as close to that as I can get. So I like that in a shoe. The claims they make and I have noticed a little of this. They've said you have to transition over to these gradually and I've kind of found that. I've found that I get a little bit of feedback from my calves if I've been wearing these all day not as much now that I've been wearing them for several weeks but yeah, if I walk a couple kilometers that would be miles an American. If I find myself walking quite a bit I can feel it in my calf particularly particularly earlier on, not so much now. Anyway, I really kind of like them there. They look nice. I like them a little dressier but what you gonna do? They're affordable, unbelievably affordable. So these were like, how to say it? These were like 60, 70 bucks when I bought them. I don't remember because I bought two pairs of years ago. Two pairs in what February of 22. So it's been little over a year and I bought two pairs and I've run through one and this is the second one and it's, I just started wearing it February, January. So I've been getting somewhere out of it and it's holding up. What I'm surprised is this was a $40 shoe on Amazon, give or take, it's black and it's hard to see. For the amount of walking I do, it's really holding up nicely on the sole. It's wearing pretty well. It seems like a fairly sturdy shoe. So I may wind up getting more of these because the price seems better and they make my feet feel better just because I'm getting more of that pactal input from the ground. I don't know that I really care about any of the claims of it'll make your knees feel better because you're walking more naturally. Come on, people have been wearing shoes for a really long. Our bodies are probably adjusted to some of the things we do with shoes. So I don't know that I buy those claims so much. But anyway, I like these. They're inexpensive. They seem to be holding up pretty well and it's just a little bit of adjustment. I don't know. Let me know what you think. If you wanna subscribe, please do. If you feel like dropping a like because you thought it was a useful, no nonsense talk about minimal issues, hit me with a like. We'll see you next time. Who knows what the mix will be next time? Maybe it will be a rant.