[Paddlewise] Teva shoes

While the ice is melting and the days are getting longer, I'm slowly 
starting to get my kayaking gear in order. I always spend a couple of 
weeks in May/June on Corsica, so I have two months to get ready. Most 
preparations take mere days (groceries, loading my battery, collecting 
books...) but one cannot start soon enough on finding _shoes_ for the 
trip. Teva is my brand of choice - not that they're any good, but their 
comparators are even worse.

Their sandals are true marvels - as long as you don't kayak. I've seen 
more than one kayaker stuck with his sandal behind a footbrace, and 
Teva's sandals do not give way. You'll drown before you slip out of a 
sandal. I guess Teva considers that a feature.

I used to love their low-profile watershoes: The proton 1 and 2. Number 
3 is a total disaster. Instead of molding the sole to the shape of a 
foot, they seem to have cut this one simply from an inner tube. To make 
it adapt to your foot, they  used the thinnest rubber they could find. 
You might as well wear socks. You might _better_ wear socks actually. In 
its infinite wisdom, Teva has created the upper shoe from two layers of 
thin plastic. Only the top layer has some sort of drainage holes. The 
space between the layers is now a perfect trap for sand: It streams in 
but never streams out. The proton 3 has a lifetime of 1 day.

Yet another shoe, the Gamma Professional, has run for a record time of 
_two_ years. The first series was perfect; on the second you just had to 
cut away a ton of nonsense to get the same perfect shoe. Not a bad 
effort, considering.

Last years shoes (it might have been Sunkosi, but they've deteriorated 
beyond recogition now) took about 3 hours of sewing to prepare for use. 
I had to close several gravel-inlets and move the straps to a useful 
position. Teva should relearn that straps have an actual purpose apart 
from looking fancy.

It seems they _have_ relearned their craft. I've laid my hands on a pair 
of Lava Falls that seem to be good watershoes once again. In my 
combination of delight and despair, I decided to stock up. I found one 
extra pair in my own country (Yeaj!) and then expanded my search to 
Europe, Canada, Australia and the United States before locating two more 
pairs. Not exactly the right color, and a little smaller than I'd hoped, 
but at least they're _shoes_, not pathetic excuses.

I have effectively cornered the global market on Teva Lava Falls, size 
10.5 and 11, and the global market on usable outdoor shoes in general. 
If anyone wants to buy a pair for 10 times the price, then know that 
they're NOT for sale. They're _mine_!

Happy paddling, in whatever might be left in the stores.
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