Keen Shoes and Shoe-goo

A few months ago I was at the REI on 6th and Lamar, and I happened upon a pretty nice sale. They had a ton of lightly used shoes available for super cheap and I managed to find two pairs of Keen shoes that I really liked. The low-top pair was $8 and the boots were $20, so I saved around $110 off the retail price! They did have a little bit of wear (and a fair amount of caked-on mud) but they are really comfortable. Keen shoes are pretty good, but on these two pairs the soles were separating from the mid-soles. Kind of annoying, but easily remedied by applying some good ol Shoe-goo. A tube of this stuff is only about $4 and works great. I used a popsicle stick to get the glue well into the separation, then I smashed the shoe under a heavy bag of topsoil (I was in the garage) and left it overnight. The next day, the shoe-goo was dry and the sole was good to go!

The shoes came with plain brown laces which were ok but I wanted to get some old-style hiking laces for the lo-tops and then a more modern pair of hiking laces for the boots. I had to get rid of an older pair of shoes to make room for these new additions but I think it’s a nice trade.