I put my shoes on in the morning, and to my knowledge tie them the same way I always do. I hop into my car, and make the 35-50 minute drive into work. Almost without fail, somewhere between leaving the parking garage and getting to the building where I work, my shoes come untied.
This by itself is not necessarily a disaster, but I just realized this morning, that’s the only time they come untied for the rest of the day. I engage in routine activity during the rest of the day, such as driving, walking around, etc., so I cannot think of why they are only coming untied in the morning about 40 mins-1 hour after I tie them. The only think I can think of is my feet are swelling or shifting in the morning, causing them to come undone.
I understand that the shoes coming untied could be a problem with the laces or my tying technique, but then shouldn’t the same thing happen when I tie them the second time?
Why is this happening? The fate of the earth depends on an answer (okay, maybe not, but I’m still curious).
Hate to see a GQ go unanswered … but this is a stumper.
Are your laces waxed? If so, perhaps they get a little stiff when the shoes are stored indoors (due to A/C and whatnot). Automobile A/C might keep them cool. In any event, maybe the laces won’t form a perfectly tight knot when the waxing is cool and stiff.
The above is, naturally, a WAG that only applies to waxed dress-shoe laces. But I do wonder if there’s some way that shoe laces in general – even unwaxed ones – can get marginally more stiff and therefore would tend to form somewhat looser knots.
An experiment to try: tomorrow morning, tie your shoes like normal, but then untie them at once and re-tie them all over again. I’m curious to see if that makes a difference.
Here’s another WAG - maybe the up and down motion of your foot on the pedals is causing the knots in the laces to loosen enough for them to come untied. Of course unless you have a stick shift this would only account for one foot.
Taking the shoes off involves loosening the laces. When you put them on, laces are not tight at the bottom. Initial walking distributes the bottom slack over the whole lace, resulting in laces loose enough to become untied. Re-tying reduces total slack to the point that shoes stay tied the rest of the day.
Xema’s explanation sounds the most plausible to me. Have you tried conciously removing all the extra slack from your laces when you first tie them in the AM? Try that and see what happens.
No. If my tiny little brain can remember, I will try the tie/retie thing.
Shoes are black leather dress shoes (fairly generic, like you’d expect any one of the thousands of suited drones like me to wear). Black laces that I assume are some sort of cotton/poly blend (they came with the shoes).
The car does not have a clutch. It is a fairly standard four door sedan, automatic transmission.
It is possible that the overpowering odor is causing the laces to curl away in disgust, but unlikely.
Hmmmm. I’m pretty good about adjusting from the bottom up, but do not make a science of it. When I can remember to do it in my groggy morning state, I will do so and report back.
well I had a similar problem for most of my adult life Then I found out I was tying my shoelaces backwards!
So the lace would come unbuckled as I walked. Then I would get irritated, and then I tied them very tight and they seemed to hold up for the rest of the day.
When you are done tying your shoelace–does the bow run parallel to you shoe or perpindicular to your shoe? I was tying mine so that the bow ended up parallel to the shoe–and as I walked it slowly came undone. Looking back this makes sense–you are slowing tugging on the bow each time you walk.
My girlfriend mentioned this to me–and showed me how she tied her shoes–and viola! The never came undone again by walking! Basically the main difference was when I crossed the one loop over the other. By going over the one loop–when I pulled it through the bow ends up perpindicular to my shoe. Problem solved!
44 years of tying my shoelaces wrong–what a :wally
Laces are the biggest scam since Amway. It’s velcro for me, baby.
[sub]Remember back in kindergarten when all the kids had velcro sneakers, and the cool thing to do was to cross the straps? Man, that was cool. I pointed out that this practice, though cool, effectively decreased the contact surface area, thus weakening the velcro bond. And somehow I was the one they made fun of.[/sub]
It might just be your feet changing shape. After the night, where your feet were horizontal, not being stepped on and having a different blood pressure, they might be a bit more arched. So, after about an hour of walking around, your feet have flattened out and assumed their daytime shape. Just a WAG.
This happens to me sometimes. I think it is because in the morning, I am too sleepy and tired and don’t put much energy into tying a good knot. Once I wake up a bit and she laces come undone, I can really put my back into it.
Okay, not extensive enough to be conclusive, but I woke up this morning, and intentionally tightened up the laces on my right shoe before tying, and just tied my left shoe the way I normally do (yes, I am performing some sort of scientific control on my shoes, I am disturbed).
The left shoe came untied about 5 minutes after getting out of my car, while the right shoes is going strong. We may have a winner.
By the way, I took a look at the new knot, and I’m not ruling that out, either. However, when I sat down this morning to try it, I realized that having about 5 minutes buffer in getting to work is not compatable with unteaching fingers trained to a lifetime of specific knottying.
Lessee, I bet when you tie them first thing in the AM you’re sitting down. When you re-tie them, you’re standing up.
Different angle of attack.
When seated, the bow tends to be closer to the inside edge. When one bends straight down, the bow ends up in the middle. Therefore, less likely to have a dangling end to step on.
You just made my afternoon - thanks!!