On Sat, Jan 9, 2010 at 11:29 AM, ivp wrote: >> grit that was ordered for our County has been diverted > > The story on our news tonight was that the roads have been done > but pavements haven't, meaning slippery times for pedestrians (cue > interviews with broken leg owners). It got me wondering whether > anyone sells spiked shoes. There's footwear for every other kind > of weather, would surpise me if some enterpreneur hadn't had a go Orienteering shoes have metal studs on the bottom - designed to give you grip on wet wood, which is what you often get underfoot in forests. Work very nicely for running on ice. I've also got some metal studded overshoes with rubber straps a bit like http://www.climbers-shop.com/255899/products/Petzl_Spiky_Plus_Antislip_Sole.aspx - they seem to be fairly widely used in towns in the Austrian Tyrol. For snow though you don't need those though, ordinary off-road shoes or walking boots with rubber studs give you plenty of grip by digging into the snow. The thing is, the pavements which haven't been cleared seem perfectly fine in walking boots - it's only where people have cleared resulting in patches of ice which seems to be a problem. It is all rather pathetic how people in this country react to a little bit of snow. To get to a doctor's appointment on Tuesday I went on all the uncleared back roads to avoid the huge traffic queues of people being pathetic on the main roads (which were clear enough to drive relatively normally. That's in a normal 2WD car. Don't know why everybody calls it "worst" either - IMHO it's the best winter I can remember, today will be the 6th day in a row I get to go XC skiing, and hoping to break my personal record of skiing 9 days in a row (that was in Norway!) Chris -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist