For work around the house, I bought a pair of $10 "garage sale" Oboz shoes at REI that were in OK shape, but that I wouldn't mind trashing. The returned merchandise tag on these shoes read something along the lines of, "Customer states laces broke." Huh? Well, sure enough, these shoes shredded two more sets of heavy duty cord style laces in very short order, just from normal tying and daily use.

As sort of a last ditch effort to validate my $10 bargain find, I took a shot on these laces. That was a year and a half ago, and amazingly, they're still going strong!

For the first few months, I went through the motions of tightening/loosening these laces via the included pinch clamp. After that, I just tucked the loose ends between the laces and the tongue, and left 'em tight. Since then, I don't touch them much -- every now and then the loose ends get a little wild and get loose, and need re-tucking. Never while I'm wearing them, though: they come loose when taking off or putting on the shoes.

I can't explain why these elastic laces aren't being ripped apart by the same metal eyeloops that killed off the traditional laces, since they're under constant tension and probably even move back and forth a little as my foot flexes. But they haven't. They're comfortable. My shoe fits perfectly -- never too loose or too tight.

So I'm going to stick with them. And the spare set of laces I bought to replace these elastics when *I Knew* they would inevitably fail? They're here in my drawer, waiting to be called upon, but it's not looking like they're going to be needed anytime soon.