MyChacos: design your own sandals

Picture yourself: You are bushwhacking through the hot, humid jungles of central Bolivia in search for the endangered Bolivian Gray Titi Monkey. The Mosquitoes are thick and the Titi sightings are few. Walking through a shallow swamp the bottom mud has the consistency a mixture of baby food, both before and after digestion. Wearing your favorite sandals you go to take a step. Lifting your foot up out of the primordial ooze the strain of the gooey mud fights the pull from your weakened bug bitten legs. Your leg muscles fight the viscous nature of the mud. Then a unnerving feeling occurs when your foot suddenly is released from the clenches of the unsavoury darkness below. Then you realize what has happened. The strap on your favorite pair of sport sandals has detached from the sole. This unfortunate series of events has rendered your sandals as useful as that herbal bug repellent you doused yourself in before your departure.

I have had a similar experience with my sandals. Instead of the depths of a South American country it was retreating from a chilly lake in Northern Ontario after a post trail-sauna dip. Then I heard about this sandal that actually has the webbing run through the sole of the sandal and up and over your foot. Ingenious I thought, "what are these sandals called" I asked. Chacos was the answer.

Now Chacos has come up with MyChacos, a design your own sandal program. Now anyone can design their own custom pair of Chaco sandals.

You pick the style Z1, ZX1 Z2, ZX2. After that decide on your footbed, sole, and webbing colours. You can even make straps longer or shorter then depending on your preference. With 200 colours
of webbing you can feel confident you will be the only person rocking a Tidal blue webbing with a Vibram Unaweep sole under a brown footbed on a Z2 sandal.

Unaweep Vibram sole

Tidal Blue

What does Captain America wear on a casual Saturday hanging at the cottage?

Some of the webbing options

There are a seemingly endless assortment of different options available and for $125 US plus shipping, well worth the investment, in my opinion. Sorry to all my Canadian friends but to order these custom Chacos you must have a US credit card as well as a US shipping address. So call in a favour to your aunt Lucy who spends her winters down in Florida and get her to order you a pair.

A big thanks to Chacos for the use of their photos and some examples of sandals created using the MyChacos program.

And you thought I was being cheeky with the Bolivian Gray Titi Monkey

Jeremy