Another hot tip

In my earlier entry, How to handle a hot parking lot, I managed to leave off another tip for for walking on hot surfaces. Here it is:

3. Walk on the edges of your feet. If you are used to shoes, you may not think about the fact that you can walk more on the edges of your feet. If you try that with shoes, the hard sole automatically makes you walk completely flat in the left/right sense. However, with bare feet you can put a bit more weight on the edges, leaving the other edge slightly up in the air and therefor not touching the hot surface. If there are no lines or parked cars, you can walk a bit on the outer edges of your feet until they feel hot, and then switch to the inner edges for a bit. This will often give your soles just enough cooling to easily handle the hot parking lot.

Another technique is to run. While running, your feet spend a lot more time in the air, and the speed can increase a cooling breeze. I won’t do this, though, for a parking lot, particularly when the other techniques work so well. It allows any spectators to confirm for themselves that bare feet are bad; I’d rather leave them with the idea that bare feet are much more robust than they think.