By Brady Halls
Most of us do it every morning. Some of us end up doing it several times a day. Such an everyday thing, yet none of us give any thought to it. No one talks about it. No one really cares about it.
Except one man.
And here's the best bit. He's the world expert on it and he lives right here in Australia. Melbourne in fact, and to date not one person has ever tried to challenge him on his expertise. Or maybe that should read: bothered to challenge him on his expertise?
He calls himself Professor Shoelace, and yes, he is a world wide authority on the tying of shoelaces.
When I first heard about him I thought this man had too much time on his hands. But I was just another ignorant Australian not appreciating the home grown talent that we had here. You see Ian Fieggen is well known around the world.
The Wall Strteet Journal has profiled him. Popular mechanics has printed his works and the American chat show Letterman has booked him to come over later in the year. Clearly the rest of the world is falling over their untied shoelaces far more than we Aussies.
Ian, sorry Professor Shoelace, has a web site showing the 17 different knots and 50 different lacing methods one can tie your shoes up with. I must say some look rather impressive.
He gets over six thousand visitors a day to the site which prompted him to take it one step further.
Remember than Seinfeld episode where Kramer wrote a coffee table book on coffee tables that opened to be a coffee table? The Professor has done the same with laces. A shoelace book on shoelaces which has shoelaces on the cover.
I still like velcro.
