poor feetsies

[chloe_dancer]

i will be bringing a spray bottle w/ lemon juice/water or vinigar/ water mixture for my hands and feet....playa dust is very base and not too nice on these parts.

[liebling]

great idea chloe.

we always bring along a foot soak tub, baby oil, special feet lotions, bag balm and nice puffy clean socks to pamper our feetsies while there.

did you have a vinegar foot bath at the dreamcatcher camp?

gael

[chloe_dancer]

no, i was at trashistan....no foot tubs......we were lucky we had shoes!!!!!

[diane o'thirst]

My feet didn't suffer, they're fine — at least the soles are. Soft and alive I did, however, tweak my ankle from stepping in a Playa divot on Sunday I, and couldn't fit my ankle into my Ugg boots, so I wore my clogs all week. There's a line of dead skin where they didn't cover. Next year I'm getting soft medium-height mocs and enclose my feet and ankles in sheepskin

What really suffered were my hands. My thumbs and index fingers are
<i>covered</i> in alligator skin =O Thumbs are painfully cracking and peeling, particularly at the joints. It's easy to wear light mocs and socks under sandals but are you gonna go everywhere wearing gloves? If you're out there, your hands are in contact with dust no matter what — and who keeps 100% awareness of where their hands are and what they're doing at all times?

[Tiara]

My foot routine:

Twice a day wash feet with Dr. Bronners soap. Then apply bag balm and put on a clean pair of socks.

Avoid going barefoot or wearing open sandals like tevas without socks.

When I do go barefoot, I make sure to soak my feet in water with lemon juice squeezed in as soon afterwards as I can.

Before I go, I buy several multi-packs of cheap ankle-length socks. The decent looking ones I wash to re-use. The truly disgusting ones go in the trash when I get home.

[sunrise]

I have heard that there are two trains of thought on the playa foot syndrome. ONE, being that you must take care of your feet by keeping them clean, aloe, oil, vinegar, or whatever else it takes, etc. etc.; and TWO, being that going barefoot on the playa with only the playa dust on them will keep them just as healthy. Has anyone heard of the second one, and if so, where can I get more information about it? Personally, I'd rather feel the playa beneath my feet, and if this indeed is an option, I'll be going barefoot next year....

Peas B w/U

[Kilmore]

Hmmm barefoot on the playa. As fun as it is, I have to personally recommend against it. Most of the time I wear boots, changing my socks twice a day, and no problems at all. In 2001 I did nothing but sandles and/or barefoot, and my feet were wrecked for a couple of weeks after... the playa dries out the skin, causing it to crack, and if you go barfoot, you end up with little small rocks of playa up in those cracks, further exasperating the whole experience. Hard to get them out too, 'cause as soon as you try to wash you feet, the skin swells from the moisture and closes around those chunks. I suppose you can do the barefoot thing if you take the time to treat your feet daily, but I found that is just a whole lot of time I would rather be doing something a bit more enjoyable.

Also, unless you go barefoot a lot and have a nice leather texture already built, the playa is not exactly comfotable on bare feet.

This year, I wore sandles one day, and boots the rest, even in the one day I could see the damage starting, so went back to boots immediately. No problems with playa foot at all.

--Kilmore

[nymphgonebad]

i wenr barefoot a lot this year - ended up with nasty playa feet once i got home. however, i didn't try any of the natural remedies.

next year......

[precipitate]

> TWO, being that going barefoot on the playa with only the playa dust on
> them will keep them just as healthy.

Since it's the direct contact with alkaline playa dust that causes the
cracking that makes playa foot so unpleasant, I'd say that's bunk.

[Skitzy]

i will be bringing a spray bottle w/ lemon juice/water or vinigar/ water mixture for my hands and feet....playa dust is very base and not too nice on these parts.

This is a great idea Chloe. Since our bodies need a PH balance that is in between the scale of acid to alkalie, the way to combat Alkaline is with acid and vsa vrsa. I'll have to remeber this for next year.

I found that keeping my feet in shoes with socks, and changing the socks morning and before I went out at night worked fine for me this year.

The only thing that suffered, and still suffered for a few weeks after was my Coccyx bone (the last bone of the spine below the Sacrum) from my dang bicycle seat and so much riding.

[nymphgonebad]

i will be bringing a spray bottle w/ lemon juice/water or vinigar/ water mixture for my hands and feet....playa dust is very base and not too nice on these parts.

This is a great idea Chloe. Since our bodies need a PH balance that is in between the scale of acid to alkalie, the way to combat Alkaline is with acid and vsa vrsa. I'll have to remeber this for next year.

I found that keeping my feet in shoes with socks, and changing the socks morning and before I went out at night worked fine for me this year.

The only thing that suffered, and still suffered for a few weeks after was my Coccyx bone (the last bone of the spine below the Sacrum) from my dang bicycle seat and so much riding.

i brough my trek with me this year and i confess that i never rode it once - even though it has a comfy seat, for that very reason.

open invitation: anyone suffering from a sore coccyx ( which is the only part of the vertebrae that doesn't move - it's fused, hence the soreness )
can come get it healed by me at camp bobygeek. if i'm not there, mona, james or any of the other healers can help you out . james was one of my crushes this year - one of my favorite moments at bm was sexually harrassing him into taking his clothes off. the only other experience in my camp that i enjoyed so thouroughly was when, after the apoccolyptic dust storm on sun evening, my friend quincy used a sledge hammer and and a case of canned diet coke for batting practice.

[Remark]

I'm probably one of the lucky few who can go barefoot all week with no cracking. My secret? About a month before playa time i start taking really good care of my feet (IT puts on the lotion!). The gold bond lotion works well for me and bag balm in the socks at night. On the playa, a good foot wash at night and more bag balm. Check in the morning for cracks or missed dirty spots (hic). This was my second year going barefoot. my first year I tried going barefoot, but by the second day they were cracking.

Funny thing, you spit fire while riding a zip-line naked and people cheer and say do it again. You go barefoot and people warn you about how dangerous it is.

[J]

open invitation: anyone suffering from a sore coccyx ( which is the only part of the vertebrae that doesn't move - it's fused, hence the soreness )
can come get it healed by me at camp bobygeek.

how sore does it have to be? Can I just pretend it's sore?

[jennnk]

i used to do a lot of black & white darkroom work, and silly me didn't wear gloves & got stop bath (read: HIGHLY acidic) on my hands all day every day. this caused cracking, dryness, redness, etc. the cure: smear vaseline (or neosporin or thick lotion) on them - like a THICK layer - before going to bed. then put socks over your hands & go to sleep. your hands will be nice and soft in the morning. my mother started doing the same thing for her feet (she has naturally nasty feet), and it works wonders.

[warrior queen]

The funny thing is that my feet were fine in flip flops. I did however spend a lot of time pouring lotion all over them. But the one time I wore sneakers I wore fishnets, doh! Needless to say the fishnets dug huge gashes in the back of my heels. Now I have blisters on the back of my feetsies that come back every time I wear shoes with heels! Looks like I have no choice but to stick to flip flops, no complaint here!!