Second Opinions - Vulpine Adaptive

Quick background: I'm a Masters road racer in New Jersey, so while not  spending much time on ice, I do ride through the winter.  I'm using products from both Foxwear and Vulpine Adaptive LLC, both companies which I found through The ICEBIKE site. 

The similarity between the two companies is that both Lou Binik of Foxwear, and Kevin Kinney of Vulpine, are very generous with their time and effort to make sure that their customer gets products which best fit the customer's needs, at very competitive prices.

I contacted Vulpine Adaptive in my search for "the better bootie", given that I train wearing cleated road shoes even in winter. Kevin didn't have booties in his product line, but rose to the challenge of modifying existing items to create a new bootie.

 I've been testing his prototype, and love it. It is laminated material with a pile lining, and a laminated neoprene sole. They breath better than all-neoprene booties, and have several design features which, while they look odd at first, are genuine improvements. They are slightly oversize, with velcro straps to snug them down - so I have the flexibility of either using them on both road and MTB shoes, or more importantly, fitting a second pair of booties (my old ones) inside, for really cold days. (24F-32F may not be super-cold air temperatures, but I'm out for as long as 3 1/2 hours.) The top zipper (most booties have rear zippers) lets me partially unzip them for added ventilation on rides which start cold, but warm up - again flexibility I haven't found elsewhere. 

If  you're interested, drop Vulpine an e-mail, because the booties are probably not yet listed on their website.

"Micheal Flack"