Ah, memories! Yeah, the bit with the pliers is exactly how I always had to do it, even with the old Binda Extras. The sprinters and kilo guys carried the pliers -- or vice grips, if you were a hardman -- to the races to tighten the straps up. Never heard of any broken metatarsals from that trick, but I always expected it.
I can't really imagine using doubles on the road. A real pain no matter how you route them, I'd think.
In the mid to late eighties, the SoCal kilo guys were into bolting their shoes to the pedals. They had problems with shoes coming apart, and some were even pulling their feet out of their shoes, so they started adding toe straps around the shoe. Then some genius realized that if they used toe straps they didn't need the bolts. Full circle kind of deal, eh? But I'm still waiting for the day when I see a hipster street fixie with bolted-in shoes.