11–20 of 188 posts
I don't like bikes, for medium distances I prefer to go by public transport/own transport
Unfortunately walking works only on moderate distances round-trip (you can go further if you go or return using something else)
Also...this is something I learned in high school after learning to drive...when I had to walk or be driven to places, I never paid much attention to what order the streets were in...and only after driving myself does their order become important in my mind. Also, the age of Google Maps makes remembering streets even more irrelevant...I think that was also a factor in the detective's skepticism of me being slightly confused about location. What can I say, Manhattan is a city that invites just walking around in a general direction.
This article makes some fantastic points. I find it sad that we force ourselves to have outwardly facing purpose to almost everything we do. Even if purposeless walking has the internal reason of more thought and creativity, we can't do that because there seems to be an over arching need to have an outward requirement to all activity (complete a project, get more exercise, fulfil some need, etc). This was driven home…
Is this common in whatever country you're in? If this happened where I went to school, there'd be words at the PTA meeting. Your principal is some kind of control freak. It doesn't sound normal at all.
I understand her.
As a busy person, nothing is more boring and time consuming than exercising "on purpose". I ride my bike everywhere, always use the stairs, do my own cleaning, laundry, groceries, and cooking, and constantly jump to conclusions. That oughta be enough.
Treating "Great White Men" of the past as exemplars of how life used to be is ridiculous. Advising people to get out and walk for the sake of walking is great, but I don't think we need to pretend that we've lost a great source of creative thinking that used to be more universal.
An odd bit of the history of walking I recently learned about: http://www.npr.org/2014/04/03/297327865/in-the-1870s-and-80s... > We may think of baseball as America's national pastime, but in the 1870s and 1880s there was another sports craze sweeping the nation: competitive walking. "Watching people walk was America's favorite spectator sport," Matthew Algeo says in his new book, Pedestrianism. http://en.wikipedia.o…
> Champagne was considered a stimulant. And a lot of trainers — these guys had trainers — advised their pedestrians to drink a lot of champagne during the race. They thought that this would give them some kind of advantage. The problem was a lot of these guys would drink it by the bottle. That definitely was not a stimulant to say the least.
Even in the city, walking without purpose can be done. During an unemployment spell in the 2008 meltdown, I did a lot of very long (2+ hour) walks with limited destinations in mind other than "Far North" or "Far South". I did them without soundtracks or texting. They gave me a much bigger appreciation for the city. Beauty doesn't just exist in the woods.
Cities are wonderful places for aimless walking! When I travel to a new city, my favorite thing to do is to leave 2-3 days at the beginning completely unplanned and just walk out the door of my room and start walking. On a recent visit to SF, I was waiting for a friend to finish with work. He invited me to stay and hang out at his company cafeteria. When I declined, saying I'd rather go wandering, he and his friends…
I get some good thinking in while commuting on my bike. Probably a similar effect.
"Even on those rear occasions when a modern undergraduate is not attending some such society he is seldom engaged in those solitary walks, or walks with a single companion, which built the minds of the previous generations. He lives in a crowd; caucus has replaced friendship."
- C.S. Lewis from the essay "Membership" in "The Weight of Glory"