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The slow death of purposeless walking

bbc.co.uk

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Re: The slow death of purposeless walking

#81

Post by kencausey »

dodders wrote: post #80
harmonicon wrote: post #72

I really enjoys the mindless strolling the article talks about. Assuming most people work 9-5, you can only take such walks in the morning or at night. Unfortunately, taking a solitary walk in my (US) city at those times is simply not safe and goes against a multitude of general safety tips. The biggest problem is the dearth of other strollers. In addition to the lack of a pedestrian culture, US does not much of a co…

Where do you live in the US that is unsafe for walking?

I don't know harmonicon's situation but in my case the problem is a small town (metropolitan area now) that was built up without consistently installing sidewalks. It's difficult to walk more than a mile without having to compete with traffic. That is changing though, I believe all new development has to include a sidewalk and there is a slowly developing 'greenways' project that is building sidewalks of twice the normal width with some paths that are not next to streets.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking

#82

Post by dredmorbius »

pwenzel wrote: post #16
jrochkind1 wrote: post #2

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…

Amusing note from the NPR story: > 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.

Alcohol in various forms was thought to be beneficial. Wine was served to workmen and drunk by cyclists in earlier times. Not ... quite as effective as thought.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking

#83

Post by aw3c2 »

hrkristian wrote: post #57
phea wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 17% figure also includes dog walking. For myself, the midnight walks with my dog have been very rewarding. Giving me time to think about things and reflect on the day. Although there are a good number of dog owners who see walking their dog as a chore, which is not the right attitude to have for being mindful.

Walking our dog always felt like a chore growing up. I'd attribute it to being young, but it's now many years later, they have a new dog (both dalmatians) and walking him when visiting is still a chore. He's either on a leash (by law) pulling relentlessly, or he's free, needing vigilant watch. It's perfectly doable having him walk next to you, but he's still stressing out at everything and it seeps into your bones. M…

That's a badly mannered/behaved dog though, many dogs don't act like that.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking

#84

Post by debt »

milesokeefe wrote: post #74
debt wrote: post #68

Smoke a little weed before you go on a purposeless walk. Make sure you have at least a distance, like a mile, that you want to walk. Also, be sure you're in a dense urban environment. I guarantee it will be one of the most inspirational activities you can do for yourself. I probably do this once a week in SF, and it really dislodges my thoughts/stresses from the previous week.

>Smoke a little weed before you go on a purposeless walk. YMMV, for me that would be a paranoid, intellectually numb walk.

Ha, you just gotta smoke the right stuff. Sometimes that paranoia is what makes it interesting; reveals the contours of your mind. You get a sense of your personality you never had before.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking

#85

Post by debt »

epi8 wrote: post #69
debt wrote: post #68

Smoke a little weed before you go on a purposeless walk. Make sure you have at least a distance, like a mile, that you want to walk. Also, be sure you're in a dense urban environment. I guarantee it will be one of the most inspirational activities you can do for yourself. I probably do this once a week in SF, and it really dislodges my thoughts/stresses from the previous week.

> Also, be sure you're in a dense urban environment. Why?

Basically, anywhere with people; they're the source of the inspiration. Riding BART or any public transit typically would have the same effect. Take a purposeless bus ride while high for the people.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking

#87

Post by sztanko »

DougWebb wrote: post #70
sztanko wrote: post #65

Just in case if you would like to plan your walks better/discover new places, let me introduce you http://walks.io , my weekend project that does this for you by solving an NP hard graph problem of finding an optimal circular route.

Your site needs to state the region that it can handle. There's no feedback or error messages when I try to type addresses near me into the search box, and it doesn't say what "Nearest Station" means.

Apologies, I totally forgot to mention it works for England only.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking

#89

Post by jader201 »

themoonbus wrote: post #39

As some one who currently works from home, a "purposeless" walk is how I start and end my work day – I think of it as my "commute". Walking clears my head, gets me outside for a bit, and helps me separate my home life from my work life. For me, those walks might not be a necessity, but they are definitely not without purpose.

I take it you live in a climate not subject to the extremes of seasons?

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking

#90

Post by lnanek2 »

pwenzel wrote: post #16
jrochkind1 wrote: post #2

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…

Amusing note from the NPR story: > 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.

Well, not technically according to modern medicine. But it does remove inhibitions, which is sort of saying the same thing as letting you do more. The most common example being angry drunks who get upset over things they never would when they were sober, or noisy drunks who party harder. I'm not sure I'd be willing to walk 6 days straight without some alcohol to remove my inhibitions.
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