Pedestrian Shops Blog

The Pedestrian Shops opened 40 years ago as the complete walking shop. We featured walkwear, including comfortable shoes, socks, and a variety of other apparel, as well as walkware, including shoe inserts, walking sticks, pedometers, handbags, luggage and a variety of other gadgets and gizmos. In addition there was walkwhere, information about where to walk, including guidebooks to local and regional trails along with a variety of titles about the benefits of walking.

My daughters, who are responsible for more and more of the company’s management, and some of our other longtime employees, started in on me last year about celebrating our heritage and reemphasizing walking. “Dad, that’s who we are,” they said.

Short and long, when you visit the downtown Boulder Pedestrian Shops you’ll find a large selection of walking sticks for both street and trail, a wide variety of insoles and other shoe inserts, high-SPF sun hats, books about walking and maps of local open space and trails, and much more, including great bags to carry it.

We haven’t neglected the shoes, either. Now more than ever, our stores feature the largest collection available of the world’s most comfortable brands of shoes.

Here on our website, www.comfortableshoes.com, you’ll find our complete selection of shoes for walking, hiking, and running.

-Richard

I met my daughter at the Phoenix airport for a spring break adventure.

The next morning Zoe and I were picked up at our hotel at 7:20 a.m. and driven to a small airport. I was wearing the Patagonia Release. Zoe was wearing the Keen H2. By 8:15 we were on a small airplane on our way to the Havasupai Indian Reservation on the edge of the Grand Canyon. Shortly thereafter we found ourselves in a small helicopter on the way down to the Colorado River.

Our next couple of hours was spent on a small boat with our Havasupai guide and a family of three from Portland. The bearded father reminded me of my brother Jeff. Their teenage Chinese son was wearing Vibram Five Fingers, which have dramatically increased in popularity at our shops during the past year. Going back up to the rim, as the helicopter climbed and climbed the 4,000 feet, I could only think of reading “The Little Engine That Could” to Zoe, 18 years before.

The afternoon included hiking, Havasupai cuisine and a walk on this crazy horseshoe-shaped glass bridge that the Indians and a guy from Taiwan built 4,000 feet above the canyon. I walked a couple of feet out on it but Zoe went all the way around.

The return trip to Phoenix was beautiful -- the sun was setting over the canyons and desert. With dust from the canyon still visible on Zoe’s Keens and my Patagonias, we agreed that adventures are always better in comfortable shoes.

-Richard

It is amazing how much we take walking for granted. Walking upright is one of the most obvious traits that separates human beings from the rest of the animal kingdom. But, that puts humans on only 2 feet, instad of 4, or even more if we're talking about insects. So, naturally, it should be something that has been talked about over the ages. We think it is important too, which is why we are in the business of providing the World's Most Comfortable Shoes!

Quotes:

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking. - Friedrich Nietzsche

If you are seeking creative ideas, go out walking. Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk. - Raymond Inmon

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me. - Fred Allen

Today I have grown taller from walking with the trees. - Karle Wilson Baker

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
- Robert Frost, Two Roads

It is not talking but walking that will bring us to heaven.
- Matthew Henry

To find new things, take the path you took yesterday.
- John Burroughs

A fact bobbed up from my memory, that the ancient Egyptians prescribed walking through a garden as a cure for the mad. It was a mind altering drug we took daily.
- Paul Fleischman, Seedfol

I was the world in which I walked.
- Wallace Stevens, Tea at the Palaz of Hoon

Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going to fast - you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.
- Eddie Cantor

Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.
- Steven Wright

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring — these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
– John Burroughs

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.
- Aldous Huxley

To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.
Chinese Proverb

Of all exercises walking is the best.
- Thomas Jefferson

Don't think you're on the right road just because it’s a well-beaten path.
- Author Unknown

The place where you lose the trail is not necessarily the place where it ends.
- Tom Brown, Jr.

Good walking leaves no track behind it. - Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching

Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind. Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility.
- Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.
- Thich Nhat Hanh

Let no one be deluded that a knowledge of the path can substitute for putting one foot in front of the other. - M. C. Richards

All paths lead nowhere, so it is important to choose a path that has heart. - Carlos Casteada

All walking is discovery. On foot we take the time to see things whole. - Hal Borland

It is good to collect things; it is better to take walks. - Anatole France

Before supper take a little walk, after supper do the same.
- Erasmus

It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end. - Ursula K. LeGuin

A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world. - Paul Dudley White

When one walks, one is brought into touch first of all with the essential relations between one's physical powers and the character of the country; one is compelled to see it as its natives do. Then every man one meets is an individual.
- Aleister Crowley

It is solved by walking.
- A Latin proverb

I have two doctors, my left leg and my right. - G. M. Trevelyan

If you want to know if your brain is flabby, feel your legs. - Bruce Barton

If you look for the truth outside yourself,
It gets farther and farther away.
Today walking alone, I meet it everywhere I step.
It is the same as me, yet I am not it.
Only if you understand it in this way
Will you merge with the way things are.
- Tung-Shan

Weston the Walker: He popularized Pedestrianism

Edward Payson Weston, 1839-1929, set out to prove walking could actually make a man "improve with age and never go stale." By age 90, he had made his point.

Along the way, Weston caught the public fancy, as he lead the world at pacing off the miles. In 1861, at age 22, Weston set out to walk from Boston to Washington in ten days. He missed his mark by half a day, but the nation embraced him.

As Weston's treks increased, with Weston walking day and night across the country, he gained the nickname "The Yankee Clipper." In conjunction with his crosscountry walks, Weston gave lectures and appeared at county fairs.

Weston the Walker's fame grew, and by 1871, the world saw Weston break all records by walking 400 miles in four days, 23 hours, and 32 minutes. That's 80 miles a day!

After a tour of Europe in 1879 where he beat England's best walker, "Blower" Brown, the world's most notable pedestrian promised to walk 50 miles a day for 100 days. He did so, capping each day's walking off with a lecture.

Throughout his life Weston the Walker was a professional pedestrian of the highest order. At 70 he broke a world record by walking 512 miles in 12 days. At 74 he walked 1500 miles from New York to Minneapolis in 60 days. Three hundred thousand showed up in Minnesota to cheer him.

Edward Payson Weston died in his sleep at 93, after having given proof, as he once said, "that the race is not to the swift."

Weston the Walker:

Robert Barclay: 1000 miles in 1000 hours

Phenomenal walking feats reached their golden age in England during the 18th and early 19th centuries, when walking had its popular super heroes, much as sports do today. One of these was a rugged gentleman farmer, Robert "Captain" Barclay, who in 1779 flourished in a society dedicated to sports and gaming. At 6-feet, 3-inches tall and 200 pounds, this strapping strongman and fistfighter amused the gentry with such stunts as raising 1,176 pounds, and once lifted a 240-pound man in the palm of one hand.

But it was as a pedestrian that Captain Barclay truly excelled. A man who loved to make wagers on his skills, in 1801 he won the equivalent of $13,000 by hiking the 90 miles between the cities of Hull and York.

Six years later, Barclay challenged the world-champion walker of his time, Abraham Wood, in a contest for the greatest distance travelled in 25 hours. The walking race started from New Market on October 12, 1807. Wood shot out of the New Market like a streak. Six hours and 40 miles later, he collapsed, while Barclay stepped right along at a steady 6 mile-per-hour slip to become a local hero.

Barclay now felt he needed a bigger challenge. The idea of walking 1000 miles in 1000 hours caught his imagination.

It had been attempted, but without success. So June 1, 1809, was set as the date. A half-mile track at New Market was the place. Barclay placed a $15,000 bet on his ability to carry off 42 days of continuous walking, with tiny fractions of sleep between miles. Betting fever shot up, thousands came to the course, and about $2.5 million was wagered by the crowds.

Barclay took of around the track dramatically on the stroke of midnight. Just before the event, he'd eaten four large meals of beef, fowl, mutton, and bread, not to mention draught upon draught of strong ale and port.

After the first weeks of winds, dust, and rain, Barclay was in constant pain. Leg cramps gripped him severely. A toothache struck adding to his misery. More rains fell. Barclay wa in an excruciating fog.

Doubt swept the ranks of those who had put money on the fabled man of iron, as Barclay's condition became more obvious by the day. He limped, he groaned and began to waver unevenly in his courses around the track. things would worsen.

Eight days before the end, Barclay was forced to be lifted by others from his chair onto the track. Four days before the finish, he could no longer eat. He cried with pain.

Then on, on the 40th day, Barclay suddenly took on an unbelievable new glow of strength.

On the last night Newcastle was a dense throng of spectators. Barclay darted across the finish line, then was off to get a hot bath with spring still left in his step, although he was 32 pounds lighter.

Barclay spent another 45 years on his feet, eventually to die from the kick of a horse.

Robert Barclay:

This story begins in 1927. A young man working in a New York City barber shop had just finished shining and putting new laces in a customer's shoes. Al Capone, the visiting gangster from Chicago, climbed down from the shine stand, smiled, and handed 23 year old Jack Hughes a five-dollar tip. At that moment, unbeknownst to Hughes or Capone, a legend was born.

Perhaps it happened because of a generous tip; after all, it was the roaring twenties, and a shine went for a nickel. When asked, Hughes was quoted as answering: "It just sort of happened. I got to twiddling Capone's old laces around my fingers. That's how the ball got started." Over the following 53 years, the ball grew and grew as the famous and the not so famous added their laces - Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Joe DiMaggio, and Sonja Henne among them. Jack Hughes became famous due to both his ever-growing ball of shoe laces and the long-winded but precise slogan he made famous during the forties: "Pedal habiliment artistically lubricated expeditiously with luminosity and ambidextrous facility for the infinitesimal renumeration of .15 cents per operation."

Jack Hughes died in October 1980. However, his legend lives on, in the now 200-plus-pound, nearly 3-foot-wide ball of shoe laces, the world's largest.

The Pedestrian Shops and Boulder Community Hospital thank you for "Tying Yours On," and your tax deductible donation. Boulder Memorial will use your donation toward the costs of design and construction of a "state of the art" walking track system to be built on their grounds.

A multi-specialty team from Boulder Memorial Hospital is ideally situated for the walking track, on the western edge of the City of Boulder. Its grounds include both expansive level areas as well as many acres of Boulder's beautiful mountain backdrop. The track will be comprised of a network of paved paths of increasing demand, as to the distance and grade, assuring the system's appropriateness for everyone from the still hospitalized cardiac or stroke patient to the serious athlete involved in aerobic conditioning. The track will include "Burma-Shave" style signage designed to assure that a given walker takes the route most appropriate for his or her specific needs, as well as providing information including distance walked, distance to go, grade, and walking and health tips.