Barefoot myths

A thread on the barefooters.org mailing list sparked this post, in it people kept mentioning 'the barefoot myths' without actually telling what those myths where, even after several people asked them to explain themselves. In an effort to hopefully answer what those myths could be according to me, I replied, but as I was typing, I realized that allot of these myths are know by name to barefooters, but might use a bit more explanation to non-barefooters, so here's another post about it, joining the dozens of barefoot sites in spreading the information.

It started with the barefoot myths, which to me means myths like the one where people are convinced driving barefoot is illegal (it's legal in about every country I've checked, which includes most western European country's and the USA), or the myth that there's a health regulation banning barefoot customers from entering stores (mainly a myth in the US, there is no such health regulation).

The typical stuff where people are convinced there's some kind of law against barefooting, just because they never thought about checking what they where told while they where growing up.
While the mailing list I was posting this on was USA centric, I'm sad to say that at least the barefoot driving myth also lives in Belgium where I live.

Then there's the stuff that isn't really a myth, more of a bad understanding, like the glass and dirt on the street and tenderfoot arguments.
When I started barefooting more often, it would often happen that I visited my dad and as we walked into his backyard, he would give a warning that I would be walking into one of his dog's droppings, or onto some bugs, or onto a piece of glass. A warning that other people too, would often give me.
And every time again, my first thought was 'I haven't walked into dog droppings or glass for years, while my feet where blind inside their shoes, why would I start now when I can feel bad things on the ground even before I put my weight down?'.

There's several important parts to that bad understanding I think, the first part is that barefooters tend to know where they are putting their feet allot better than other people, simply because they've learned that they can't just smack down their feet and hope it wasn't on a pointy stone.

A barefooter learns to scan the ground for their feet before they put them down, and to feel the ground before they puts their weight on their foot, something that (just like driving) might take some practice at first, but quickly becomes an automation.
A non-barefooted person however is taught to rely on their shoes, as they are supposed to protect their feet and dampen sensations. There's another myth in there, but getting into that would double this post's length. The non-barefooter however soon learns that they can stamp down their feet wherever they want without much trouble, so they soon stop bothering with keeping an eye on the ground and before you know it they've stepped on something nasty.
I also know there's an interesting medical article related to foot puncture injury (which I can't find just now :( I'll keep looking though) that researched the amount of children that came into hospitals with puncture wounds on their feet (from stepping onto nails etc.). It found that while there where both barefooted and non-barefoot children brought in, the barefoot ones generally had lighter injuries, with only slight punctures that quickly healed, compared to the non-barefoot children who generally had more severe injuries that damaged muscles and even bones, probably because they didn't realize they had stepped on a nail until it was already deep inside their foot.

The second part to understand is that the streets aren't littered with glass, poop, rusty nails and nasty insects, most people just don't tend to notice. What they do notice is the one time in years when they do step into something nasty while walking along oblivious to the ground, but those few instances disrupt the monotony, so they get remembered due too selection bias.

A third part to understand is that a barefooters feet are also tougher than you'd think.
While those journalists who step out of their shoes and immediately start running across pointy asphalt for their 'barefoot experience' article might think otherwise, you can't just loose your shoes and stand on nails, just like about everything else, it takes some time.
If you start walking barefoot regularly (a few hours a day is a good start), then it won't take long before your feet notice, they'll think 'hey, I'm no longer inside a hot, sweaty and overprotective coffin anymore, I better get a little tougher!' and before you know it, your soles start changing.
First they will get a little harder, while you'll feel less of every pebble you walk on. After a while however, they get softer again, turning into a tough leathery skin that while it can resist most punctures, is still quite flexible. That flexibility is even part of it's defense against puncture and as an extra gift, your feet will be even cleaner looking than you thought, as the skin becomes less sweaty and the dust has a harder time sticking to it.
And after a while of regular barefooting, you can run across pointy asphalt and even broken glass isn't that much of a worry anymore, tweezers will get out the few shards that do get in or you can just wait for them to grow out, your feet have learned to defend themselves again.

Now with extra twitter

I finally gave in and made a twitter account.
I previously hesitated because it looked like another information overload tool, it always seemed like something people would use to send way to much updates (I'm in the mall now -> I found some nice shoes -> thinking of buying shoes -> didn't buy shoes after all, color didn't match -> drinking a coffee in the mall, people watching -> found a purse -> etc. :p )

But still, don't judge before you tried it (or at least investigated it) so when I recently found something for which twitter could be useful, I decided to give it a try (after being on the fence for half a week...), so you can follow me from http://twitter.com/gemakie.
At the least I'll be posting where I'm paragliding the next time I'm going out, as that's my reason for starting the feed in the first place.

Barefoot status quo

Currently I tend to walk around barefoot most of the time, only putting on shoes when going to work or when they are needed for safety.
The safety part probably won’t change, it’s mainly for ankle protection while paragliding (hard landings) and it’s part of the insurance rules, with good reason (similar to how wrist guards while skating are a good idea)
For the work part… I’m a consultant and at the moment I’m not yet up to the task of explaining my reasons to 1) my boss & 2) the customer I’m currently working with (which can change allot) & 3) the customers of the customers I’m working with (who often come past whatever table I’m working at). So for now, I’m considering shoes at work a necessary evil while I’m representing my company, similar to how the people in suits probably see their ties :p

Now my next goal would be to combine my jogging ‘thing to do’ with this one resulting in barefoot jogging, I’m guessing the jogging will hurt allot more than the barefoot running, even if it’s mostly on asphalt :D

As for reactions I got, most where neutral or good, surprised at seeing someone without shoes and/or asking about the reason behind it.
There where only a few negative ones though, and nothing too severe.

See more progress on: go barefoot more

43things.com

While searching for 'Stop eating sugar', I came upon a site called 43things.com.
It seems to be aimed at helping you achieve goals in live, something that I'm trying to do right now, so I'm gone give it a try.
I've also connected 43things to this blog, so hopefully there will be a bit more life in here again (just as the dust was settling again...)

And if your wondering why I was searching for 'Stop eating sugar', I'm suspecting my high sugar intake might have something to do with my general lack of energy. It came up at work kind of sideways when talking about the weight watchers diet and how eating sugar takes lots of energy to burn... considering I'm sitting in an office with three other guys, once does wonder if the metrosexual has firmly taken over :p

Pirate galaxy and some more flying

I'm still exhausted from last weekend, with mano mundo in the schorre behind my apartment and a weekend long street fair going on in front of my apartment, I didn't get much sleep...

On Saturday I also got the crazy idea to walk ~15km to my dad's house, not that hard on it's own since I used to walk allot when I was younger, but lately I've been interested in barefooting so I wanted to try those ~15km barefoot... I think I got about 12km's done before the prickly asphalt became to much to bare, still quite a bit for an unhardened foot I think. The final outcome however was that I had blister on one foot and had a hard time walking any distance barefoot across prickly surfaces like asphalt and most sidewalks around here.

Still, the next day was my first free flying day with ikarus and a bit of sore feet or exhaustion wouldn't stop me, so on Sunday around 5:30 am, my alarm rang. After several hours driving, first on my own, then in the ikarus van, we arrived at the "hetschenberg" (Volmarange) site. Most of us managed at least two flights and did some soaring, turning the 180m decent into flights of half an hour or longer, so getting up early had been worth it. Personally I did two flights, having quite a bit of trouble with the backward launches, something I had little chance to practice so far. Still, I can't wait till next flight day next Sunday.

Between all of this I've also found a new game to play, Pirate galaxy, for which I posted a review on everything2.

Buying a wing of my own.

Yesterday, after work, I made a side trip to ikarus, the paragliding school and club I joined earlier this year.
During march I had started preparatory training for paragliding, followed by my first basic stage from 6 to 10 April, teaching me the basics of how to handle and fly a paraglider.
So yesterday I went to buy paragliding equipment so that I could fly and practice without having to rent school equipment every time. Now I think I got lucky, as I managed to buy the same equipment that I had already been using during my stage, barely used and still fit to last me quite a while, I can't wait to test it.

I also signed up for the next stage already, which is the advanced stage in juli and will probably be signing up for two more in September, which is a week of safety followed by a week of thermal stage. Next to those there will also be ikarus fly days on most weekends, and I live right next to the schorre in Boom, which is great for ground handling paragliders, so I'm sure to be (training for) paragliding allot this summer.

Last night I also managed to upload a selection of pictures from the April stage, so if your interested, head over to the picassa web album.

The itch to draw, it's back again...

Every few months, it seems, I get an itch to draw things. From spaceships to abstracts, I've tried allot before, but every time so far, I loose my interest within a few months (one of my more annoying flaws I think).

The itch is back again... this time it's itching me to get back to working on my webcomic idea, whispering some new possibilities into my ear and holding the shadow of a grand story before me.

The trouble is not that I don't like to draw, completely the opposite actually. I would love to draw, crappy as it might be, but every time I've started on a webcomic or other project like it, I loose interest or get fed up with it a month or so down the road, after the itch has left again, the muse is looking at the job offerings and I can't get myself to sit down with a pencil in my hand anymore.

After a few cycles like that, it kinda gets predictable and depressing to look at...
But still, I've got a forgotten worlds universe and story lead from the last cycle that I'm considering restarting.

A few weeks ago I did a few calculations about the world in there and I almost dropped of my chair, the not-so-big world I thought it would be turned out to be gigantic.
Think of an advanced dyson sphere reaching out more or less to where in sol the asteriod belt is, now fill it with air, floating islands and enough soft field tech to keep the air presure constant and the solar radiation from being dangerous*. You could probably have thousands of different earth size populations living inside and still have room left.

* The trick would be to first get the air inside spinning, so all the air etc. molecules are orbiting the sun and not just falling into it. Rotate the air faster the closer it is to the sun and you should be able to have a constant gravity effect towards the outer shell. The soft fields would be a variation of force fields, but instead of thin, hard walls, they would be verry thick area's that you woulden't even feel, slowly pushing the various air masses arround. All powered by that massive powerplant in the middle called a star.

On slightly related news, the story 'The killer Queens of Morugon' got turned down by 365 Tomorrows.
Their response had the following to say.

In order to be effective, Flash Fiction needs to engage you in the action of the story from the first or second word, the writing needs to show primarily, and only tell where absolutely necessary. This is entirely telling, with the promise of a show at the end, and I'm afraid that doesn't work.

If you were to use this as your own back story, and write an action piece that takes place in this world, you'd have a much better chance of success. This could work as the buildup to a longer story, but I'm afraid it's just not suitable as a Flash piece.

They probably have a good point there, but it got me thinking of dropping flash fiction for now, getting rid of the 600 word limits and just writing until it's done on my next pieces.

Qframe weekend, slightly reworked

To start the life-blogging, I thought I'd start with the piece that got me started, slightly reworked to fit mirror talk.

The Qframe weekend has become a tradition at work, every year a part of the Qframe team, loaded with suitcases, snacks and beverages, loads into several cars to spend a weekend in not to far away locations. This time the area of Durbuy and the weekend from 27 to 29 march was our goal.

On Friday, we started by arriving between 18 and 19h in Kontich at our company's headquarters, with the plan to leave one full car at a time whenever enough people had arrived to fill one. On the other end of the ride, every group of new arrivals at the chalet (Le Bois des Rèves in Borlon, Durbuy) seemed to be impressed by the excellent accommodations, which also seems to be turning into a tradition. This time we could enjoy from an extensive vacation house, which was heavily restaurated with different bath- and bedrooms and an extensive kitchen, much more interesting however seemed to be the living rooms with a billiard, table football and several long tables for games, which every evening would be in use up to the early hours of the morning.

The 'pizza hut before departing' tradition had to be broken due to organizational reasons, so instead this was made up by sponsoring the local fries seller. Once everyone was full, the games began. Chapeau seemed to be the favorite this year, unlike gold seeker and where wolves from last year.

The following morning bigger adventure was on the horizon, after an extensive breakfast and a short traffic jam at the douches we headed to Durbuy Adventure, there we would be climbing across the rope course in the morning, followed by a mountain bike treasure search in the afternoon. Except for some short rain showers, the sun was also present, so I'm sure that everyone was exhausted but satisfied by the time we crawled back into the cars, ready to (after some refreshing) dive into the Durbuy nightlife, or at least to dine extensively in Côté Cour.

The mood was once again excellent this year, so after the usual nightly snacks and games for the night owls, it was already halfway to noon when we started breakfast the following day. Since it was the last day some of us really wanted to try out that Jacuzzi, unfortunately with limited success. So onwards to some bow shooting, the activity planned for Sunday, once again with Durbuy Adventure. Once there our big group was split up in two groups and it was remarkable how one group focused heavily on the point count and the competitive side while the other group was way more relaxed, shooting just for fun, once again a proof of the diverse characters at Qframe I suppose.

After a short sidetrack past the treasure chest (filled with carabiners) to finish the previous days treasure search, we finally headed back to the chalet to pack and return home again.

Repurposing this blog

I've been thinking a bit since I got asked if I would write another post for the work blog, and I'm thinking of breaking open the subject for this blog (mirror talk).

Until now, mirror talk was just to keep a record of my writing and story's, but it seems that there's another type of writing I could start with that I can't just link too, namely a real blog.
I shortly considered making a separate blog just to blog about non-writing stuff, but that seems a bit of an arbitrary split...

So in the future, I'll be blogging about different things... probably going the 'this is my boring life but I just want to share it' route that millions of bloggers before me have gone down... and to think I was so shure I would never go that way... :)

Anyway, it will hopefully get me writing, even if it's just about everyday stuff.
So, the post that got me writing are in dutch at the qframe blog under Pieter's blog (and yep, Qframe if the company I work at)

Silently into the night @ E2

I think somewhere below I made a promise, if a story that got send to 365 tomorrows didn't get published, I would post it to Everything2 so you could read it there.
'Silently into the night' didn't get published on 365 tomorrows...
I just did a slight rewrite of the story (the 600 words limit was gone, that tends to give more freedom) and posted it on E2 under the title 'Silently into the night'.
I guess this now also allows you to figure out my E2 nick, there's a few more posts on there from me, not fiction, but you might be interested in reading them anyway if your curious ;)

The killer Queens of Morugon submitted

Writing might have been more than an impulse idea after all, this morning while showering a new story idea popped into my head and I've been typing it up during the last few hours.
I first had a slightly jarring story of just about 600 words that read like a boring documentary without really making it clear that it was a documentary...
So, new document and a rewrite later, it got moved to a classroom area discussing the implications of that piece of 'history' and it seems to fit allot better... so good even that after a few rereads, spellchecks and their/there/they're checks, I've just submitted it to 365 tomorrows.
Now just to wait a month or two (as their 4-6 weeks estimate seems a bit underestimated) and you might be able to read it.
This is probably the fastest I've ever gone from having an idea to turning it into a publishable story and it's energising to say the least.

On a related note, a few days back I had another idea like this and I wrote down several keynotes for it, but I haven't gone back to flesh it out yet, guess I might do that soon. Currently titled 'Questions eternal'.

And to finish on a slightly sadder note, 'Silently into the night' got denied on 31 dec. 08, an interesting way to end the year to say the least...
They brought up some decent points in the mail though, so I can't really blame them.
The text after the standard mail part: 'I'm afraid this plot line has already been used in too many stories. Keep an eye on your use of there and their, as they've been interchanged in a few places in the story, however otherwise the writing is good. I'd encourage you to try something a little more unusual in terms of a plot, and write another story for submission; we'd be happy to review it.' Hopefully killer Queens of Morugon are unusual enough for them. :)