A nice article from the UK, promoting the rediscovery of a simple and healthy childhood pastime: walking barefoot...

Get fit for free: Barefoot walking | Life and style | The Guardian

Wiggling bare toes, now going off for my barefoot Sunday walk in the park,

~*Txim Asawl*~

It's awesone

I've looked at their site before, they give exact specifications for what foot length is for each size.

Also, nice article :)

A nice barefoot weekend
 

Due to mild weather (temps over 10°C) and the thaw melting away old, crusted snow and frozen slush, I was able to spent a whole weekend unshod:

• Friday: barefoot on my way to the office and in the office for the first hour of the work day, before the bosses arrived. Leaving the office barefoot after work was the starting point of an unshod weekend.
• Saturday: with temps reaching almost 15°C, I certainly went barefoot on my weekend shopping trip to a tobacconist, a drug store and my usual supermarket, without hassles. Later, in the evening I went to our RPG group barefoot in the rain.
• Sunday: The barefoot Sunday stroll in the park... greatly enjoying the different textures of a park, where the ground had turned from frozen to slightly muddy. Even though it was slightly cooler with temps around 6°C, it was a feast for bare soles.

As usual, I have put a detailed report and pictures in my barefoot diary on my web site.

And even though the temperatures have now just reached 0°C, I am planning to leave my apartment for the way to work in my bare feet, too. With dry grounds, it's not as dangerous as the times, when snow and slush were covering the pavement... and the weather forecasts are telling me about temperatures rising again to well over 10°C by mid-week... so, apart from the hours at work, my toes will wiggle freely and bare this week, too.

Wiggling bare toes with delight,

~*Txim Asawl*~

Awesome :)

Barefoot walking is probably the only thing making me look towards the spring. But before that.. MOAR SNOW.

I'm disappointed I never got to try having a proper walk on some snow :(

Another nice article on barefooting in the UK
 

This one from the Guardian also refers to Alison O'Neill, the barefoot shepherd from Cumbria and the joys of discovering barefoot hiking:

Bare your sole: the joys of shoeless hiking | Travel | The Guardian

There's a nice quote by Alison O'Neill in it, too, about our barefoot connection to Nature:

"It's kinder on the environment, too. When we walk barefoot, we tread a lighter path and show our respect for a natural world."

Wiggling bare toes,

~*Txim Asawl*~

Even though last week limited my barefooting due to those office dress code rules, I was able to take lots of barefoot steps before and after work, and even in the office, before the bosses and bigwigs arrived... the current mild weather with temperatures above 10°C (50F) is just ideal for barefooting - especially on rainy days, when I make sure not to miss a puddle.
:D

As usual, I put footnotes (pun very much intended) of these last few days onto my barefoot diary page, too.

Wiggling bare toes, now happily facing a fully barefoot weekend,

~*Txim Asawl*~

I have some vibram fivefingers and I love them! I'm on my second pair, but cannot wear them in the winter as it's too damp and cold so approach shoes have to be worn :(

txim_asawl, I never knew there was a name for having a slightly longer second toe! Mine are like that and I had to buy a size larger in my fivefingers for them to fit better. It's a shame I cannot have some custom made, imagine it would cost a fortune!

Well, Australia - already known for being a barefoot-friendly nation - has a new approach for making barefooting something positive in the executive office sector, too...

Train the brain to end the reign of all that pain and strain

In a clinical test, aimed at making executive staff "smarter, healthier and more productive", barefoot workout is one means of achieving that goal:

"Volunteers in the Melbourne study will take a battery of cognitive tests, learn how to deal with stress, manage conflict and work out barefoot in an ''intelligent'' gym where treadmills are banned and all exercise is designed to boost brainpower"

Sounds like a good pro argument for barefooting in the office. However, there is that little bitter aftertaste of thinking of office employees as units of production that need to be improved to work more effectively and productively - something that runs against the ideal of walking barefoot as a means to decelerate life, to get to relax and energize, to live more than merely function...

Wiggling bare toes, thoughtfully,

~*Txim Asawl*~

And yet another of those "charity" drives to bring shoes to the "poor barefoot kids"...:

Pine Crest travels to Jamaica, gives back - Broward High Schools - MiamiHerald.com

High school basketball player Traveon Henry of Fort Lauderdale's Pine Crest basketball team went to Jamaica - his parents' home - with his team for a series of games, and distributed more than 400 sneakers to the poor kids there.

IMO, one of the people commenting on this article got it just right:

"Did anyone bother to ask the barefoot children if they even wanted shoes?
Did anyone question whether there might be something more important they
might need? Shoes on a tropical island are not a necessity."

Wouldn't it be equally futile to have Avatars bring sneakers to the Na'vi?

Wiggling bare toes,

~*Txim Asawl*~

:facepalm:
Shoes are really not that good for the feet, they are going against millions of years of evolution - look at some of the world's best runners, about half are barefoot. An average ancient human was equal to some of the best humans today.

Indeed, evolution (or the divine spark, if you're more inclined to believe in that) has designed human feet to walk bare on all surfaces, be they soft, fluffy, hard or unyielding, too. And shoes came up a long time after mankind has been out there barefoot, really. The oldest shoes found currently known are from 8,000 to 7,000 BC (a pair of prehistoric sandals found in Oregon). I guess people came to invent those, as times began to get colder - and with temperatures dropping a lot below freezing, there is a point to protecting one's feet against the cold.

Returning to modern times, I have found another neat pro argument for barefooting:

http://refs.ahcuah.com/dn110117.gif

Wiggling bare toes,

~*Txim Asawl*~

Interesting. Oregon has quite the history with making shoes...

http://blog.makezine.com/bowerman1_large.jpg

Bill Bowerman, track coach for Oregon, here making shoes...

http://www.kicksandchicks.com/authen...-moon-shoe.png

Early Prototype

http://images.sneakernews.com/wp-con...eme-suns-1.jpg

Huge Franchise

http://www.gearculture.com/wp-conten...-free-5-v3.jpg

...And going back to where this all started.... all started in Oregon....

Hahahahaha :P

As for cold, that is part of the appeal of shoes like the FiveFingers :)