A few members of the barefoot community and others who have stumbled onto this blog have emailed me privately. Very nice notes saying, "Hey, Jake, I like what you write, but your blog doesn't tell us about who you are, your other interests, or what you do for a living." Fair points. Flattering that anyone cares.
Hmm, where to start? Let's just say I'm a businessman/traveling salesman. Kinda ordinary. I do get to fly around to cool countries and places, but most of the time my travel looks like your average traveling salesman: go to airport, board plane, blah, blah, blah, taxi to hotel, emails, sleep. Wake up the next day and do it again. No sightseeing, hangin' on the beach, nothing like that. Just show up, close the deal, and bring home the bacon.
Please understand. I'm not a Rupert Murdock let-me-influence-the-world-through-privately-owned-media kind of capitalist, or a Karl Rove buy-a-Republican-seat type of capitalist. But I'm definitely pro-business. So how does a guy who wears a business suit to work end up running barefoot and eating like a caveman? My wife asks the same question. Here's the answer: I am in awe of nature.
I grew up on a cattle farm in Kansas. If there is a more powerful force than Mother Nature, I haven't experienced it. I've seen her take the life from a newborn calf, generate a tornado that killed 24 people, and calm a bull so kids could take turns sitting on his back. I've seen crazed dogs attack a baby pig, coyotes kill a whole coop full of chickens, and inner city kids giggle as horses ate apples right out of their hands.
So if the doubts and second-guessing of approaching middle-age have had any positive impact on my life, its reminded me that Mother Nature is in charge. She has had a pretty big influence on our development as a species, and there are always consequences when we come up with new, unnatural ways to make our lives easier.
Take shoes. Our feet have evolved over millions of years to be these shock-absorbing, balancing, ground-feeling tools, and we turn around and cover them with hard, squishy, absorbent, water-repellent shoes. And how does Mother Nature repay us? She tricks us into running on our heels, bouncing up and down, landing with bone-jarring force. She gives us aches and pains in our joints every time we run further than the end of the street. She invents shin splints.
How about food? For millions of years, Mother Nature provided our ancestors with an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of meats, plants and insects. We ate fatty mammoth meat, berries and seeds, and the occasional six-legged crawly thingy. It's only been the last several thousand years that humans have grown crops and eaten grains in significant portions. So Mother Nature is having a good laugh now. More than 50% of us are overweight or obese from eating corn-syrup-containing fast food, donuts, and soft drinks. Diabetes is sky-rocketing.
So maybe I'm a bit of an anomaly. I believe in the laws of supply and demand, small government, and free markets, but I fear and respect Mother Nature. She's clearly expressed her feelings to me about my running long distances in squishy shoes, and those pains and injuries led me to barefoot running. She's had fun playing with my energy levels, "regularity", and beer gut. That's why I've switched to eating fish, meats, vegetables and fruits. Almost zero grains and processed and unnatural foods.
Thank you to my friends at the Barefoot Runners Society for not kicking me out of the club after my disclosure that, for me, socialism is a state of mind, not a form of state. For everyone else, tune in soon to runbarefooteurope.blogspot.com where I attempt to justify living in a social-welfare-based country like Germany while working with an organization that only cares about cash flow and profits. It ain't gonna be pretty.
*This post printed here at the BRS and at www.runbarefooteurope.blogspot.com *
Hmm, where to start? Let's just say I'm a businessman/traveling salesman. Kinda ordinary. I do get to fly around to cool countries and places, but most of the time my travel looks like your average traveling salesman: go to airport, board plane, blah, blah, blah, taxi to hotel, emails, sleep. Wake up the next day and do it again. No sightseeing, hangin' on the beach, nothing like that. Just show up, close the deal, and bring home the bacon.
Please understand. I'm not a Rupert Murdock let-me-influence-the-world-through-privately-owned-media kind of capitalist, or a Karl Rove buy-a-Republican-seat type of capitalist. But I'm definitely pro-business. So how does a guy who wears a business suit to work end up running barefoot and eating like a caveman? My wife asks the same question. Here's the answer: I am in awe of nature.
I grew up on a cattle farm in Kansas. If there is a more powerful force than Mother Nature, I haven't experienced it. I've seen her take the life from a newborn calf, generate a tornado that killed 24 people, and calm a bull so kids could take turns sitting on his back. I've seen crazed dogs attack a baby pig, coyotes kill a whole coop full of chickens, and inner city kids giggle as horses ate apples right out of their hands.
So if the doubts and second-guessing of approaching middle-age have had any positive impact on my life, its reminded me that Mother Nature is in charge. She has had a pretty big influence on our development as a species, and there are always consequences when we come up with new, unnatural ways to make our lives easier.
Take shoes. Our feet have evolved over millions of years to be these shock-absorbing, balancing, ground-feeling tools, and we turn around and cover them with hard, squishy, absorbent, water-repellent shoes. And how does Mother Nature repay us? She tricks us into running on our heels, bouncing up and down, landing with bone-jarring force. She gives us aches and pains in our joints every time we run further than the end of the street. She invents shin splints.
How about food? For millions of years, Mother Nature provided our ancestors with an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of meats, plants and insects. We ate fatty mammoth meat, berries and seeds, and the occasional six-legged crawly thingy. It's only been the last several thousand years that humans have grown crops and eaten grains in significant portions. So Mother Nature is having a good laugh now. More than 50% of us are overweight or obese from eating corn-syrup-containing fast food, donuts, and soft drinks. Diabetes is sky-rocketing.
So maybe I'm a bit of an anomaly. I believe in the laws of supply and demand, small government, and free markets, but I fear and respect Mother Nature. She's clearly expressed her feelings to me about my running long distances in squishy shoes, and those pains and injuries led me to barefoot running. She's had fun playing with my energy levels, "regularity", and beer gut. That's why I've switched to eating fish, meats, vegetables and fruits. Almost zero grains and processed and unnatural foods.
Thank you to my friends at the Barefoot Runners Society for not kicking me out of the club after my disclosure that, for me, socialism is a state of mind, not a form of state. For everyone else, tune in soon to runbarefooteurope.blogspot.com where I attempt to justify living in a social-welfare-based country like Germany while working with an organization that only cares about cash flow and profits. It ain't gonna be pretty.
*This post printed here at the BRS and at www.runbarefooteurope.blogspot.com *
