two of the pedestrians, edward weston and o'leary. they weren't very good at it.ton walked from new york to san francisco in about 1907 and, again, sold one of these pamphlets along the way. he did another walk from new york to minneapolis and sealed a pamphlet. the major sponsor was the packard car company which said you could go 300 miles a day. he did not like cars. weston did not like cars just because he felt they made people walk less. ironically, weston in 1927 was crossing a street in manhattan and wasá left crippled and never walked a day again and died at the age of 90 two years later. o'leary would stage walks. he would challenge the fastest runner to run around the bases twice faster than he could walk around the bases once. he would pass a hat collecting nickels and dimes. this is basically how he funded his retirement. in the book i have a scene where he imagined -- he performed between the white sox and the a's in 1927 and i imagine the players in the dugout who were born well after that, they had never heard of it. this olds man walking around the

there was a guy named edward weston, and he was a door to door book salesman in boston.he made a bet with a friend in the autumn of 1860 on the outcome of that year's presidential election. westen bet lincoln would lose. spoiler alert. lincoln wins. so weston, to fulfill the terms of the bet, it was an unusual bet, the loser had to walk from boston to washington in ten days and arrive in time to see the inauguration. now, this was a really arduous undertaking in 1861. the inauguration was in march of 1861. i'm sure it's no walk in the park today either. i wouldn't recommend taking the interstate. he walked from boston. set out february 21st. of course, the roads were terrible. it was the middle of winter. outside the major cities, there were no paved roads at all. in some places you barely had no more than a dirt path to tell you where to go. there were no reliable maps to speak of. basically, when he got to a town, he would have to ask how do i get to the next town. this attempt to walk from boston to washington really captured the public's imagination. it fascinated pe