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The Passage of a Few People Through a Rather Brief Moment in Time #48 - Los Californios' Penultimate Stand

05.26.10

One or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement
and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be
drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.

It's a bike ride.

Started by user nathansnider and user theroyalacademy.

It meets every Wednesday at 8:30pm
at California Donuts #21.
We ride at 9pm.
We'll endeavor to return before the last red line trains (around midnight).

On this bike ride, you might expect:
- full moon picnics
- inconvenient passageways
- "cover" versions of other people's rides, performed with amateurish enthusiasm
- amateurish enthusiasm
- disorientation
- reorientation
- pool halls
- bowling alleys
- karaoke
- geocaching
- oblique strategies
- Oulipian constraints
- traffic median tea parties
- rivers that no longer exist
- smell tourism
- Couchwick v2.0

Furthermore:
- a medium pace (probably not for beginners; certainly not a hustle)
- about 35 miles this week!
- few stops, short stops
- but we're not in a rush; we don't need to run every light
- victory donuts!

Just a little bit of history repeating.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

This week:

Los Californios' Penultimate Stand


It was January. A California January, not cold but with a chill in the air. And quiet.
Dust coated their boots, their faces, their teeth.

They had been abandoned by their country. And yet, last September, they had
managed to win back Los Angeles. The American marines had captured it only
a month earlier, bloodlessly, but most had left for other campaigns and the
city was under-defended. The Californios returned and overpowered those that
had remained.

The Americans were not going to make the same mistake again. The American
soldiers, across the river, numbered three times as many as the Californios
and the Americans had the material support of a whole country behind them.
The Californios were going it alone. They had only whatever arms remained from
past battles. They didn't have enough.

But, that day, they had the advantage of position. They waited on the bank of
the river as the American forces charged. Or, rather, slowly waded. They were
crossing a river after all, and this river's bed had patches of quicksand. The
American soldiers should've been easy targets, but the Californios were armed
not with artillery, but mostly with lances, with swords. They had guns too, but
what are guns without ammunition? The men at the Californio cannons were
the easy targets.

So all they could do is wait. The sound of nearly 600 men sloshing through
the water. Rifle fire. Cannon. The glare of the sun and the wide blue expanse
weighing down on them. And then the Americans were there. And the fight was
not really a fight at all but the slow realization that the math was not on their side.
As a last resort the right flank of lancers charged back, shouting, "Viva Los
Californios!" But the Americans countered with their own "New Orleans! New
Orleans!" and their own charge.

How strange that must've sounded. "New Orleans!" Where? "New Orleans!"
Why? Did the Californios know that had been the site of an American victory
over England? Did they know that was the last decisive battle of this new
empire over that old one? Did they know that this battle here, that day, would
be their own New Orleans -- except they were on the wrong side of a history
that was about to run straight over them? They knew they were beaten and
they knew that they had to retreat. And it was not their final day. Though they
couldn't know it then, that would be tomorrow.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

PLEASE NOTE: Again, I've planned a long one here. My guess is that we will
not get back to the start by midnight, as we usually do. But, since we
will be passing through downtown on the way back, I don't anticipate people
having trouble making it back to the subway in time for the last trains, if need be.

ALSO: Given the distance, we'll probably leave a little earlier than usual. So be
there on time or you might just be eating donuts by yourself then going home.

Inspired by actual events!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------


Viva Los Californios!





























































































































Certain shifting angles,
certain receding perspectives. 		 



Posted by theroyalacademy
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