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The Passage of a Few People Through a Rather Brief Moment in Time #200 - Re:Entry
05.25.13
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).
This week we start a special series of Saturday day rides
in celebration of our 200th ride.
Meet at UNION STATION at 8:30am
Metrolink train departs at 8:55am
Return train arrives at approx. 5:30pm
On this bike ride, you might expect:
- inconvenient passageways
- oblique strategies
- Oulipian constraints
- disorientation
- reorientation
- "cover" versions of other people's rides, performed with amateurish enthusiasm
- amateurish enthusiasm
- pool halls
- bowling alleys
- karaoke
- geocaching
- full moon picnics
- traffic median tea parties
- rivers that no longer exist
- smell tourism
- Couchwick v2.0
Furthermore:
- usually 20-35 miles
- usually some hills
- a medium pace (probably not for beginners; certainly not a hustle)
- few stops, short stops
- but we're not in a rush; we don't need to run every light
- victory donuts!
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This week:
Re:Entry
I don't know where Nathan spent his first two years in Southern California, but
I spent mine in Santa Clarita. I was going to school and, though I had a car for the
first time in my life, having previously been a lifelong pedestrian, public transit rider,
and cyclist, the prospect of living in the city and commuting up to Valencia sounded
absurd. So I spent two years in the community of Edward Scissorhands, the
community of Weeds.
And yet, being in grad school, I didn't really have time to explore all that much.
And what exploration I did was mostly done in the way someone in a car explores:
I drove around a lot, yet saw relatively little. It was all destination and little in the way
of journey.
When school was over I fully intended to move back east. Life however, as the cliché
goes, had other plans. A job opening opened, I applied, was hired, and after a brutal
month of commuting to the city from the 'burbs, I became a resident of Los Angeles.
Fast forward almost ten years. I hadn't really given Santa Clarita much thought in
the interim. I had visited my school's library a couple times, gone to a couple
art openings there. One time I took the train up and rode down to the city. But I had
more or less left the suburb two valleys to the north behind.
Then, last year at AFI Fest, I saw a documentary about a group of teenagers growing
up there. It showed them hanging out in abandoned hillside houses, defunct mini golf
courses, concrete civic infrastructure. Well, okay, now you've got my attention. I knew
I needed to get up there again, take another look. This ride is the result.
So, in a way, it is a return to a beginning -- a fitting exercise for an anniversary. A lot
has changed in the nearly ten years since I left but mostly it feels about the same.
Sprawl. Sprawling houses and barren, sprawling hills. And weird border spaces
between the two: dead zones, spaces in plain view which one tends to edit from
one's sight. Santa Clarita is the collision of sanitized suburbia and wild, open spaces,
of strip malls and oil fields, of wide expanses of asphalt and wide expanses of brush --
ready to burn when the summer gets hot. Its extreme weirdness is masked by
extreme boringness. "It's a nice place to raise a family." There's a lot of beige brick.
The ride has changed a bit too. We go a little farther than we used to, riding perhaps
a little faster. Nathan is now known for the hilly routes (I've grown lazy!). We no longer
have those weeks when the ride is just us and maybe one or two other people.
But, on balance, things also remain unchanged: baroque routes, conceptual conceits,
bridges, tunnels, hills, off-roading, disorientation, etc., etc. Always the same in that it
is always a bit different.
This week, in celebration of our 200th ride, we begin the four-week cycle of rides
outside our normal territory. We begin in Santa Clarita, where I began my time as a
Southern Californian. We will twist our way through its streets and along its trails and,
as ever, keep our eyes open for the unusual, the unexpected.
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IMPORTANT DETAILS, PLEASE READ:
- There is no ride Wednesday, May 22
- As noted above, we will be meeting on SATURDAY this week AT UNION STATION
at 8:30 IN THE MORNING and taking the Metrolink train up to where we'll ride.
We'll gather in the corridor with the ramps to the tracks. PLEASE BE ON TIME and
purchase your ticket before you meet up with us. Weekend unlimited passes are $10.
If you miss the train, you are out of luck.
- If you want to drive instead, you are welcome to do so. We should arrive at the
Santa Clarita station a little before 10am. We are not waiting there for people; make
sure you are present when we show up. (We are actually returning from the Newhall
station, but the two are fairly close to each other, so I recommend just parking at
Santa Clarita.)
- The route is fairly short -- about 26 miles -- so we plan to go at a more leisurely
pace than usual. We will stop for lunch (there is an In N Out Burger and a grocery
store nearby) in the early afternoon.
- There is over a mile of off-roading including a rather long hill which we will have to
carry our bikes up. Please be prepared for that.
- Also prepare for heat and sun. Bring lots of water. Bring sunscreen.
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For the latest information about each week's ride, join our mailing list:
groups.google.com/group/the-passage-announcements
For more information about past rides, visit our website:
ThePassageRide.com
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Discuss
The changing of landscapes
from one hour to the next
will result in complete disorientation....
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