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The Passage of a Few People Through a Rather Brief Moment in Time #208: Troll Hunters
07.24.13
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).
On the fifth year of this bike ride, you might expect:
- more inconvenient passageways
- more full moon picnics
- perhaps more "cover" versions of other people's rides, performed with amateurish enthusiasm
- certainly more amateurish enthusiasm
- disorientation
- reorientation
- pool halls
- bowling alleys
- dance parties
- karaoke
- imaginary histories
- scavenging for fun and sustenance
- more geocaching
- more oblique strategies
- more Oulipian constraints
- traffic median tea parties
Furthermore:
- A medium pace (maybe not for beginners; certainly not a hustle)
- We're not in a rush; we don't need to run every light.
- Maybe some distance;maybe some hills
- Victory donuts!
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This week:
Troll Hunters
Trolls, trolls, trolls. What are we to do about the trolls? It is an age old question. While folk tales tend to
emphasize the victories of clever humans over those hideous and dim-witted creatures, it is easy to forget that
there was also a conception of trolls as a more persistent presence, responsible for all sorts of ills. From
devouring livestock to causing rockslides to stealing human babies and leaving behind changelings with birth
defects, the trolls, more often than not, won. Like fairies, elves and ghosts, trolls were seen as occupying liminal
spaces where they were able to operate by their own rules, which could be upsetting to those who entered their
territory unaware.
There are, of course, those who have taken up the mantle of troll in the modern age, and it may even be said that
much of their influence derives from a similar state of informational liminality. However, as it is difficult to ride
one's bicycle on the internet, we will attempt to remain grounded in the physical, exploring spaces inhabited by
trolls of the classic folkloric form: the bridge-dwellers, mountain kings, and adversaries of billygoats. And should
we actually find ourselves confronted by a troll? Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Or not.
25 miles this week, with several small hills, a staircase or two, and some offroad portions that may be walked or
ridden.
Talk, talk, talk...
Check out our new web site!
(and join the mailing list!)
The hacienda must be built.
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