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The Passage of a Few People Through a Rather Brief Moment in Time #227: Santa's Workshop
12.4.13
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:
Santa's Workshop
***Please note that we will be leaving the donut shop at 9:00 SHARP this week, as we are taking the 9:11 Red
Line to North Hollywood. Bring a TAP card! Those who wish to meet us at NoHo station should be there at 9:30,
and those who wish to return to NoHo station will have an opportunity to do so around mile 20.***
Alright, so maybe it's not quite the North Pole, but our northern terminus will be as close as this ride has gotten to
it on a Wednesday night. And it's pretty cold out. Also, if you squint a little, part of the route is vaguely sleigh-
shaped? Good enough, we say!
Besides, it's not as if anyone feels compelled to make excuses for invoking Santa this time of year. Billboards,
storefronts, front lawn displays... one sometimes has to wonder if there's any place that Santa isn't. For such a
big guy, he's a pretty flexible character - malleable, even. Old Sinterklaas and Father Christmas didn't need any
reindeer or elf workshops, and originally neither did Santa. But a poem here, a song there, plus the odd
newspaper or television cartoon, and eventually all that iconography and ad copy congeals into Tradition. The
tides of culture are mysterious indeed. Before long, Santa could even be using a bike as his primary mode of
transportation. No promises here, but we're working on it.
30 (or, optionally, 20) miles this week, with no large hills and only a short bit of unpaved riding. Bundle up!
Talk, talk, talk...
Check out our web site!
(and our tumblr!)
(and join the mailing list!)
The hacienda must be built.
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