Over the past few weeks, I’ve challenged you to do something special within a carefully selected set of preconditions. I answered collectively and this posed a challenge to me: How do I summarize all these reactions at the maximum length of this column? Fortunately, my assistant Eva de Roode did a lot of the prep work, while I was still lying on the French beach, and provided a clear overview and feedback for each topic. Here are six of our readers’ favorite reactions.
In the “Playing by the Rules” category, Karol Kornelisen sent his photos from a bike trip to France where he didn’t want to take the tacky tourist photos. He decided to stop every 60 kilometers and take exactly four photos at a time: the road in two directions and what was on either side of that road. These were the only photos of his ride, and his bike always comes across as a personal touch.
Some readers have responded to more than one challenge. For example, Robert Prinze reported in his book Traveling as Far as Possible in 24 Hours that in 1989 he managed to cover a distance of no less than 2,318.4 kilometers in 24 hours – which he did in 1991. Made it into the Guinness Book of Records. Prins is still hopping, because a few weeks later he reported on the “Save Them All” class that he’s bringing hikers into all 217 possible combinations on a day of the month and day of the week. Next Wednesday, August 31, he hopes to add the last Wednesday to his list and on September 17, he can complete his project using lift 217, and thus the very last lift. If you see him somewhere along the road soon, take him with you.
In the category “Creating a Collection with a Crazy Standard,” Marianne Hofer writes that for the tenth anniversary of her exhibition Tijd voor Kunst, she invited artists to artworks with a maximum size of 10 x 10 centimeters. These objects can now be seen in a gallery, where, in addition to paintings, ceramics and other three-dimensional objects can also be seen. I suspect that the most accurate boundary condition should be a max size of 10 x 10 x 10 centimeters and soon it will be cycling along with the tape measure to check it out.
Many readers sent in something not related to themselves. For example, Peter Benning mentioned in a report “Save Them All” that a good friend of his life is in Cape Town and trying to see all the birds in the 1991 revised edition of Newman’s birds in South Africa. It is 70 percent. “The nice thing is that it is precisely this completely old version, despite the fact that many versions have been followed and there are much better guides available!” “They were eating well regularly,” Wim van Oudheusden wrote of his brother who and a group of random friends were brought into their lives by accidentally getting off a metro station and then visiting the first restaurant they encountered.
By far the most reaction to the “Do Something Almost In Your Name” challenge came and our favorite was Harmjan Snijder who wrote: “Since everyone passed me by: Kalman Rijder”.
