How many posters could one stick in one day?

Well... the best (and most fun) way to find out, would be to simply do it.


First, I got quite a number of posters...

These posters are from a creative writing / creative activism group I'm part of. Our international website: is www.loesje.org.

I divided the posters in piles of 100 in order to count them. I had 513.



The process would be simple. At the end of the day, all I would have to do is count how many posters I got left.
513 minus whatever would be left, would be the amount of posters I put up.

Before I could to do that however, I had to make a small portion of glue.



A recipe can be found here. I tend to use a lot more water though, as thin glue lasts a lot longer. The wheatpaste was left to cool overnight.

7:37

I woke up. As I was well prepared, I managed to go out the door at 8:00.

The setup:
To increase sticking speed (, i.e. most time is spent on getting to the next good place to stick a poster), I used my bicycle.



In the rucksack are the posters, and in the bag a moist brush and more glue (if you made good glue you only need to dip your brush once every ten posters or so). On the back seat are posters I want to save for a specific location. The trick to being fast is as follows: 1. biking is faster than walking, 2. once I found a spot, all I need to do is withdraw the brush and a poster, make a few streaks and leave, a matter of seconds.

The first round of sticking

The idea was, for the first few rounds, to bike in a circle, so I could go home again to get more glue and posters and put some food in my stomach.

It was a really nice morning to bike around. For all of the day, I enjoyed the biking as much as the sticking. Here are some of the posters from the first round:











To my surprise, around 11:00, I was already out of posters. So I quickly biked back home, got there at 11:15, got more posters and glue, and had a small break where I also put some more food in my mouth.

Around this time, I had stuck about 150 posters. Which was almost unbelievable to me, as I normally stick around 50 posters in a similar amount of time. Today, I was working in a flash.

Luckily, when I was home, I also found some extra posters hiding under some books. 189 of them. :)




The second round

With new posters, new glue, and a fuller stomach, I went out the door again. Making another circle, but in another direction.

Here are some of the posters:











Got back home around three, had stuck about 300 posters up till now, and ate a big lunch.

Round three

I thought about it for a while, and in the end decided to take the motherload with me, all the posters and glue I had left. I also took some food with me, so I wouldn't starve. For this final round I biked to the neighbouring city of Potsdam to stick there, as well as on my way there.







an inline skate marathon along the way, had never seen this








Small hedgehog I saw along the way.

By now it had gotten dark, and my camera battery was getting low, so I didn't take many more pictures, as I wanted to be sure to be able to photograph the last poster of the day.


View of the lake, on my way to Potsdam.


Evening sticking in Potsdam and the surrounding area, a really nice place to bike as well. I really enjoyed being outside all day, and the sticking was also a lot of fun.

My original plan was to stop around midnight. But I felt more than enough motivation to continue, so I did. :)

---

I put up the last poster at 1:50 am. Poster #702.



There wasn't a poster left, I took the train home, and called it a day. :D I had never expected this.