Burning Man 2014

This year definitely ended better than last one - no traumatic eye injuries, short Exodus, good fire, minimal drama (handled mostly like adults). But there was certainly a lot that was minorly disappointing. I won't dwell on that however.

There's something that I've been realizing though - some years back I stopped taking pictures, trusting to the world that they'd get better ones than I could hope to capture. And ever since, I've been basically absent from the online world, existing as a ghost or a silhouette in the periphery of other people's photos. Some part of me decided back then that anyone else would have more interesting and important things to say (we're talking years ago now) and, again, I've basically stopped existing for a lot of my friends. Out of sight, out of mind. Time to stop doing that.

So part of that is blogging again.
SO!  I'm writing about Burning Man, because it stands as a coherent quantum of time I should memorialize.

We left Friday. I'd packed the car late the night before, so I'd had plenty of time to remember things I'd forgotten, and I headed out to pick up Mike at a reasonable hour of the morning. We made our way up to Reno and bought a day's worth of water, since we'd expected our water to arrive on the Truck only a little after us.  We hit Gate road at dusk (siiiigh), and only spent two hours waiting in line to get in. Apparently, that was an amazingly short period compared to what was to come. As last year, I dropped a basic tent setup (draggable) since nobody in camp gets placed after dark.

OMG WE JUST GOT TO GATE ROAD

Saturday morning we placed ourselves, though the tent was totally overstuffed with our gear since the shade structure was also on the Truck. Camp setup was mostly done, except for other stuff that was also on the Truck, so Mike spent some time exploring the nascent city while I hung out at camp. Honestly, that was most of Sunday too, though the Truck arrived Sunday afternoon.  By that time we were on our last jug of water, I was awfully dehydrated, and we were borrowing from other folks - so my stress levels went through the floor when the truck arrived.

We set up the shade, and got to work on the camp bar, then all took off to work a late-night opening show at Gate. At 11:45, the shift changed and we set out our product, then at 12:01, comets and gas mines lit the night.  Apparently we were on the list of art projects. Lovely stuff, and nearly zero cleanup.

As we returned to camp, Jack told me that there'd been a weather report predicting hail and rain at 4am, so I piled as much of our gear away from the edges of our shade as possible, and went to bed. Waking up to the sound of hail on the tent while safe and warm snuggled up with Mike, is probably my favorite memory of this year. There were lightning flashes so bright that they woke and re-woke me through my eyelids, through the tent, and through the shade structure.  The thunder was loud enough to shake the bed. I'm told that the City was struck twice; once in DPW camp where some poor soul got zapped but didn't die of it thankfully, and once on the main comm tower. I don't know that I believe that it was only twice.

Mud, mud, glorious mud, nothing quite like it for cooling the blood.

As we woke in the lovely cool and dim of the morning, the mud was a Thing and the portas were so far away, and the reports from the Gate line were horrifying. The camp wifi allowed me to check and confirm that the BMorg had in fact closed the City.  Good thing the Truck had gotten there when it did. So Monday was also mostly spent hoping to see things, but with the entire playa a few days behind schedule.  At the same time, we *did* do BurnIt! again on Monday, even though the city was ostensibly closed. By that time the playa was dry enough.

And here we lapse into "stories not mine to tell" land.  Sorry about that, all.

I'd put aside time to do pyro on Wednesday, but ended up building the roman candle guns for TASM on Friday for most of the day, and then not having a shoot in the evening.  TASM was a huge success, but not without some logistical and theatrical hurdles. Trying to organize a crew of 26 across playa with changing conditions and meeting times was just fucking ridiculous. But we managed that, plus two "main dudes" in the show, plus drive-bys of two volleys of art cars - one with hand-held boards of comets, and another with propane flamethrower effects.  It was a bit slow between cues, but it went well and we got props from lots of folks for the show.

Burn Night was interesting. The same glue-lam stuff that they'd used in the Temple last year, that caused so much strife and work to burn, was used in *massive* main structural members on the Man, and consequently it took him an hour and a half to fall.  I was happy to be watching it from the tower in camp, and to have the ability to climb down and do things like, oh, I dunno, go to the bathroom.  We heard lots of stories about people not having that option over the course of the evening - and I pity the Ranger Sandmen. That must've been a hellish shift.

Sunday, it turned out we weren't needed for the Temple after all, since the crew who built it this year knew what they were doing and didn't use glue-lam. I honestly don't recall much of what we did during the day except that we visited Chef and Pollen in Nectar Village.  The Temple burn itself was beautiful, with mostly quiet burners in respectful (sniffly) silence. The Temple's descent was probably the most beautiful thing I can imagine: the domed vault's intricately carved plywood flapping in the breeze like fabric to reveal the bones beneath, and the structure's final graceful spiraling collapse into a bed of coals.  After that, we took a tour of the remaining art cars, marveled at how much saner the City felt without the sound camps blaring and fighting each other, and wandered around looking at the few remaining pieces of art. There was someone putting a refractor (?) in front of the giant searchlights at one sound camp, producing amazing shifting rainbows spreading out across the playa. There was also a lovely set of electronic sound and visualization toys at Illumination Village, one using iPads to select and create viz using the touchscreens, and another using a Kinect to create both sound and viz by waving your hands around in a cutout frame.  Lovely stuff.

Monday was teardown, and it went surprisingly fast. The truck was loaded by 3. We left at 3:15. We were off-playa a scant hour and a half later (hour-and-forty-five if you count the transit from 4:30 and A to the Gate road). We took a shortish detour to try the acclaimed Indian Tacos on our way out to Reno - it wasn't great, but maybe that was a function of the one we stopped at more than anything else.  Nevertheless, food that I didn't have to cook was a nice change. We drove south from Reno to the Carson Valley, and rolled into David Walley's Hot Springs resort looking like some kinda refugees. (Mom had gifted us an overnight reservation - which was one of the nicest things...)  We took probably the longest showers in years, scrubbing and scrubbing and soaping and scrubbing some more.  Then we did the same thing again in the morning before hitting breakfast.

Civilization!

Because of road closures, we ended up taking a rather longer and circuitous route home, which took us through some lovely country. We also ended up at a place called Lockford, which I recalled from Cherylynn's tales of their Hawaiian sausage - so we made a sausage stop. I need to grill those up soonish and see if they're as good as everyone says...

Beautiful country (click to enlarge)

I dropped Mike off and headed home to start a flurry of unpacking. I got it.. mostly done in one day. Two loads of laundry down, most of the camping gear stowed in the shed, the clothes unpacked and the tubs stowed. All that remains is a load of bleachables, and a trip to the laundromat to handle the sleeping bags (which are just too big for my apartment complex's washer).

Last night I took out my braids. This morning I washed the sticky, waxy goop out of my hair. This evening I put quarters into the air machine at the gas station and blew the playa out of my sideview mirrors and engine compartment. I'll take it to the car wash tomorrow, and soon this year's event will be just a memory.