Curious Places. Curiouser People

Welcome Back to the Land of the Living:

I awoke on a park bench in front of the great effigy of The Man wondering what series of bad decisions I made last night that lead me to this particular place at this particular time.  I try to rearrange the jigsaw puzzle in my mind.   I remember a huge party.   I remember a bar.  I remember making out with the woman with the wildly colorful hair.   I remember going to see The Man.   I remember getting separated from my group and my bike so in my infinite wisdom declared “That’s OK, I just live here now” and promptly passed out.  

A young woman in a frilly dress and white parasol approaches.  “This part of The Man gets a lot of sun in the morning.   So you might want to find someplace shadier if you still need to rest."  “Thanks” I manage to croak out.   “Let me know if you need anything” she says turning then literally skipping off in the opposite direction.  Curiouser and curiouser.   

Welcome Home.

I've woken up in stranger places.

Heavy:

I've been depressed lately, and my anxiety has been turned up to 11.  I don't know how both those things happen at the same time.  A state where you lack energy, but you can also be on edge all the time and twitchy as fuck.  I lost my job recently, and that's just added to the fun.  I debated briefly whether to put myself through Burning Man this year.  But the way out is through, and everything by this point was mostly paid for anyway.  Might as well lose myself in the moment and figure out the rest of the life stuff upon return.

The one thing I hadn't bought yet was my plane ticket.  So I decided to be frugal about it, and nothing says frugal more than Spirit Air.  Spirit Air's motto: Sit down, shut up, and maybe we'll get you there.  Normally this flight depending upon: airline, day, time, layovers, and phase of the moon can cost $700 -$1000+.  Spirit came in at $450 so I really couldn't argue.

The trade off is my layovers ranged from 6-8 hours or to RUUUUUUUUUNNN!  GET IN THE PLANE OR STRAP YOURSELF TO IT WE'RE TAKING OFF RIGHT NOW!  Cue Schwarzenegger screaming at you to "GET TO THE CHAPPAH!"

All things said I think Spirit gets a bad rap.  You get what you pay for here.  Which is to say: No TV or movies so you can entertain your damn self, no charging outlets so hope you brought a power bank to charge your shit, and everything little thing costs extra so no pretzels or half can of Diet Coke in a plastic cup for you.  That said the planes all felt relatively new/modern.  Whenever I fly United or Delta I get the sense that the plane is from the Triassic era, but they've just shoehorned a screen into the back of the seat ahead of you to keep your mind off the fact you're flying in a metal dinosaur.

A Gen Z woman on one of my flights didn't quite understand that.  First she didn't understand the concept of "Zones" on an airplane and had to be told to wait while she huffed.  This seems like a failure of the American public education system more than anything else.  I say less trigonometry, and more practical life stuff like knowing how to do your taxes, or board a plane properly.  I've never had a life/death situation where things came down to determining the length of the side of a fucking triangle.

Then when on board she asked where the charging station for her phone was, and got significantly upset when told to pound sand.  Lady this isn't "poor person pretending to be a rich princess airlines".  This is Spirit.  Sit down.  Huff less.  You could pay for this flight by breaking a jar of pennies.  They don't exactly give out heated towels and foot rubs here.  You're lucky your seat number didn't say "duct taped to the side of the plane".

Airports are one of the few places where it's socially acceptable to sleep in public, and I hate airports that don't account for that.  In Texas I had to sleep in a shitty chair during layovers rather than finding a decent place to flop down.  Also I was flying at odd hours so I couldn't even drink myself into unconsciousness.  The concept of time is so liquid at airports I don't understand why most things aren't just open 24 hours.  Once while traveling I asked an airport worker if there was a bar open where I could get a decent beer and a burger.  

Them:  Sir it's 8AM.

Me:  I've just been through 3 time zones.  Is it though?  Whatever, can a bro get a mimosa?

Lean and Mean on the Burner Express:

Look at all the peasants waiting while I cut the line and cruise in. 

The Burner Express is a bus service that can transport you to and from Burning Man directly from either the airport in Reno or San Francisco.  I should have explored this option a long time ago.

I had a terrible experience with renting a van last year.  Sure I had space and storage, but the bumper got a tiny scratch on it and they threaten to sue me.  Not to mention cleaning fees are $500+ now.  I imagine a lot of these rental car companies are hurting since the pandemic and they're now looking for their pound of flesh because no one was traveling.

The Burner Express was fast, convenient, and a hell of a lot cheaper than renting a car and inevitably paying hundreds of dollars to clean it.  I arrived to my departure time early, and so did everyone else.  We hit the ground running a half hour ahead because everyone had their shit together.

The greatest benefit to the bus is you skip the line during entry and exodus.  I am never spending 6+ hours in line again.  More on that later.

I was traveling light.  I only had one bag and my backpack.  Everything else including my camping equipment and ebike was in a Boston shipping container waiting for me on playa.  Before I used to travel with: 2 bags, a personal item, and maybe even a carry on.  I'd rent a bike ahead of time to pickup/drop off which was sometimes complicated.  The benefit was I had all my stuff on me or near me at all times.  The downside is I'm only one person and I have to saddle all this shit and cart it around.  It got to be too much.  So this year I decided to pair things down to a minimum.  This being my 5th trip to the desert I've figured out what I need/don't need to survive now.  That said the list changes every year as I encounter new challenges.

The bus even included a shopping trip to a local supermarket so you could pick up: booze, food, and any other supplies you needed.  I can't take this crap back with me on the plane so this was the first time I perfectly planned all the things I needed without having to give away energy drinks to randos before I could get back on a plane.  I relied on my generous camp for all other means of sustenance.

As a New Englander I am fiercely proud.  We take radical self-reliance very seriously and generally don't like to rely on other people.  But make no mistake we are helpful.  We're just going to bitch about it while we assist you.  Not everyone, but many on the west coast will drive by you on the side of the road while you try to change a tire and wish you the best.  A New Englander will call you a dumbass but pull over to help you work the jack and insult your shitty choice of tires while they make an actual effort to get you back on the road. 

We are independant, cranky, but good hearted people.

That Said I Needed to Rely on my Camp More than Ever:

When it's 3AM and you're drunk off your tits.  Follow the blue light home.  Even some of our neighbors were very appreciative of using our camp as a beacon.

I am not part of what is called a theme camp or a formal camp.  We're in the open camping area.  So we show up in the suburbs with a loose idea of where we might be staying based on the people we know and the first come/first serve land we claim.

Over the years my camp has grown, shrunk, fractured, reformed, and grown bigger and more independent than we ever have before.  This time around we were about ~20+ people strong.  I'm including those who may have camped near us or seperate, but still hung out with us most of the time all the same.  We all had our own autonomy.  In other words you could setup your own space within the camp however you wanted.  We all had the real-estate, and the freedom to come and go as we pleased.

This is the first year a sand storm didn't knock his ass over.

Strange Days:

My adventures usually start as follows.  I point my bike in a general direction and just see what happens to me out there.  This time I did less exploring, less bar hopping, and even less art or music.  I was more content to just hang out at camp with all the wonderful characters that I only get to spend time with once a year.

Part of me wish I got out there more.  Went to more wild parties.  Saw more crazy things.  But my depression is a constant drain.  I found it better to hang back and center myself.  Regardless I was rarely alone.

I've said before in previous entries here "Sometimes you don't get the Burn you want, but you get the Burn you need".  Except for last year... The year trapped in mud can die in a fire, and anyone who tells you it was "the best year ever" needs their head examined.

The benefit of our informal camp is there are no shifts or expectations.  Yes sometimes a group of us would go out together to see/experience something, but there is no group think.  We all do what we want when we want out there.  Helping each other out, and sharing resources as we go along.  No care. No schedule.  It's more of a collection of free wills bouncing from person to person, adventure to adventure.

[A Pet's Love]:

The temple at Burning Man is a non denominal place of grieving.  Everything inside be it: tributes, pictures, personal messages, intimate art pieces, letters to loved ones lost, all gets cathartically burned down to the ground at the end of the event.

If you're suffering from loss it can be a refuge.  A place to meditate on, and celebrate lives now lost.  A place to find peace.

But a space so heavy with sorrow can often feel like you're trying to breath in a different atmosphere other than oxygen.  I usually can't spend more than 5 minutes inside without breaking down.  As someone who considers themselves an empath I try not to read the messages scrawled on the walls for fear of losing it, and bursting into tears.

Over the past few years I lost two of my cats to cancer.  I had them for over a decade.  They were my world.  I made statues of them before my trip to the desert, and placed them in the temple as a form of letting go.

Edward 2022

Jacob 2023

This year I had the idea to open up the tribute.  I wanted to make a generically animal shaped sculpture and allow people to write the names of their lost pets on it.  Originally my design was to make it at least 3 feet tall.  In reality I only had enough creative energy to make it a little over a foot.  But it's a start.

I put little bells on the Sharpies

It was fascinating to see it evolve over the week as people added more names to it.  I hope to continue this project each year I go improving upon the sculpture.  Making it larger and more prominent.  I want people to know how much these animals mean.

In this life I chose not to have children.  But this life also gave me cats.  My playa name is Kathmandu for a reason, and it's not because I've ever been to Nepal.  I love my boys.

Consensual Cuddling:

I met someone I found absolutely stunning.  She was tall.  Commanding in her height.  Possessing a strong independent attitude, unique style, and had a general air about her that was right in my wheelhouse.  True, this woman was also almost 2 decades younger than me.  But that part didn’t matter.  Her ethereal beauty came from elsewhere.

Now what would a goddess like that want with the likes of me?  I mean I should just be happy she’s even talking to me.  Because I know how this equation goes: 

(lack of confidence + wearing your heart on your sleeve + being way too honest) X (alcohol + arrogance) = stupid shit that comes out of your mouth that you call flirting.

Now I don’t know how the conversation started, but I complimented her on her height and style.  Only in the most *me* way possible.  Which is to say over-dramatically ramble at her like I’m workshopping the delivery of a Shakespearean soliloquy.  I think at one point I called her “the eighth wonder of the world”.

Once I was done with my little performance in a moment of clarity I thought:  Welp fucked that up pretty good, way to terrifier her…

To my surprise she took the compliment from this over the top lunatic gracefully, and with a couple of deep hugs mentioned that people back where she lives don’t always see her that way.

Now it’s time for the 😇angel vs 😈devil on the shoulder debate lightning round.

😇Angel:  Wow look!  You actually didn’t make it weird for once!  Take the win and change the subject.  You’re just an old creep compared to her. There’s no way you’re actually going to be able to touch her.

😈Devil:  PUSH! 👏 YOUR! 👏 LUCK!👏  -  PUSH!👏  YOUR!👏  LUCK!👏

Me:  Hey, let me know if you’d like to cuddle later.

😈Devil:  That’s… that’s it?  You shot your shot and the best you got is a line about cuddling?  Jesus, it’s like you have a master’s degree in how not to get laid.

Her:  *Goes into an explanation about how her current relationship status was recently a bit complicated, but that she's willing enough to be touched/held again*

Me:  Wait what?

😈Devil:  Wait what?

😇Angel:  Wait what?

So at this point I felt like the dog that caught the car.  I had built her up in my mind, and over-thought it so much that what the hell was I supposed to do with this much woman now?

In simple terms the stipulation was that we’d just keep it to friendly cuddles.  So while touch therapy is very sensual, it doesn’t always need to be sexual.  Basically even as someone who is often starved for affection and attention (despite my wild adventures) we could both appreciate that we were getting something out of this level of warmth and closeness.  Our time together contributed to a great week of fondness among other escapades.

No idea of I’ll ever see/hear from her again.  Sometimes you have an intimate engagement with someone once, and they drift out of your life in but a moment.  On the other hand, Burning Man does often have a way of keeping people connected together one way or another.  All part of the adventure.

Gallery and Random Musings:

Wooooooooo!

It's hard to see but someone brought a mechanical bull out here.

Sometimes you'll turn around and see some amazing art.  And sometimes just nothingness.

I don't think I'll ever get married, but I really liked this concept.

This scary ass thing.

Somebody brought a whole ass merry-go-round out here.

ARTAX NOOOOOO!!!!!  Too soon.  I still have childhood trauma from The Neverending Story

The serpent and the ship was easily the best art piece out on playa.  The detail on this thing was crazy.

This is exactly what you think it is.  From what I understand it tours the US in support of women's reproductive rights.

Love this bastard.

Exodus:

When all was said and done I lazily packed up my shit and realized that my bus schedule was a little too close for comfort to my flight time out.  They don't let you change times per say just put you on standby.

I figured there would be earlier slots on earlier buses.  After all there's got to be some hippie that overslept and missed their bus, as well as some college kid who thought they were only going to an EDM festival then promptly freaked out on day 2 when they realized there are no taco trucks and you could actually die out here.

College kid or hippie no, I wanted their damn seat.  Rumors were also swirling that a massive dust storm was going to hit in the afternoon.  Possibly crippling visibility and shutting down the gate.  So it was time to get out of Dodge.

I got to the bus station around 7:30AM and got myself a seat by 8:30AM without issue.  Plenty of time to kill for my flight in the afternoon.

What the Future Holds:

I needed this trip for my own sanity even if it felt like I was flying by the seat of my pants and waivered between being an anxious mess or low energy at times.  Part of me wants to maybe take a year off.  But the other just wants to live/survive out there like a feral cat with the people I love.

I don't know what's next.  But I'm grateful for all the connections I've made both new and old over the years.  These are my people.  Regardless I will always be a member of the Boston Burning Man community, and I'm not going to stop helping people cross the country to prepare for this event.  I've also even started attending the smaller more local Burns including Firefly in Vermont.  So stay tuned for that story soon enough.  Until then stay dusty.

Welcome Home.

Flooding Man: Making the Best of the Burn that Mostly Didn't

[Insert "Phew... don't go in there" joke here]
But yeah seriously don't go in there.

Black Rock City Underwater:

It's Friday afternoon.  I'm in the shade around a table surrounded by campmates, neighbors, and friends both old and new.  We're eating, sharing drinks, and having fun in the middle of nowhere.  I'm thinking about the rest of my plans.  The things I want to see that day.  The parties I want to go to at night.

Then rain starts to spit.  

Then the skies open.

Torrential downpour sends all attendees scurrying back to their tents, RV's, and shelters.  The rain continued to come down in sheets off and on from late afternoon through the night.  I think I spent close to 10 hours in my tent just trying to sleep the rain away.

When everyone emerged the next morning our acrid barren landscape had turned into a world covered in muck.  Mud so thick it threatened to rip the shoes off your feet with each step.  We assessed the damage, and realized that the rest of the weekend was going to be very, very different.

Welcome Home.

Preface:

On a positive note all the mud did make it easier to fight The Predator.  Arnold would be proud.

*Schwarzenegger Voice* BLM shut down the gate!  Go!  Go Now! 
Get Elon Musk to the CHOPPAH!

There was a long road for me to get to the point where I was ankle deep in what felt like kindergarten paste.  I planned to take a workcation tour of the west coast visiting: LA, San Francisco, Reno, and finally Black Rock.  While I've never really seen myself living on that shore, I still wanted to explore the opposite coast, and possibly look into establishing a presence there in some form.  I figured if Burning Man was going to be a thing for me in at least the near future I should look into: possible storage solutions, vehicle parking, RVs owning vs renting, equipment rentals, etc.

Unfortunately none of that planning happened as my cat Jacob passed away the month before, and between work and other duties I didn't have the focus to put together the details of this trip.  So like everything else in life I just had to push through and roll with it.  More details of my pre-Burning Man part of the trip in this write up here.

Since 2020 I've had to deal with the death of: both my cats, a childhood friend, and my father.  The hits just keep coming, so last year was a time of deep depressive mourning for me.  This year despite Jacob's death I wanted to celebrate life.  His life.  My life.  The lives of the people I've recently lost.  The lives of the friends I've literally had for decades that made my west coast trip possible.

Regardless of what mother nature's plans were this was my goal.

Pilgrimage:

The gate opens at 12:01 on Sunday.  Last year left Reno at 8:00PM, but due to ticket sales I guessed that might be too early this round so I left at 9:00PM instead.  Both departures were perfectly timed and I got through the gate in about an hour and a half.

I camp out in the open/free camping area.  Which means I don't have a fixed address going in.  Gold rush, first come/first serve rules apply.  Since I was first on the scene it was my job to secure the campsite.  My campmates and I agreed on a general address beforehand based on a couple of factors.  But there really wasn't an issue locking down where we wanted to stay.

Basically you pick a spot.  Lay down some lights around the perimeter, and then so people really know it's your space, park like an asshole, or like you come from Boston really.

3:15 and J was our address.  T-minus 48 hours tops before this sign gets stolen by someone.

I splurged on getting the mini-van this year rather than a rinky-dink sedan.  Let me just say it's a luxury to be able to completely lie down in some cool AC if I needed to.

Camp:

I bought a new tent this year and I'm glad I did (more on that later).  We also had more shade structures than we knew what to do with this round, but everything came in handy once the monsoon came.

I have to say that as the week wore on we were all surprised by the amount of unclaimed space there was still around us.  Usually by this time you're negotiating boundaries with other camps to make sure you don't step on each other's toes.  Not as much foot traffic either as random visitors to camp were less frequent this year.

Last year's sandstorms and triple digit heat shook a lot of people.  I'm sure a number of folks threw in the towel after that one, and I don't blame them.  Last year was also the first time the event took place since COVID, and I think a lot of people wanted to come back to the experience again.  Only now you're faced with: inflation, predatory car rental outfits that are still hungry from when no one traveled, and general increased travel and equipment prices.  I think hit with a combination of all those realities a lot of people either held off entirely, or waited until discount tickets cropped up for the weekend.

That said if last year shook you, I don't know what this year did to you.

Community:

One morning this young dude rolled by our camp looking like a lost puppy.  Barely even a shirt on his back.  We took him in, slathered him in sunscreen, gave him some water, and asked what his deal was.  Now this is a tale as old as time out here.

"Me and my friends got excited as soon as we arrived at camp at night.  We went out to see the [Man/Temple] and I got separated from my group.  Now I don't remember my address or where we were staying."

Your phone is barely functional by the time you get out here.  Which makes all of our modern modes of communication basically moot.  It requires some forethought, but if a member of your party gets lost you can go to the Playa Info station adjacent to Center Camp, and leave word that if "so and so" comes asking please give them this address.  That said not everyone anticipates this scenario ahead of time, and even walkie-talkies become iffy when 70K+ people are all trying to use the same damn frequency.

My man had to walk up and down the entire free camping area looking for his friends, which is a good chunk of the map to cover.  I hope he found his friends.

Center Camp Kinda Sucks Now:

I needed a break late in the night. I'd been on my bike all day, and knew I should have slept more.  So, I turned into Center Camp.  A neutral place at the heart of the city where you could usually grab a cup of coffee to perk up, and check out some low key art.  Since they decided to discontinue coffee sales a year ago, I thought at the very least this would still be a chill place to recover.

Nope.

Center Camp was awful.  From what I could tell from the frantic Stage Manager they were obligated to provide entertainment 24/7.  No matter how terrible.  Has it always been like this and I never noticed?

This is dumb. 

This used to be a cafe.  Just let me relax surrounded by art.  You're only rambling to fill dead air.  At one point because a musician failed to show up at their assigned hour the Stage Manager just handed a microphone to a small child and let them wail on it while everyone else in attendance was just trying to relax on stained couches.  Can you imagine trying to walk through what is essentially a lounge with art, and instead of gently piped in calming music, you get pure loaded high pitched gibberish generated by a small child that's just been told to go to town with a significantly loud auditory system?  Sure it gathered a crowd, but for the wrong reasons.

Then when they had musicians finally show up their attitude was: "I'm the second coming of Dave Matthews.  I brought this shitty guitar out into the desert especially for you, so I'm basically doing you a favor.  Now here's my 8 hour set that's only slightly less annoying than the toddler screaming jam session we just had".

I know I'm being harsh.  Usually I'm all for self-expression, but turn this thing into an abandoned bean bag filled hotel lobby and be done with it.  The place should be a haunted Marriot.  It still has a function. e.g. when folks needed to band together after the storm to get people organized to get out.  Fine.  But this "art for the sake of art" do or die 24/7 entertainment crap is both unattainable and obnoxious.

The Temple:

The Temple is a nondenominational place of mourning where you can let go of what you've lost.  Despite the gorgeous architecture, and lattice work I didn't get a lot of pictures inside namely because it's like bringing a camera into a church, and regardless of my Atheism I find it disrespectful outside of a tour of the Vatican.  This year's temple design was meant to be inspired by an upside down desert flower, and was truly stunning.

Jacob passed away only a month before I came out here.  So my tribute to him felt a bit rushed, but it was the best I could do on short notice because I felt I needed to at least do something.

Jacob was the blackest of black cats except for 3 tiny wisps of white on his chest.

The paint that I chose is literally one of the darkest/light absorbing paints you can buy on the market.

There was a group that was offering materials to do art therapy in The Temple.  
So naturally I drew an angry cat.

I hate to say it, but I regret not being able to share and achieve the catharsis of watching this whole thing burn down.  It robbed me of a much needed release, and made the final journey of my trip unfortunately seem anticlimactic.

Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated:

It's somewhere around 3AM. It's been raining since the evening, but now there's a lull in the storm.  Now mind you the only time this place is ever quiet is when The Temple burns, and even then there's usually at least one asshole in a distant art car blaring dubstep that didn't get the memo.  But this was QUIET.  At 3AM I should still be hearing that *Untz Untz Untz* bass of somebody's nearby sound camp.  Living in a closely packed city I've adapted myself to constant noise to the point where I forgo earplugs.  I actually can't sleep in total silence anymore like Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny which is probably why I woke up.

I could see my surrounding solar powered Christmas lights through my tent, but they looked weird somehow.  I opened up my flap to find that there was basically an inch deep moat around my tent and the lights were actually underwater.  Even with a mushy ground, between the industrial tarp I laid down, and the new 4 season tent, absolutely no water was making it through.  Because otherwise at that point my air mattress would have turned into a flotation device.

Morning came and while we were trying to get used to this new goopy alien landscape a friend from a neighboring camp that had Starlink internet access came over and said: "Look what's trending on Twitter/X: Burning Man and Ebola".

Shit.

It was at this point that I decided I should probably try to get some messages out.

I wandered a bit, and did that idiotic thing where you raise your phone over your head because that couple extra feet of distance to the heavens is going to make all the difference.  I had heard rumors of temporary cell towers being erected which could have been bullshit (along with the deployment of the National Guard), but I had to see if I could rub two bars together in order to get a signal.  It constantly wavered between a bar or two and SOS.  Eventually I was able to get a number of messages in/out explaining that the rumors of my demise were greatly exaggerated.  I was safe.  Messy, but safe.

At this point they had shut down the gate entry/exit as well as the airport.  No word on resuming travel.  The estimate that people stuck to was that (weather permitting) it takes at least 12 hours for the playa to fully dry out and become safe to drive on.  There was talk of another storm predicted for Monday.  So I knew that if it didn't divert and miss us we'd be screwed for at least the better part of another day.  I feared pushing my exit plans into late Tuesday/Wednesday, and forcing me to: reschedule flights, pay extra days on the car rental at a rate of $80/day, and take more time off from work.

Some people became anxious that they couldn't get out.  

Some people became outraged that they wouldn't be let out.

Some people were stupid and thought they could navigate an RV through 6+ inches of clay.

Most people just really made the best of it.

The air of anxiety was valid as many only plan to stay [X] number of days and therefore only bring a little more than [X] amount of food and water.  I also felt bad for the weekend warriors.  These folks probably showed up Friday morning using a cheap ticket discounted from a scalper, and were barely settling into camp before god decided to just piss on everything.  I can just imagine some poor bastard barely got his tent stakes into the ground before the skies opened up and they regretted their life choices.

A lot of information was spread via word of mouth.  Much of it conflicting.  Imagine playing a giant game of telephone with 70K+ muddy people.

Why Burning Man doesn't have the equivalent of an emergency broadcast system is beyond me.  I want one boring AM/FM station that just regurgitates vital information on a loop.  Weather.  Exit/Entry gate time estimates.  Special announcements from law enforcement.  Maybe some information around scheduled art burns.  That's it.  Am I missing something here?  I can't tell you how frustrating it is to turn on the radio desperate for info, and I get some Kirkland brand Howard Stern interviewing someone I don't care about, regarding some bullshit art piece that's probably caked in mud or underwater right now.  Then after I listen that crap you get a 20 second sound bite telling you to shelter in place and urging RV owners not to be assholes.

This is a huge failure for the organization.

That said this wasn't the Fyre Festival 2.0 that some in the media portrayed it to be.  Once I eventually made it back to civilization I got a huge kick out of two things: Joe Biden had to be made aware of the situation, and InfoWars accused us of making some sort of pagan sacrifice that earned us god's wrath.

Guy in a black suit wearing an earpiece:  Sir, thousands of hippies are trapped at Burning Man.
President Biden:  What's a Burning Man, and do we need to put him out?

I think that at any other event things would have gone from 0 to Lord of the Flies really fast.  Or as Chris Rock suggested people would be eyeballing their plumpest campmate, and checking to see if they brought enough hot sauce and ketchup packets.  But this community of weirdos came together as best they could to make the remainder of the stay more tolerable.  Personally I don't trust anyone who tries to play this off as "the best year ever".  They're about as full of it as my sneakers were of mud.  But regardless of the fog of war it wasn't nearly as bad or crazy as the news suspected.

A moment of silence for these leather shoes that I've been wearing for more than a decade.  I might dip the whole thing into a vat of clear epoxy resin and preserve it as a sculpture.

My eBike got Lost/Stolen:

There is a certain amount of elitism that comes with this event.  Lots of people expect you to experience BM the same way they do when in fact everyone should be making their own experience based on their comfort level.  e.g. If you're in a comfy RV with A/C you're looked down upon by those who bought a tent at Walmart for $30 bucks right before showing up.  Now eBikes are the new RV.

Here are some facts:

• With pedal assist (you're still pedaling but the motor is giving you an extra nudge) ebikes are a game changer in terms of not being completely drained at the end of the week after traversing the city and it's clock-like layout.  I had friends camped on opposite sides of the city, and it would have been absolutely exhausting to bounce back and forth between them with out help.
  
  
• A friend with a similar bike helped me program it to cap my speed at 5mph, which is the standard limit for travel on playa.  Yes there is an air of lawlessness, but you can still get ticketed out here for being a jerk.  Normally first gear lurches you close to ~10mph with one rotation of the pedal.
  
  
• If no one was around and I'm in a barren wasteland I admit I would occasionally open it up to higher speeds even though I didn't really use the throttle (which involves no pedaling, just pure laziness) .
  
  
• BM banned my category of eBike because it can reach speeds just shy of 30mph.  But they instituted a "Just don't be a dick about it" policy a few weeks before the event.
  
  
• eBikes are in high demand right now which makes them obviously greater targets for theft.

   The tiger head is actually a backpack.  Because it's easier to stuff something in there than let it rattle around the bike basket and fly off during bumpy off road conditions.

I considered my bike unstealable based on how unique I made it.  Not everyone rides around in a glow in the dark bike covered in cat stickers.  It stood out at home.  Here?  Not so much.

I thought I should walk my bike to the shipping container ahead of time because it was pretty much useless at that point anyway.  What I should have done is waited, then thrown the bike untouched by the mud into my van and drive it down there after everything dried.

Nope, I was an idiot.

Trying to drag my bike through the mud was like that child traumatizing scene in The Never Ending Story where Atreyu tries to save Artax from the Swamp of Eternal Sadness.  You know the one.

Too soon!

The rear wheel with the motor locked up despite my best efforts to keep it dry and relatively mud free during the storm.  The front wheel and it's fender was churning mud like a child's Play-Doh factory.  Eventually a nearby camp took pity on me and helped me lock up the bike, and said I could come back to dig it out later, or grab a battery to try and get it moving again. 

I turned around bikeless to go back to camp, but with out the bike to steady me I was wobbling like Jack Sparrow after 3 pints of rum.  Pretty sure I fell at least a few times, and after falling on my ass enough I decided to go back and try to just lug the bike back to camp.

I knew the general address of the camp I left my bike at.  But as I went up and down the street I noticed it wasn't generally there.  After some more wobbly escapades I had to ask myself how much was this worth to me?  My feet hurt, and I'm about one really good fall away from breaking something.  

I did try to hunt for it again, but I had to cut my losses.  At least I stripped it of all it's lights and batteries.  The batteries alone run around $300-$500.

Environmental Reckoning?

Sure I recycle, but I'm not the biggest tree hugger out there.  But when a monsoon comes to the desert you know something is not right.  How they hell does a climate change denier shrug off a hurricane crossing California into Nevada?  How do you explain that it's normal for a desert to literally gain an entire month's worth of rain in one night?  It's like the ancient dried lakebed was fighting to become a lake again.  

While this event is a "leave no trace" affair it by no means is good for the environment.  In fact at this point I figure the environment is trying to find new and exciting ways to kill us since we've been doing the same to it for years.  My opinion is that Burning Man's goal of becoming carbon negative by 2030 is a bit of a well meaning hippie pipe dream.  Especially when the organization is killing geothermal projects in the area via local politics.  Everyone wants clean energy, but put up: a windmill, a geothermal well, or a solar panel farm, and suddenly they're all NIMBY.  Lawmaker or homeowner shorthand for "Not In My BackYard".  It's the same way everyone wants good cell service, but at the same time keep those huge ass towers away from my real estate. 

Let me point out the problem here.  Say you're an artist that cares about the Earth.  So rather than buying new materials for your sculpture you use recycled wooden pallets and other found materials.  I think that's great.  Now we're going to take that eco-friendly masterpiece, put it on a big ol' diesel freight truck, drive it out 200 miles in the middle of nowhere, get a construction crane operator to actually assemble the thing, hook it to a gas generator to power the lights on it (all art has to be visible at night), and finally burn it all down at the end of the week essentially shoving your environmentally friendly sculpture's carbon emissions down nature's throat.

This is the equivalent of ordering 5 Big Macs, and then pointing to your Diet Coke saying: "I'm trying to be mindful of my caloric intake".

Now does that mean you say "fuck it" next time and build your sculpture entirely out of car tires dipped in hot tar, wrapped in asbestos, and painted with the finest lead-based pigments?  No.  Because I understand every bit helps.  Just don't pat yourself on the back too hard.

I'll admit there's still plenty of environmentally conscious things you could do out there, and the community helps.  I once attended a Zoom meeting with Burners that took the time to explain: how solar panels work, their limitations, and how to build your own rig.  It was incredibly educational and now I own a fully solar camping kitchen.

The Man I Didn't Get to See Burn:

Unfortunately I needed to get out of Dodge early on Monday.  By that time neither The Man or The Temple were still in any shape to be set ablaze as they were still soaked.  But the design this year in my opinion was immaculate.  I really loved the huge honeycomb hive towering layout.

Random Musings:

Anybody see where I put my cup last night?  No I wasn't drunk.  I only had one glass of wine guys come on.

I mean sure... nail gun shooting range set in a place with copious amounts of drugs and alcohol, 200 miles away from the closest hospital?  What could possibly go wrong?

If this were street legal I'd tool around in this thing full time as my main mode of transportation.

This is El Pulpo Magnifico, next in line of the fiery mechanical octopus cars since El Pulpo Mechanico retired about 2 years ago.  There's no joke here.  I just thought it important to explain this beast.  It's famous enough to be lampooned on an episode of The Simpsons.

Little did anyone suspect a pirate ship would come in handy later.

This random guy pulled up on his bike next to me while we were moving and just says "Oh perfect timing!" then tosses this bracelet to me which I immediately caught.  Cute trick.  You got me there.  My hands are not normally this sunburned.

Literally a human sized cat tree.  Human tree?  That just sounds weird.

This place does not pussy-foot around with it's drinks...  I mean just look at that huge vat of pickle juice they give you with a shot of their homemade whiskey.

In an odd piece of coincidence I met the owner/creator of this shark car while in a bar on Venice Beach a couple weeks before.

Learn how to code while you poop in the Porta-Pottie.  I've gained a lot of wisdom from these stalls over the years.

Obviously one of my favorites.  I mean just look at the scale of this damn thing.

I can't remember the name of this steam boat from a nearby camp.  I just kept calling it "Proud Mary" and they tolerated me.  Their camp would frequently have live Billy Joel style piano performances.

This group is called the Lamplighters.  There's something around a 100 of them, and their job is to hang over 1,000 kerosene lamps along the main roads.  These are your only streetlights.  I hung out with their camp once when I heard them playing Dropkick Murphy songs, because I'm required by law to introduce myself that I'm from Boston at that point.

Here's how the Pegasus works.  There are 4 buttons surrounding the sculpture. You need to time it that all 4 buttons are pressed at the same time so that the statue will gallop and flap its wings.  This is kind of a neat idea as you have to work together (often with strangers).

When disaster struck everyone was walking around in their fashionable "Air
Playas".  I suspect Nike is going to follow this hip new soggy trend.

Yeah, I've got Hobbit feet from years of barefoot running.  I already gave up on shoes even before the rain.  Then the ground ate my boots when I even tried.

These were our neighbors from New Orleans if you could guess it.

The Chapel of Babel.  A campmate of mine worked on this project.  The art and architecture were asstounding.

Mom: He's just not right for you!
Her: Mom this isn't a phase!  We're in love!

Look anyone can make a cat, or slap a cat onto something to bump it's popularity, but this was absolutely beautiful at night.

The Omega Wacky Inflatable.  It sold a thousand used cars in order to ascend to this form.

This looks like Camp Broken Clavicle.

Sometimes I don't even know what I'm looking at.  There's got to be a reason an icecream truck has boobs, but at the same I'm both intrigued and terrified to ask.

These celestial sculptures were absolutely uncanny.  Like this was some NASA level shit.

Watercolors have usually been the bane of my artistic existence.  It's my weakest medium by far, but a local Boston camp let me paint a pink cat. 

The second time I went to Burning Man I got so disoriented one night I had to make sure this place actually existed once I got home and could actually Google some images...

I spent a week in San Francisco just before coming to Burning Man, and I'm ashamed to say this is still the closest I've been to The Golden Gate Bridge.

What the Future Holds:

This year's unofficial theme was "making the best of it".

Nothing that happened to me this year has deterred me from going back.  That said, I think "going back" might look a lot different next time.  This was an extraordinarily expensive year for me even before I got to the wastelands and catastrophe struck.  So I've changed my mindset from "I need to invest in having more of an independant presence on the West Coast." to "How can I make this a regular thing right now with out either killing myself, or costing an arm and a leg in the future?"

The story that I always share with new folks is that during my first year I showed up to Burning Man with only two bags and a prayer.  By virtue of setting my tent up in a random location I made wonderful friends that I've camped with each time I've been out there since.  I've loved my experience, but I feel that I may have reached the limit to where traveling 2,000 miles across country in order to survive out in the desert has become logistically and monetarily strenuous even with trusted campmates, and a strong set of Burner friends.

At this point it might be a good time to explore joining one of the formal Boston theme camps if they'll have me, which brings with it shared resources, and expands my travel/shipping options.  I've made an effort to participate with the Boston Burner community for a while now because I believe in giving back where so many people prepared me for this adventure years ago to begin with.

Until then, stay dry out there. 

Welcome Home.