Burning Man

Well burning man - how can I describe burning man. I have - thusfar - described it to entice whomever I was speaking but also to give clear warning of the realities of burning man. The realities are that it's in the middle of an old lakebed and is dry and alkaline so it basically eats your skin and sucks the moisture from your body. It's a stunningly beautiful location. Beautiful mountains all around. The sun sets and the moon rises, the moon sets and the sun rises. Amazing. But there is a dust factor. A dust factor that will drive you mad at some point. I was told that everyone has burning man freak outs. About three is a good average.
I'm not sure I freaked out about the dust. But there were definitely times that I spent laughing maniacally about it. Lost in late night punchy humor about it. And thoroughly impressed by how it managed to coat EVERYTHING. I think if there was a freakout on my part about it - it was definitely afterwards when I was trying to wash it off and convince my lips to stop being cracked. The dust creates white outs so you can't see ten feet in front of you. You need GOOD goggles and a good face mask. I wore a sarong wrapped around my head and often would put it over my mouth when the wind began to blow. OH - but I have some amazing pictures shot at night with a flash that show how extreme the dust really is. When the flash went it looks like I'm taking a picture in a blizzard but during that time there wasn't enough dust for me to be wearing my mask. You need to drink lots of water and keep food handy to keep your energy and emotions stable.
It's the desert, it will mess with you.
The other realities are that you could die. This is an awesome fun festival, but no one is really watching out for you. You have to be responsible for your actions. And there are lots of fun things to free climb and lots of fun things to imbibe. Those things do not go together.

Ok those realities aside. I don't think I've ever seen such a collection of wonderfully sweet and creative people. Everyone was nice. Nicer than rainbow people. It feels very safe. I never felt like I needed to go around with an escort or have friends within sight. I never felt threatened at all and felt quite comfortable with most everyone I ran across. Then there's the psycho creativity factor. The art that's made is really spectacular. Free standing sculptures that have to face wind and elements, people touching or climbing on them etc. And the art cars were probably the most incredible... everything from electric vehicles, purple people eaters, giant predator cars with gunturrets that had mounted flame throwers, to bicycle eyes, and the aluminum dragon bike that was kinetic, moved it's head, lifted it and breathed fire. There was lots of fire. And lots of talent. From juggling, acrobatics, contact, aerials, capoeira, sculpture... to massage, chiropractors, body painting... even people with airplanes. It was pretty incredible. And among the most incredible was the temple - built of individually carved sheets of ply and planks, this thing looked like a lotus, was three floors tall and was built to be burned. In it, on it, everyone wrote their thoughts and prayers, left their memories and pain, and on the last night, it went up in flames. Impermanence. Really a beautiful thing.

Burning man- where the brilliant get to have fun and show off. The tender hearted have a place to be open and feel safe. The free spirits get to run and play. The pyros get to burn everything they wish. The artist get to freely express.

It's worth trying, at least once... it's one of the real experiences to be have of our age, and who knows how long it will really last.

Colorado Wanderings - Post Nevada - PreNew Mexico: Really From Salt to Sand and by Sand I mean DUST

So.... I haven't been on this for awhile. Not for lack of internet but for lack of it letting me upload my pictures... the bugger. So, while I have lots of pictures to share I'll have to upload them at some point to some net server and then post links or something. None of which will happen here, cause while I have regular internet - uploading things is apparently not an option. C'est la.

There are more adventures recently then I can decently recount in one sitting but I will do my best to begin or create an acceptable overview.

So from Andy, dad and I borrowed a bunch of stuff including his nice BMW wagon to go adventuring in. We drove from Salt Lake City to Bonneville for Speed Week. Bonneville salt flats is where they set the land speed records and it just happened that they were having speed week while we were driving by and that it was very much en-route. So we decided to stop and check it out. We basically took this little road out into the whiteness of the flats until the road ended and then parked and hitched a ride out into the salt. (We were warned not to bring our car out there unless we wanted to deal with the salt for a long time.)

The Salt is rather amazing. It's huge - flat - and somewhat reflective. And creates waves like heat waves but is cool to the touch. It's also very sticky. It will basically adhere to anything and then cake worse than dense snow. Needless to say - I subjected my feet to it to see what would happen. It began to feel rather odd after not long and I put my shoes back on. They were running motorcycles the day we went and we got to see the vehicle that holds the record and it's driver. 360mph. Personally I don't think I'd want to go that fast in a funny long pod. We saw a few runs from some motorcycles - but forgot to have our opera glasses with us to actually see that well. Ultimately it's really just a bike or pod going fast as it can in a line. What's really crazy is seeing how they're built and what people do to make these things go fast. There were some pretty amazing vehicles including electric ones.
Again, a picture is worth a thousand words. I'll try to get there at some point.

So we spent a couple hours there then hitched a ride back out - amusingly with the exact same people we hitched a ride in with.

Heading back towards the burn - the number of burners on the road began to become rather numerous and obvious. It was a fun train passing people, getting passed by people, waving to people acknowledging that we were all heading toward the same destination. I haven't been in a caravan like that in a long time.

We camped under a gorgeous tapestry of stars in some Nevada rest stop and were off again soon after dawn.

I'll continue this post in a bit but right now I have to marvel at the fact that I'm sitting in Evergreen Colorado in late September and this is the second day of snow that we've had. Considering my bold concept that the next leg of the journey will happen on foot or net hitch-hiking... I think I need to head out pretty soon.