For Those About to Burn, We Salute You


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North America » United States » California » Stockton
August 30th 2011
Published: June 21st 2012
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I have to do more Burning Man preparation today.

I need lots more supplies, and I need to finish the build I could not complete yesterday.

I’m going to miss a day of the festival dealing with these issues, but the alternative is far worse.

Such are the tradeoffs people must make on long trips.





My Bed and Breakfast hosts really recommended driving toward Reno anyway.

It only takes four and a half hours, and the route through the Sierras has majestic scenery.

I ultimately decided to head back to Stockton instead.

I did this for practical reasons.

Every Burner gets their last minute supplies in Reno, so I figure that what I need will be harder to find.

I also think locating an undisturbed place to build things will be easier along the road between Stockton and Reno than in Reno itself.


The Priest Grade



Heading out of Groveland, the road first goes over rolling hills.

It then reaches what appears to be a cliff.

The view reveals a narrow deep valley with an obvious town in it.

This is the top of the Priest Grade, the notorious mountain climb I encountered four days earlier (see The Golden State).

Driving down is pretty much as nasty as driving up, particularly because I got stuck in a long line of cars behind a huge RV.

Thank god for low gear so I could save my brakes.

Soon afterward, the road ran along the side of a large reservoir.

It happens to be the eastern end of Don Pedro, the same one the raft trip ended on (see Rafting paradise).

From there, the road went through rolling hills, until the land became completely flat.

I am now in the Central Valley, the most productive agricultural region in the world.





Soon enough, I reached Stockton and could finish my shopping.

It took a long time.

I never knew one event could require so much stuff.

To be accurate, Burning Man technically needs little beyond food, water, and shelter; but taking only that often leads to a miserable experience.

Doing Burning Man well requires a long list.

After several hours in several stores, I finally had it all.

I had enough stuff, in fact, that it completely filled my trunk and most of my car seats.

I made sure to buy plenty of tape this time around; what I don’t use in the initial build will almost certainly be required for repairs.


Finishing my Burning Man Setup



Now that I have all this stuff, I need to assemble it.

I got on Interstate 80 and headed east into the Sierras.

The road climbs at a steady grade.

I saw a sign for a rest area, and figured it was the best place to work I was going to find.





I changed a few things from yesterday.

I found a spot with a picnic table, to reduce all the stooping.

Even more importantly, I brought a gallon of water.

The picnic area needed to have a careful balance, close enough to the parking area to be within the range of its lights, but no so close it was directly visible.

The last thing I need is some highway patrolman seeing something potentially suspicious.





Finishing the build required a few hours.

The constant taping became a tedious pain.

The sun set while I was working, the reason I knew I needed to be near the lights.

The good side of this is that the heat dropped, so I could work more between water breaks.

After all the panels were taped, I needed to cut holes for the connectors.

The panels are fastened to the tent with zip ties, one of the playa’s great fasteners (the gorilla tape I used on the panels is the other).

To put them on quickly, the panels should have preset holes.

The holes need to be made with the panels on the tent, to ensure they line up correctly between pieces.

To reinforce the holes against the wind, I applied more tape before cutting.

This was yet another slow precise job.


Strip Packaging before Burning Man



With the major building finished, I had yet more work to do.

Burning Man is a Leave No Trace event, which means that everything brought through the gate needs to be either consumed or brought back out.

Everything means EVERYTHING, all little bits of trash included.

The veterans I interviewed talked about the importance of stripping as much packaging as possible before heading to Black Rock City.

Packaging simply becomes debris, nasty pieces of trash to keep track of for the week.

Throwing it in a trash bag doesn’t work, because the entire bag may blow away!

Removing it all took yet more hours of work, cutting boxes, ripping off stickers, and cutting the little twist ties stores use to attach price tags.

I made sure to collect it all in a garbage bag, which I’ll throw out later.





Finishing my preparation was much harder than I thought it would be.

I learned a few useful things for the festival.

First of all, while a camping knife is a wonderful tool, this doesn’t mean it’s the best tool for the job.

One pair of razor scissors could have shortened the work considerably.

Despite its length, I’m going to double check my supply list tomorrow to make sure it contains everything I’ll need.

Once on the playa, anything missing I will need to do without.

The other thing, paradoxically, is that I’m quite good at solving problems with what I have.

After all, I did manage to complete what I needed; it just took much more time than I had planned.

I can worry a little less about becoming a casualty statistic in Black Rock City because I forgot something.





While taking one of my breaks, I saw an RV pull into the rest area.

This particular RV was covered in paint splotches, with PVC pipes strapped to the roof and three bicycles on the back.

In this location, that vehicle can be going only one place.

I said hello.

Sure enough, they are heading to Black Rock City.





California law limits visitor’s time in a single rest stop to six hours.

I spent five.

Now late at night, I finally got back on the road.

The highway climbed and climbed.

It then shrank to one lane and passed through a long series of construction.

That ended at a mountain pass.

Along the way, I passed a number of vehicles similar to the RV from earlier, all filled with stuff and bikes.

One was quite unmistakable, with EL wire taped to the rear window spelling out ‘BURN’.


Reno



After the pass, the road flattened out.

The trees disappeared.

The highway followed a canyon through a set of mountains, and then a set of buildings appeared in the distance like a mirage.

Downtown Reno does not have the surreal nighttime glow people often describe about Las Vegas, but it was strange enough.

A cluster of buildings glowed in neon downtown, with a few others off in the distance.

These are all casinos.

At this time of night, they are about the only place to get food aside from convenience stores.

The meal was more remarkable for all the Keno forms at the tables than the food.

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5th September 2017

Planning and organizational skills needed
Amazed and ....... not sure what the words are.
6th September 2017

Burning Man planning
That was a tough day, and an essential one. I've read plenty of blogs about how people went to /Burning Man and had their mind blown, expanded their personal boundaries, and/or found spiritual truth. I found very little on what it takes to get there. I wrote this one to help cover that gap. Thanks for commenting on it :)

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