Burning Man

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ok, this blog will be a little different.

Burning Man doesn't lend itself readily to the normal ways of doing things. So, here's some random memories and thoughts about the week. Oh, for those that don't know "The Playa" refers to the type of dusty desert surface. It's pronounced like plier and not like player.


• Dust
• Vast numbers of mechanically crazy glowing gigantic art cars crusing the desert picking up randoms
• A shipwreck in the desert complete with pier and various weird ship paraphernalia (pickled squid?)
• Wrangler fish swimming around luring trippers with glowing ball bait
• Daily hunt for a tasty coffee (always free)
• Camping with Couch Surfers - most from Seattle, but plenty from worldwide
• More dust
• So much art out on the playa. We are still finding pictures online of things we didn't see.
• The temple - intricate wooden multistory structure - a thing of beauty and all to be reduced to ashes on Sunday night in a silent and beautiful ceremony
• Subtle introverted Aussie riding across the playa with HUGE Australian flags on their bikes
• A few space shuttles flying the playa around too. We met and chatted to one of the captains in the middle of a dust storm. He refused to wear a mask or goggles despite the conditions "bah - something's going to kill me, may as well be playa dust"
• Tasty pancakes from the popular pancake stall
• It's a gift economy. No money changing hands (apart from for the ice for the cooler). So different from ANY other festival.
• Chris helping out for a couple of hours repairing communal bikes and hearing funny stories while there.
• Why no Chai tent?
• The wonderful Potty pigs looking after our local portaloos and letting us use their showers when we needed to de-dust on Thursday.
• Speaking of dust... more of it. It's one of the finest dusts on the planet. It is extremely alkaline (it fizzes if you pour vinegar onto it!). It gets into everything and never gets out. The most recent winter was very dry so no rain holding the dust down - made for a very dusty festival
• A 30m long red shark visible as it swam across the playa half a kilometre away
• Random gifts from random strangers.
• Playing a strange join the dots game with an Israeli guy and a german girl during a dust storm white-out
• ahhh the popcorn stall - great popcorn with a variety of crazy flavours to put on top
• Bacon, bacon everywhere! Even bacon floss! Really!
• Nachos tent, with White Russian cocktails (The Dude was happy)
• Fire breathing mechanical octopus
• More rules than there used to be (having to show ID for drinks - wtf?)
• The French Quarter - good coffee, pastries, and a fantastic New Orleans style funeral for the Man, including a tuba which shot out fire everytime it was blown.
• Not many photos - didn't want to destroy the camera. If you want more, just use google images and search for Burning Man 2012. I'm sure you'll find millions. :-)
• Dust bowling. Or was it the toilet bowl? A ten pin bowling alley out in the middle of nowhere, which was also next to the toilets.
• Chris getting his feet cleaned by a naked guy while Nena had her nails painted, and two girls had sex about 3m away. Yeah... really. Welcome to Burning Man. ;-)
• The burning of the man. Massive fire storm tornadoes. Really hot - crowd backing away.
• Lots of skydivers (even into a dust-storm)
• "Keep Burning Man potentially fatal" stickers. hehehe.
• Being ordered around by some lady getting us to all stand in line for the Google satellite flyover. No idea if it worked or not.
• Enough EL wire to light up Vegas (ok, not quite - but close!)
• Helping jump-start a lady's car which had gotten a flat battery in the exodus line by being continuously turned off and back on again.
• Three hours to get out and back onto the highway during exodus (and that was despite getting up at 5am to "avoid the rush").


ok, that will do. No amount of description will do. Have a look around at photos, and look on you tube for videos. Better still - just go.

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Here's a bunch of links of Burning Man videos and photos. This list was from the Burning Man newsletter and we haven't looked at them, but they are probably very good:

AMAZING AERIAL VIDEO OF BLACK ROCK CITY 2012http://bit.ly/SltDEH
VIDEO FROM VINCENT ROMMELAERE<br style="color:񮾑 font-family: 'Courier New', monaco, monospace, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;" />http://bit.ly/SlvKsd
(Warnings: brief bits of NSFW content ... and dubstep.)SWEET VIDEO OF CAMP LIFE - GRANDMA'S HAUShttp://bit.ly/SlL08m

LA Times Photo Galleryhttp://lat.ms/RQsLgd
NEIL GIRLING'S 2012 PHOTO GALLERYhttp://bit.ly/Slw8GZ
SPENCER JONES PHOTO GALLERYhttp://bit.ly/SlFWB0

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Photos

Esky
When stuff don't fit in yer car, just tie it to the outside. No worries.

A road full of Burners
We're on our way...

In dust we trust...
or at least we disappear. This was driving in. Sometimes the visibility dropped to maybe 50cm in front of the car. Fun!

Octopus!
No photos of this at night - imagine all arms moving up and down and shooting flames out everywhere.

Commuting
on a communal bike. The famous yellow bikes (which is written in red on a green bike...)

Art Cars by Night
Shiny things.

Mean car
This was a beast. Four massive wide tyres on the back. Some huge V8 donk up front and the whole thing made of shiny metal.

Puff the Magic Dragon
Let's rip with some fire.

Silhouettes
There was an intensely bright red light near our campsite. Made it easy to find out way home...

Making shorts
A couple of guys sewing up some very small and tight disco shorts for us. Noice.

Sunset
Look around at sunset and there are people standing on every available surface admiring the sky.

Spinning light thingy
Side on it looked like a DNA helix.

Cool tattoo.
And post office in the background.

Ship!
One of many

Really?
Famous quote that one...

Typical BM scene
Giant unicycle, wooden Wall Street in the background (yes, it was burnt to the ground on Saturday night), and some strangely shaped art to boot.

Space Shuttle
There were a few of these around the playa

the Temple
so beautiful and huge.