Re: Well how was it Wizard???

Hello Greg :-) I had another wonderful time at this years Burning Man gathering. I began my trip on Sunday the day before the event starts and traveled up HWY 395 to Buckeye Hotsprings near Bridgeport to meet up with a couple of friends who were camping there. While going up the steep highway grade just north of Bishop I noticed my vehicle temp was getting hot ( bummer ). When I got on the dirt roads around Buckeye it was almost to the red line ( yikes ). I soaked for about four hours with Greg ( been to Burning Man five times ) and Danny at those beautiful springs then headed out to my destination for the evening, Carson City, Super 8 Motel. Thankfully while driving on the HWY the vehicle temp would remain normal. I hooked up with a repair guy 7Am the next morning and he found the problem with the overheating. It was a relay switch that runs the two electric fans the helps keep the engine cool. So I was quite happy to be back in business and on my way to Burning Man by 9AM.

I got to Burning Man around 1PM and the line was pretty short, but, I had to get out of line to get my BM ticket at the Will Call area. That set me back a couple of hours between the ticket line and the car line getting back into the main entrance line. No more Will Call tickets for me :-) The weather was about perfect with no big dust storm like the first day of last years event. Got to the area of Black Rock City where I usually camp then organized for a while before heading off on my bike to look for my brother-in-law ( Mark ) who was attending Burning Man for the first time. He had left a message with my wife during my trip up there that he would leave word of his where-a-bouts at a certain camp. On my ride to this location I happened to pass by Marks camp spot. We visited everyday and he definitely had a great time :-)

The weather was real good in general except for the normal afternoon winds that stir some thicker dust in the central part of Black Rock City. Friday night turned out to be pretty windy and dusty so I opted out of my normal few hours of riding around the city to instead get a good long rest overnight, since the Man would burn the following day and I wanted to have lots of energy for that. The mornings out there are usually real nice and everyday before having my first meal of the day I would go out for either a long bike ride or walk in the warm early day sun. Saturday early on was nice but around mid afternoon some Lenticular Clouds started showing up over the local mountains and I told my Burning Man neighbors that many times these clouds are indicative of strong winds moving into the area. Sure enough the winds picked up and the dust really started filling the air. I went into Center Camp ( with my trusty dust mask ) and enjoyed some time checking out all the cool stuff that happens there while waves of dust clouds came and went.

It was getting towards sunset so I headed back to camp to get in a good meal before going out to watch the big burn. Looking into the central area of the city the dust clouds where very thick and I knew there would be no burn unless and until these conditions improved. Finally as the burn time was nearing I figured I better dive into the dust to see what was happening regarding the burn. When I got to the inner ring of the city ( the Explanade ) the Man was just visible through the dust. As I started out across the large open expanse in the central city where the Man sits the wind really picked up and the Man dis-appeared from view. I rode off in the direction of the Man and finally got to the large ring of big art vehicles that form around him on burn night. There is an inner ring area where the Black Rock Rangers keep people back a couple of hundred feet or so from the man for saftey during the burn and for the pre-burn fire acts. Normally there are thousands of people there by that time but because of the dust most folks were avoiding the area for the time being.

The Man is lit brightly with nean tubes and the dust storm was so thick that at lot of the time you could not even see him from only a couple of hundred feet away. I had on my moto goggles, dust mash, and hood over my head to keep some of the dust off me, and from getting me all clogged up :-) That dust is very fine being basically like the consistency of flour. I was talking to one of the Black Rock City Rangers and he said that the Man has always ( every year since Burning Man began ) burned on burn night so once again amazingly around 9:30PM the high winds began to subside and by around 10PM the burn big Burn Party began. There was a whole lot of wood that went into the art structure around the Man and it created one huge fire. Lots of cool fireworks and fire twirler acts also in the hour before the burn. The whole scene of Black Rock City on burn night just really has to be seen to be fully appreciated for its amazing qualities. Its a gigantic beehive of incredible sights and sounds :-)

Well I like to beat the wicked traffic jam of half of Black Rock City's inhabitants who leave starting on Sunday morning so I packed up and began my trip home around 12 midnight after the burn. I drove for three and a half hours all the way back to Travertine Hotsprings near Bridgeport and when I got there no one was at the springs. It was beautiful night with a bright moon overhead, some big white roundish clouds floating around with a cool comfortable air temp. There is a real nice hotpool right by the dirt road at Travertine and soaking in it after my long drive and dusty experience earlier that evening was was a great way to cap off the end of my Burning Man 2009 adventure. Still enjoying all the memories of the fun times I had there :-)

I have begun to post photos from my trip at my Flickr Photo site:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35054303@N00/?saved=1

which can also be found at the Wizard's pictures link below. I will be adding more pics as I get the chance too :-)