![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Sep. 8th, 2007 06:06 pmBurning Man, Burning Man. In retrospect I don't know what I expected, but it was completely different.
(a) Strangelove in San Marino; (b) The Burning Man entry queue
Between these two photos is a 540 mile drive in our open-cockpit jalopy, "Strangelove." We left at Los Angeles rush hour, a convenient match for our 35 mile-per-hour cruising speed, and elicited grins and photos all along interstate 210 out of Pasadena and over the Cajon pass. No roof, no doors, Robb and Dan and I on the bench seat with a ton of precariously packed cargo following--awesome. Night fell somewhere around Victorville and by Bridgeport we, freezing, pile on the fake furs and a sleeping bag and snuggled a little closer.
Entry to Burning Man is slow. The gatekeepers search each vehicle for stowaways. Once in, greeters greet with a hug and a "Welcome home!" Burning Man "virgins" ring a bell, and sometimes are made to roll in the dirt (better get it over with now!). In oldentimes they were spanked.
We arrived on Saturday, with "early arrival" passes that let us in two days before the start of the festival. These days were "working man," in which we built our shade structure, a huge tent made up out of PVC pipe and the plastic-canvas images from old billboards (purchased surplus in Kansas) and anchored by steel rebar sledgehammered into the ground. We sucked down gatorade and goggles kept the dust from our eyes. By the end of the day we had a structure in which we could sleep. Meanwhile, the city grew up around us.
For some reason our water supply--eight or eleven 55-gallon drums hauled from San Francisco (or Reno?)--was flavored minty with menthol.
(a) Assembling our Yurt; (b) Anselm at the end of Working Man
Gradually more and more of our camp arrived. Here's a picture of our shade structure when fully populated on Tuesday (we built another one for sleeping):
(a) Strangelove in San Marino; (b) The Burning Man entry queue
Between these two photos is a 540 mile drive in our open-cockpit jalopy, "Strangelove." We left at Los Angeles rush hour, a convenient match for our 35 mile-per-hour cruising speed, and elicited grins and photos all along interstate 210 out of Pasadena and over the Cajon pass. No roof, no doors, Robb and Dan and I on the bench seat with a ton of precariously packed cargo following--awesome. Night fell somewhere around Victorville and by Bridgeport we, freezing, pile on the fake furs and a sleeping bag and snuggled a little closer.
Entry to Burning Man is slow. The gatekeepers search each vehicle for stowaways. Once in, greeters greet with a hug and a "Welcome home!" Burning Man "virgins" ring a bell, and sometimes are made to roll in the dirt (better get it over with now!). In oldentimes they were spanked.
We arrived on Saturday, with "early arrival" passes that let us in two days before the start of the festival. These days were "working man," in which we built our shade structure, a huge tent made up out of PVC pipe and the plastic-canvas images from old billboards (purchased surplus in Kansas) and anchored by steel rebar sledgehammered into the ground. We sucked down gatorade and goggles kept the dust from our eyes. By the end of the day we had a structure in which we could sleep. Meanwhile, the city grew up around us.
For some reason our water supply--eight or eleven 55-gallon drums hauled from San Francisco (or Reno?)--was flavored minty with menthol.
(a) Assembling our Yurt; (b) Anselm at the end of Working Man
Gradually more and more of our camp arrived. Here's a picture of our shade structure when fully populated on Tuesday (we built another one for sleeping):
