Reflections on a Burning Man - 2022.
Sep. 11th, 2022 07:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gridloreThis year was hard. After a two-year hiatus, everyone was rusty and bad at things. As kshandra said, this was the year we brought too much and forgot everything. She's not wrong. We, for example, totally failed to plan for lunch. Breakfast and dinner were covered, but I needed small things to snack on throughout the day to keep my blood sugar and energy levels up. We already have several good plans for next year.
I am both ashamed and angry at my physical failings. My low blood pressure led to constant issues with browning out when I stood. I am physically weak, and could not help out with camp duties. That will change. I'm going to see my doctor about the blood pressure issue, and I am committed to being in better shape next year so I can contribute! I'm also going to fill out volunteer forms for the departments I can do, like BMIR (the official radio station,) Box Office, or Earth Guardians.
I want to be better. I want to carry my share of the load. Everyone who knows me understands that I am determined to do my part.
But many thanks to my campmates who helped me through this hard week. Even to the point of walking me to the porta-potty bank (hereafter referred to as the "jots") and making sure I was OK. They also fed me. So, onto the breakdown!
Friday, August 26th
After getting to Fernley to stay inkevin_standlee's place, we had a near disaster. We were keeping all the important papers and our cash envelope in a zippered folder, and I left it on the roof of the truck when we went for dinner. Miracle of miracles, the people who lived next door were not only Burners, they were part of our village! Crisis averted, we got some sleep in.
Saturday, August 27th
We got a good early start from Fernley, with a stop at the Pilot truck stop to fill up and grab some road supplies. I realized I was an idiot and had tossed the giant Gatorade bottle I was planning to use as a night urinal in Kevin's recycling. Oh, well. We made great time through Wadsworth and Nixon, never even seeing a cop.
Then came the cows. Driving up 447, you drive over several cattle guards and past signs warning of free-range bovines, butkshandra had never seen a cow in 20 years, and yet here they were, leisurely crossing the road: cows, man. Once past the cows, we stopped briefly in Empire for a few things and browsed the bazaar that always is there. One more stop in Gerlach for water (21 gallons) and we were onto SR 34!
Once we hit dirt, we made excellent time. Our wait in line to get to the Box Office was no more than 30 minutes. We breezed through Gate, and onto the Greeter, and drove about 15 feet inside the Greeters station when. . .
Dust storm. A serious Alpha. It wasn't a white out, it was a brownout as it got dark as night in the truck. We literally could not see past the hood of the truck. Eventually, it lightened a little and we began creeping forward following the tail lights of the RV in front of us. That is where we all made an error. The outermost street of the city has a flag line marking the end of the city. Inside is a road, and outside the line is walk-in camping. We ended up on the wrong side of the flag line. We were treated to the sight of a Black Rock Ranger hauling ass to the one break in the line and frantically waving us onto the correct street. We eventually reached our camp.
M*A*S*H 4207 is one of the longest-tenured camps at Burning Man, and we have a lot of fun recreating the feel of the film and TV show, to the point of running episodes of M*A*S*H all night in our theater tent. After some pushing and pulling, we ended up in an L shape with our friends' RV. We were able to merge our shaded areas. We all agreed we should plan for this again.
Our first night in Tramp Cripwire went well.
Saturday, August 28th
This was our acclimation day.kshandra had a shift at the Department of Mutant Vehicles, and I just tried to adjust to the desert. We packed way too much booze (we ended up giving it to the DPW Resto crew when we left) and not enough snacks. I did do some storytelling and had some great conversations. I was already mentally checking off things we shouldn't have brought and could replace. As an example, we have a camp service for four. Plates, bowls, cups, plus a full set of cutlery. We used two bowls and our sporks. Next year, we're bringing our Bento boxes.
Monday, August 29th
Rosie's is officially open, and I'm telling stories and jokes. That's my art, I'm a storyteller. We lost a lot of medication due to the heat melting some of the gel caps. Not critical, but annoying. In the eveningkshandra and I headed out to look at some art. Since we're both disabled and have disabled parking placards, we are allowed to drive during the event.
Burning Man at night puts Las Vegas to shame. Everywhere there are lights, flames, and music (mostly EDM from the Sound Camps, but it makes people happy, so whatever.) We noticed some lights on the low clouds, and I realize that is lightning. We head back to camp and hear there is a storm warning: potential gale-force winds, rain, and lightning. We spend some frantic moments securing loose objects. The storm ends up passing us to the north. We did a tiny bit of rain, and some decent winds, but we dodged that bullet.
There was one incident that sent my blood pressure soaring and me racing around camp at speeds I haven't managed in years. I am the camp expert on heat injuries, hurray for Army training, I guess. But one of my campmates yelled that there was a heat stroke victim. That was all I heard, so I was off like a shot to Rosie's, figuring that was the most likely place. Nothing, I search the camp, finally coming back to my area to find the guy stretched out two feet from where I had been sitting. I instructed the people there on how to treat the victim until I realized he was sweating and could speak. Heat exhaustion, not heat stroke. We still poured ice water on his balls because it was fun.
The EMTs showed up, and I was the guy who finally had to say "go to Rampart (the medical field hospital)." Of course, by this point I was aphasic from stress and had to make the baseball "you're ejected!" sign. Thankfully, someone saw me and passed on the message. He was fine after getting fluid and resting for a bit.
Heat injuries are sneaky.
Tuesday, August 30th.
I am still having problems acclimating, and my low blood pressure is to blame. I've resolved to see my doctor about possible hypotension. I've also added salt tablets to the ever-growing "bring next year" list. My hydration is excellent, I'm drinking lots of water, and limiting my caffeine and alcohol intake, and I'm still having these issues. It's really limiting what I can do and what I feel safe doing.
We do another nighttime art drive, this time in search of Black Rock Station, a haunted train station that people were raving about. Didn't find it, but we had a good time. Coming back into the city we stop at a legendary camp. Voodoo Soup serves amazing soups. They open when the soup is on, and close when they run out. Tonight they were open andkshandra and I had the most amazing vegetable beef soup ever. It was almost a stew, and they added just enough red bell pepper to give the soup a nice heat. Literally, the best soup I've ever had.
Wednesday, August 31st
I know that California suffered more from the heat than we did, we were hearing about the record temperatures back home. But it reached 108°F/42°Cand all I could do for most of the day was drink water, hang out in Rosie's and dodge the minor dust storm. One nice thing, Fallon NAS paid us a visit! One of their OPFOR F-16N fighters did a pass over the city. Love that sound!
Thursday, September 1st
Still too hot and I'm still plagued by dizziness and brownouts from blood pressure. It's really harshing my Burn. We did a visit from Science, a friend of ours who camps with the Lost Penguin Cafe. In the evening there was a DMV family art tour, we took the truck in case I had to leave early. What was funny is we became part of a DMV enforcement action! A mutant vehicle owner had finally broken too many rules and his vehicles were being confiscated and sent to Burning Man Purgatory, aka D Lot. It was fun to see the gang in action.
We witnessed an amazing drone show, found ¡El Pulpo Magnífico!, and finally got to Black Rock Station. It felt so good to get out and explore!
Friday, September 2nd
Today was my day to land in Rampart Med. We were at the DMV shack stealing some internet, and I kept getting woozy. I decided to go see the docs about five seconds beforekshandra could tell me we were going. The triage worker took my blood pressure. 85 over 58. That earns you a cot and a doctor. They gave me a liter of saline, and in response to another complaint, the doc checked me out a bit further. Great people, all volunteers.
We were back in camp for our traditional Thanksgiving meal. Yes, it's normally on Thursday, but we delayed it so a late arrival could join us. Great food in the best community feed tradition, we all stood and said what we were thankful for. There was laughter and tears, and I got a dram of $175 Scotch. Goddamn! Our camp lead described it as drinking a cigar. He wasn't wrong.
Today was also when we started soft loading. Soft loading is where you start packing the things you won't need before departing. The idea is to make breaking camp as seamless and easy as possible. It really worked well.
Saturday, September 3rd
Today was the day everything went to fucking hell. It started with an announcement that ice was being rationed, one bag of block or crushed per person, and they had to physically be there. I couldn't walk that far at that point if you paid me! Ice is indispensable on the Playa.Forget keeping the beer cold, it keeps your water cold, it keeps the food in your cooler from spoiling, it is literally an absolute necessity. The cherry on that shit sundae was the announcement that we shouldn't expect any ice on Sunday.
Remember my mentioning my friend from the Lost Penguin Cafe? They have 128 people in their camp. They run a bar and make snow cones. They need to feed all their members daily, which means a lot of food that needs to be chilled. No ice and they can't feed themselves after one day. It was a colossal fuck-up by someone at the Org, and everyone is demanding answers.
Then, to make the day even more miserable, we got hit with a 6-hour dust storm with near-gale force winds. It was still over a hundred degrees, mind you, and now we had this to deal with. The Playa tests us, that's part of my joy in going, but c'mon, man! Even through the dust, we noticed that Exodus had begun in earnest.
It was decided that M*A*S*H would close Sunday evening and leave early Monday. This created a dilemma for us. Normally, we stay until Tuesday to avoid Exodus, but with my health issues, nobody wanted us to be the Last Man Standing in our village. We agreed to leave Monday as well.kshandra was able to find enough internet to add one more night at Boomtown, our post-Burn decompression destination.
The storm abated in plenty of time for the Man Burn. But neither of us had the spoons to drive out. Honestly, I prefer going to the Temple Burn. But it was funny. We got lazy and took the truck over to the nearest bank of jots. As we pulled onto 3:30, we had a great view of the Man fully engulfed in fire and even saw him fall.
Sunday, September 4th
Oh, hey. Ice was delivered. This pissed off people even more because they had begun striking camps based on the idea that there would be no ice The Org screwed this up by the numbers. The day was spent packing up. We had our last Playa meal sitting in Darby waiting for the Temp Burn. This structure is filled with remembrances of those we have lost, and when it burns. . . close to 25,000 people go completely silent. Two cars near us were gently ringing gongs in a soft funeral measure. I'm not a person who is into woo, but the energy there is undeniable. Grief, joy, and closure.
Monday, September 5th - Tuesday, September 6th
This is not going to be a funny story someday. We will not look back on this and laugh. We left camp at around 0915 and officially hit Gate Road at around 115-1130. According to BMIR, the time to the pavement at that point was 8 hours.
We were on Gate Road for close to THIRTEEN HOURS. With no information about why these delays were happening, we'd roll a few hundred feet and then stop for an hour or two. We could only run the engine and AC for about ten minutes out of each hour. BMIR was worse than useless. There's an official BM Traffic Twitter account, but there's no signal out there! It was once again over 100°, and we were in the cab of a Ford Ranger. Stephen King could have written this scenario.
We finally made it to SR 34, and I was worried about our fuel situation. So we stopped in Gerlach at the one gas station in a hundred-mile radius. It was a two-hour wait there.kshandra went and got us pizza. Finally fueled up, we got onto 447. We arrived at Boomtown Hotel and Casino at like 0530. We had been awake for 22 hours. I was too tired to even take a shower, I just washed my face and collapsed.
I swear, if giant mutant brine shrimp are attacking the Playa on Monday, I'm still leaving Tuesday.
Well, that's it. I took very few pictures, as this was an amazingly hard year.
See y'all next year in the dust!
kshandra said, this was the year we brought too much and forgot everything. She's not wrong. We, for example, totally failed to plan for lunch. Breakfast and dinner were covered, but I needed small things to snack on throughout the day to keep my blood sugar and energy levels up. We already have several good plans for next year.I am both ashamed and angry at my physical failings. My low blood pressure led to constant issues with browning out when I stood. I am physically weak, and could not help out with camp duties. That will change. I'm going to see my doctor about the blood pressure issue, and I am committed to being in better shape next year so I can contribute! I'm also going to fill out volunteer forms for the departments I can do, like BMIR (the official radio station,) Box Office, or Earth Guardians.
I want to be better. I want to carry my share of the load. Everyone who knows me understands that I am determined to do my part.
But many thanks to my campmates who helped me through this hard week. Even to the point of walking me to the porta-potty bank (hereafter referred to as the "jots") and making sure I was OK. They also fed me. So, onto the breakdown!
Friday, August 26th
After getting to Fernley to stay in
kevin_standlee's place, we had a near disaster. We were keeping all the important papers and our cash envelope in a zippered folder, and I left it on the roof of the truck when we went for dinner. Miracle of miracles, the people who lived next door were not only Burners, they were part of our village! Crisis averted, we got some sleep in.Saturday, August 27th
We got a good early start from Fernley, with a stop at the Pilot truck stop to fill up and grab some road supplies. I realized I was an idiot and had tossed the giant Gatorade bottle I was planning to use as a night urinal in Kevin's recycling. Oh, well. We made great time through Wadsworth and Nixon, never even seeing a cop.
Then came the cows. Driving up 447, you drive over several cattle guards and past signs warning of free-range bovines, but
kshandra had never seen a cow in 20 years, and yet here they were, leisurely crossing the road: cows, man. Once past the cows, we stopped briefly in Empire for a few things and browsed the bazaar that always is there. One more stop in Gerlach for water (21 gallons) and we were onto SR 34!Once we hit dirt, we made excellent time. Our wait in line to get to the Box Office was no more than 30 minutes. We breezed through Gate, and onto the Greeter, and drove about 15 feet inside the Greeters station when. . .
Dust storm. A serious Alpha. It wasn't a white out, it was a brownout as it got dark as night in the truck. We literally could not see past the hood of the truck. Eventually, it lightened a little and we began creeping forward following the tail lights of the RV in front of us. That is where we all made an error. The outermost street of the city has a flag line marking the end of the city. Inside is a road, and outside the line is walk-in camping. We ended up on the wrong side of the flag line. We were treated to the sight of a Black Rock Ranger hauling ass to the one break in the line and frantically waving us onto the correct street. We eventually reached our camp.
M*A*S*H 4207 is one of the longest-tenured camps at Burning Man, and we have a lot of fun recreating the feel of the film and TV show, to the point of running episodes of M*A*S*H all night in our theater tent. After some pushing and pulling, we ended up in an L shape with our friends' RV. We were able to merge our shaded areas. We all agreed we should plan for this again.
Our first night in Tramp Cripwire went well.
Saturday, August 28th
This was our acclimation day.
kshandra had a shift at the Department of Mutant Vehicles, and I just tried to adjust to the desert. We packed way too much booze (we ended up giving it to the DPW Resto crew when we left) and not enough snacks. I did do some storytelling and had some great conversations. I was already mentally checking off things we shouldn't have brought and could replace. As an example, we have a camp service for four. Plates, bowls, cups, plus a full set of cutlery. We used two bowls and our sporks. Next year, we're bringing our Bento boxes.Monday, August 29th
Rosie's is officially open, and I'm telling stories and jokes. That's my art, I'm a storyteller. We lost a lot of medication due to the heat melting some of the gel caps. Not critical, but annoying. In the evening
kshandra and I headed out to look at some art. Since we're both disabled and have disabled parking placards, we are allowed to drive during the event. Burning Man at night puts Las Vegas to shame. Everywhere there are lights, flames, and music (mostly EDM from the Sound Camps, but it makes people happy, so whatever.) We noticed some lights on the low clouds, and I realize that is lightning. We head back to camp and hear there is a storm warning: potential gale-force winds, rain, and lightning. We spend some frantic moments securing loose objects. The storm ends up passing us to the north. We did a tiny bit of rain, and some decent winds, but we dodged that bullet.
There was one incident that sent my blood pressure soaring and me racing around camp at speeds I haven't managed in years. I am the camp expert on heat injuries, hurray for Army training, I guess. But one of my campmates yelled that there was a heat stroke victim. That was all I heard, so I was off like a shot to Rosie's, figuring that was the most likely place. Nothing, I search the camp, finally coming back to my area to find the guy stretched out two feet from where I had been sitting. I instructed the people there on how to treat the victim until I realized he was sweating and could speak. Heat exhaustion, not heat stroke. We still poured ice water on his balls because it was fun.
The EMTs showed up, and I was the guy who finally had to say "go to Rampart (the medical field hospital)." Of course, by this point I was aphasic from stress and had to make the baseball "you're ejected!" sign. Thankfully, someone saw me and passed on the message. He was fine after getting fluid and resting for a bit.
Heat injuries are sneaky.
Tuesday, August 30th.
I am still having problems acclimating, and my low blood pressure is to blame. I've resolved to see my doctor about possible hypotension. I've also added salt tablets to the ever-growing "bring next year" list. My hydration is excellent, I'm drinking lots of water, and limiting my caffeine and alcohol intake, and I'm still having these issues. It's really limiting what I can do and what I feel safe doing.
We do another nighttime art drive, this time in search of Black Rock Station, a haunted train station that people were raving about. Didn't find it, but we had a good time. Coming back into the city we stop at a legendary camp. Voodoo Soup serves amazing soups. They open when the soup is on, and close when they run out. Tonight they were open and
kshandra and I had the most amazing vegetable beef soup ever. It was almost a stew, and they added just enough red bell pepper to give the soup a nice heat. Literally, the best soup I've ever had.Wednesday, August 31st
I know that California suffered more from the heat than we did, we were hearing about the record temperatures back home. But it reached 108°F/42°Cand all I could do for most of the day was drink water, hang out in Rosie's and dodge the minor dust storm. One nice thing, Fallon NAS paid us a visit! One of their OPFOR F-16N fighters did a pass over the city. Love that sound!
Thursday, September 1st
Still too hot and I'm still plagued by dizziness and brownouts from blood pressure. It's really harshing my Burn. We did a visit from Science, a friend of ours who camps with the Lost Penguin Cafe. In the evening there was a DMV family art tour, we took the truck in case I had to leave early. What was funny is we became part of a DMV enforcement action! A mutant vehicle owner had finally broken too many rules and his vehicles were being confiscated and sent to Burning Man Purgatory, aka D Lot. It was fun to see the gang in action.
We witnessed an amazing drone show, found ¡El Pulpo Magnífico!, and finally got to Black Rock Station. It felt so good to get out and explore!
Friday, September 2nd
Today was my day to land in Rampart Med. We were at the DMV shack stealing some internet, and I kept getting woozy. I decided to go see the docs about five seconds before
kshandra could tell me we were going. The triage worker took my blood pressure. 85 over 58. That earns you a cot and a doctor. They gave me a liter of saline, and in response to another complaint, the doc checked me out a bit further. Great people, all volunteers.We were back in camp for our traditional Thanksgiving meal. Yes, it's normally on Thursday, but we delayed it so a late arrival could join us. Great food in the best community feed tradition, we all stood and said what we were thankful for. There was laughter and tears, and I got a dram of $175 Scotch. Goddamn! Our camp lead described it as drinking a cigar. He wasn't wrong.
Today was also when we started soft loading. Soft loading is where you start packing the things you won't need before departing. The idea is to make breaking camp as seamless and easy as possible. It really worked well.
Saturday, September 3rd
Today was the day everything went to fucking hell. It started with an announcement that ice was being rationed, one bag of block or crushed per person, and they had to physically be there. I couldn't walk that far at that point if you paid me! Ice is indispensable on the Playa.Forget keeping the beer cold, it keeps your water cold, it keeps the food in your cooler from spoiling, it is literally an absolute necessity. The cherry on that shit sundae was the announcement that we shouldn't expect any ice on Sunday.
Remember my mentioning my friend from the Lost Penguin Cafe? They have 128 people in their camp. They run a bar and make snow cones. They need to feed all their members daily, which means a lot of food that needs to be chilled. No ice and they can't feed themselves after one day. It was a colossal fuck-up by someone at the Org, and everyone is demanding answers.
Then, to make the day even more miserable, we got hit with a 6-hour dust storm with near-gale force winds. It was still over a hundred degrees, mind you, and now we had this to deal with. The Playa tests us, that's part of my joy in going, but c'mon, man! Even through the dust, we noticed that Exodus had begun in earnest.
It was decided that M*A*S*H would close Sunday evening and leave early Monday. This created a dilemma for us. Normally, we stay until Tuesday to avoid Exodus, but with my health issues, nobody wanted us to be the Last Man Standing in our village. We agreed to leave Monday as well.
kshandra was able to find enough internet to add one more night at Boomtown, our post-Burn decompression destination.The storm abated in plenty of time for the Man Burn. But neither of us had the spoons to drive out. Honestly, I prefer going to the Temple Burn. But it was funny. We got lazy and took the truck over to the nearest bank of jots. As we pulled onto 3:30, we had a great view of the Man fully engulfed in fire and even saw him fall.
Sunday, September 4th
Oh, hey. Ice was delivered. This pissed off people even more because they had begun striking camps based on the idea that there would be no ice The Org screwed this up by the numbers. The day was spent packing up. We had our last Playa meal sitting in Darby waiting for the Temp Burn. This structure is filled with remembrances of those we have lost, and when it burns. . . close to 25,000 people go completely silent. Two cars near us were gently ringing gongs in a soft funeral measure. I'm not a person who is into woo, but the energy there is undeniable. Grief, joy, and closure.
Monday, September 5th - Tuesday, September 6th
This is not going to be a funny story someday. We will not look back on this and laugh. We left camp at around 0915 and officially hit Gate Road at around 115-1130. According to BMIR, the time to the pavement at that point was 8 hours.
We were on Gate Road for close to THIRTEEN HOURS. With no information about why these delays were happening, we'd roll a few hundred feet and then stop for an hour or two. We could only run the engine and AC for about ten minutes out of each hour. BMIR was worse than useless. There's an official BM Traffic Twitter account, but there's no signal out there! It was once again over 100°, and we were in the cab of a Ford Ranger. Stephen King could have written this scenario.
We finally made it to SR 34, and I was worried about our fuel situation. So we stopped in Gerlach at the one gas station in a hundred-mile radius. It was a two-hour wait there.
kshandra went and got us pizza. Finally fueled up, we got onto 447. We arrived at Boomtown Hotel and Casino at like 0530. We had been awake for 22 hours. I was too tired to even take a shower, I just washed my face and collapsed.I swear, if giant mutant brine shrimp are attacking the Playa on Monday, I'm still leaving Tuesday.
Well, that's it. I took very few pictures, as this was an amazingly hard year.
See y'all next year in the dust!
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Date: 13 Sep 2022 05:04 (UTC)