When the winter comes...
I am torn with energy. I arrived back from Burning Man to find a letter from Sierra at Tahoe saying they want to hire me back, plus autum has struck the bay area with a vengence.
First, 'The Burn'. Round up goes like this. I left Oakland at 3AM Friday night, drove the entire way because the driver I hitched a ride with was asleep, and her co-driver hadnt driven in 8 years (lives in paris and India). 8 hours later, we made it to the Black Rock Desert. It's an odd sort of place, rugged and sharp volcanic mountains on all sides of a perfect plane. A desert so flat, it's where Nobel set the land speed record back in '89. The city was mostly assembled when I got there, sortof. The main buildings were all there, just not really built yet.
Without sleep, I downed a redbull or three and began setting up DDI and 2-Pi-R, got out of my head a little and did more work on 2pir. Keep in mind that people aren't allowed in before monday without special passes. Saturday and sunday were full workdays, trying to get our camp and shade structures setup. Monday, we tried to work hard on 2-Pi-R, but it was about 105F in the shade, and I passed out in the desert underneath a metal tub I had laid on its side to make a cave. The electronics package hadn't arrived yet, and a few cables were missing from DDI. uf.
Hookahdome got setup, and we went in there to chill some. Keepin mind that most music at Burning man is either bad Psytrance or just plain bad. Hookahdome, on the other hand, and winking lotus both play awesome chill music. Incredible DJs there at both of those.
Tuesday, things started coming together, after I had a medical emergency that put me in the careful hands of some doctors, I got better, and we got DDI up for its first night. I got to go to a lecture at Entheon and Fire Erowid was handing out little chick tracts at the door. The Erowids are dirty, long haired hippies, and they are so cute. I wanted to put them in a box and take them home with me. DDI Ran, 2-pi-r didn't.
Wednesday, we got emergency reinforcements for the electronics, and finally got shit working 100% at 2-pi-r. (which might I add, setting off percussive flame effects in 110 degree heat SUCKS ASS). By this time, I had figured the way to sleep through a night involves sleeping from 4-dawn in my tent, an hour after dawn, my tentwould get too hot, so I'd shamble into the shade structure (or hookahdome) and sleep until 11 or so (or when the hookans threw us out). Wednesday night also had the Hookahdome spin jam, which was FUCKINGINCREDIBLE. I've never seen so many good fire performers in one place. It seriously blew all I'd seen before out of the water. Pyronaughts were there. Phoenix Projekt, English staff spinners, Colorado whip and staff spinners, Angelknifers from hawaii, California represented hugely. There were also three performers who just blew my fucking mind away with their skill level.
I spun dart with them, and was doing pretty well until altitude caught up with me and Inearly blacked out. Jos and I made up and all was well after that.
Thursday I went staff and sword crazy. I seriously was spinning or juggling something from 11am until about 7pm. Wow. It was sweet. Then atnight I got loaded and did a bunch of staff and dart sets infront of hookahdome. Josie and I biked around the playa and saw a bunch of coolshit. Cirque Brezerk was doings stuff infront of Red Nose District, which was awesome, but they had some bad musicians in art cars parked out front, so we moved on. Ended up at hookahdome, having gigglefits until dawn. Was probably the best night I had there, except when "fireboy" stole my redbull.
Friday was busy, and I worked that night. We challenged Thunderdome/Death Guild to a death match, then I dressed people for DDI from 11 until 3 fucking 30. Shifts normally run 10-2 or 10-1, depending on how much propane we can purge how quickly. Friday sucked ass. It was seriously the worst nigth I had out there, and itjustkept going on and on. The fun part was when these two firemen showed up in their own firesuits and said "Hey, we don't want to play the game, we just want to get set on fire. Is this where we wait?"
I'll finish that by including pictures from Wired Online:
We fucking crisped them.
Saturday we all slept in, after the friday night, we needed it. Centre camp was a fucking mess, butI got to meet MCP (of firestaff-tutorials.co.uk) and talk with her about her teaching methods. She teaches from the end to the beginning, believing that students need to know an endpoint more than they need to know where to start from. I really respect and like her style. she's also a fucking goddess of contact staff. That night we had the Thunderdome deathmatch. They beat us in DDI. When we went to thunderdome, Reedo was our champion, and their guy (sky), clocked him in the face with a fist! Reed bloodied up the guy's face, and that was that...
... until they said that we lost. Their guy was bleeding from the face, nose, and eyesockets. Our guy had a split knuckle. Whatever. It wasn't too bad until they started spitting on our crew (we all showed up in flightsuits). sore loosers. Fuck'em.
Worked again sunday night. It was Drunk Drunk Immolation, as we broke our own rules witha shitton of burbon, and got smashed while operating. Luckly, there were no accidents! Yay! Thank god for the disclaimer on the back of the ticket. ("By attending this event, you voluntarily assume the risk of injury or death...")
Wired online has a good roundup of highlights. I'll put that up in leiu of myown pics.
http://blog.wired.com/burningman2006/index.album?i=0
Oh yeah. 100 Belgians flew out and made this FUCKING HUGE thing that we all called "The Waffle". It was awesome.
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Yeah. I'm all written out.More later.
First, 'The Burn'. Round up goes like this. I left Oakland at 3AM Friday night, drove the entire way because the driver I hitched a ride with was asleep, and her co-driver hadnt driven in 8 years (lives in paris and India). 8 hours later, we made it to the Black Rock Desert. It's an odd sort of place, rugged and sharp volcanic mountains on all sides of a perfect plane. A desert so flat, it's where Nobel set the land speed record back in '89. The city was mostly assembled when I got there, sortof. The main buildings were all there, just not really built yet.
Without sleep, I downed a redbull or three and began setting up DDI and 2-Pi-R, got out of my head a little and did more work on 2pir. Keep in mind that people aren't allowed in before monday without special passes. Saturday and sunday were full workdays, trying to get our camp and shade structures setup. Monday, we tried to work hard on 2-Pi-R, but it was about 105F in the shade, and I passed out in the desert underneath a metal tub I had laid on its side to make a cave. The electronics package hadn't arrived yet, and a few cables were missing from DDI. uf.
Hookahdome got setup, and we went in there to chill some. Keepin mind that most music at Burning man is either bad Psytrance or just plain bad. Hookahdome, on the other hand, and winking lotus both play awesome chill music. Incredible DJs there at both of those.
Tuesday, things started coming together, after I had a medical emergency that put me in the careful hands of some doctors, I got better, and we got DDI up for its first night. I got to go to a lecture at Entheon and Fire Erowid was handing out little chick tracts at the door. The Erowids are dirty, long haired hippies, and they are so cute. I wanted to put them in a box and take them home with me. DDI Ran, 2-pi-r didn't.
Wednesday, we got emergency reinforcements for the electronics, and finally got shit working 100% at 2-pi-r. (which might I add, setting off percussive flame effects in 110 degree heat SUCKS ASS). By this time, I had figured the way to sleep through a night involves sleeping from 4-dawn in my tent, an hour after dawn, my tentwould get too hot, so I'd shamble into the shade structure (or hookahdome) and sleep until 11 or so (or when the hookans threw us out). Wednesday night also had the Hookahdome spin jam, which was FUCKINGINCREDIBLE. I've never seen so many good fire performers in one place. It seriously blew all I'd seen before out of the water. Pyronaughts were there. Phoenix Projekt, English staff spinners, Colorado whip and staff spinners, Angelknifers from hawaii, California represented hugely. There were also three performers who just blew my fucking mind away with their skill level.
I spun dart with them, and was doing pretty well until altitude caught up with me and Inearly blacked out. Jos and I made up and all was well after that.
Thursday I went staff and sword crazy. I seriously was spinning or juggling something from 11am until about 7pm. Wow. It was sweet. Then atnight I got loaded and did a bunch of staff and dart sets infront of hookahdome. Josie and I biked around the playa and saw a bunch of coolshit. Cirque Brezerk was doings stuff infront of Red Nose District, which was awesome, but they had some bad musicians in art cars parked out front, so we moved on. Ended up at hookahdome, having gigglefits until dawn. Was probably the best night I had there, except when "fireboy" stole my redbull.
Friday was busy, and I worked that night. We challenged Thunderdome/Death Guild to a death match, then I dressed people for DDI from 11 until 3 fucking 30. Shifts normally run 10-2 or 10-1, depending on how much propane we can purge how quickly. Friday sucked ass. It was seriously the worst nigth I had out there, and itjustkept going on and on. The fun part was when these two firemen showed up in their own firesuits and said "Hey, we don't want to play the game, we just want to get set on fire. Is this where we wait?"
I'll finish that by including pictures from Wired Online:
We fucking crisped them.
Saturday we all slept in, after the friday night, we needed it. Centre camp was a fucking mess, butI got to meet MCP (of firestaff-tutorials.co.uk) and talk with her about her teaching methods. She teaches from the end to the beginning, believing that students need to know an endpoint more than they need to know where to start from. I really respect and like her style. she's also a fucking goddess of contact staff. That night we had the Thunderdome deathmatch. They beat us in DDI. When we went to thunderdome, Reedo was our champion, and their guy (sky), clocked him in the face with a fist! Reed bloodied up the guy's face, and that was that...
... until they said that we lost. Their guy was bleeding from the face, nose, and eyesockets. Our guy had a split knuckle. Whatever. It wasn't too bad until they started spitting on our crew (we all showed up in flightsuits). sore loosers. Fuck'em.
Worked again sunday night. It was Drunk Drunk Immolation, as we broke our own rules witha shitton of burbon, and got smashed while operating. Luckly, there were no accidents! Yay! Thank god for the disclaimer on the back of the ticket. ("By attending this event, you voluntarily assume the risk of injury or death...")
Wired online has a good roundup of highlights. I'll put that up in leiu of myown pics.
http://blog.wired.com/burningman2006/index.album?i=0
Oh yeah. 100 Belgians flew out and made this FUCKING HUGE thing that we all called "The Waffle". It was awesome.
--------------------------------------
Yeah. I'm all written out.More later.