BM2K5 (the movie) SF -> BRC Kids Camp Kids Camp Fun Kids Camp Art Car Life in Kids Camp Chazz's Tacos bicycling the playa art cars Dicky / The Temples Passage / Clockworks The Machine / daytime art nighttime art nighttime scenes participant-citizens Center Camp The Man Rangers Lamplighters Contessa treasure hunt The Man Burns BRC -> SF desktops Ranger patch Ranger jacket
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Burning Man 2005: San Francisco to Black Rock City
Monday 29 August 2005
It has been nine years since my first Burning Man, my third with the kids. In all those years, with all the schwag given to me by fellow Rangers and other participant-citizens I've never taken the time to be properly decorated.
This year I vowed to change all that. My stunningly old Singer 33 sewing machine needs serious maintenance, and my mother-in-law's has something wrong with the bobbin thread tension, so I borrow a modern model from a friend. I usually sew patches by hand, but it seems awfully sloppy and slow. A machine makes all the difference.
In the hot evenings - the days before this year's event have been sweltering - I hunch over a sewing machine and affix patches and name tags. I'm bleary-eyed, exhausted during the days, but somehow I find the energy to fire it up after midnight. I even head over to the discount fabrics store on Haight Street and sew flags for Kids Camp in neon green, neon pink, and bright purple. Here you see Lila and Isaac inspecting my work the morning after.
Finally, all the boxes having been inspected and consolidated, new supplies purchased, and everything else packed into the GMC Safari we rent annually, we're off!
Here you see Isaac right after we pick him up at his elementary school, just after he's dismissed at 14:40. From there we head right out. You can see he's a bit tired; it's been quite a couple of weeks for him too.
Lila hasn't made it this far; she's fallen asleep right outside San Francisco. A nap is a good thing for kids on a road trip. We should be on the playa in six or so hours; 350 mi (563 km) plus a short stop in Reno.
Here's my darling wife, Rose, who was a Black Rock City Ranger in 1996. Not only is she tired from wrangling the kids while I've been doing client work, but she's done all of our food plus the kids' clothes. Thanks, honey.
Lastly, yours truly. Not sporting my traditional Burning Man haircut, I'm going as a mushroom haircut in stead (hard to tell from this photo). Both Isaac and I have short hair in back and longer, floppy hair atop, courtesy of our revitalized clipper.
The traffic isn't great, but we keep up a good pace until somewhere near Sacramento. Then, as we drag along in the single digits between horrifying suburbs, I curse the hoardes of mid-day commuters.
Things don't get much better: here you see the brilliant minds of CalTrans, who decide that this is the perfect time to rip up and repave both the shoulders on I-80. (Travellers
of a few days ago reported no such mess.) We spend hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic, for no good reason at all, as 30,000 burners squeeze through a single lane. Good move, morons.
Once in Nevada things get marginally better, but that's comparing against a pretty low benchmark. Here's the highway fiasco in Reno, a mess that's been going on for some time, we're told. (That's the Nugget at left, with the rest of the casino skyline beautifully lighted.)
We're so wrung out by the traffic that we eat at an Italian restaurant next to the Andronico's supermarket that we traditionally use to buy our water supplies. The food is good, but the prices are too high, and we're too exhausted to enjoy in any case. The kids are virtually sleep-walking, and fall asleep almost the minute we gas up and pull back on the highway.
Instead of arriving around 19:30 or 20:00, sometime near sunset, a good time to set up camp, we drive into Kids Camp at 01:30!
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