The Center Camp crew was up late Friday night getting their Oculus burn structure ready for Saturday’s Little Burn.

Erik, Jamie, Goatt and the rest took turns carving out their fancy new camp insignia in the wood, then worked late into the night to get it ready to go.

It’s just like the big burn, only little. People work long and hard to get things just right, then they burn it up. Gone forever.

Even though it’s a Saturday, and even though the Little Burn is tonight, it’s still very much a regular work day. It’s not quite as hot as the past couple of days, but there’s no question there are more than a few people feeling more than a little baked.

More people seem to arrive every hour. The Commissary is more crowded than ever, with long lines for food snaking out the door. And outsiders will be welcomed to the playa for the evening’s festivities. But the witching hour comes at noon on Sunday, when only paid-up people with permission to be out here early are allowed to stay.

See you later when the sun goes down and the first fires get sparked up.

The stakes are in, the fence is strung and the flags are flapping in the breeze. All that’s missing is a line of cars and vans and RVs a couple of miles long, and things would look like opening day.

The sense of anticipation here is building, even though there’s a certain serenity to the Gate scene now.

Last night the Gate crew held a fence-tying party. Everyone was invited to participate, in return for copious amounts of beer and whisky. Wild Child reported this morning that he’d never seen a jankier fence, but thanked everyone for helping anyway.

Ok, so the word for today was hot.

I mean, hot hot.

I mean, really really goddamn hot. And you know what? It’s cooled off since yesterday.

Yesterday it was 108 degrees in the shade. Some say 109, some say 107, so we’ll go with the average. It was hot yesterday, and it was hot today. Sun beating down on your head and shoulders hot, and oh by the way, there is no pool. No beach.

There were warnings at the DPW meeting this morning to watch out for each other. “If one of you breaks yourself, the whole crew suffers.”

So the word went out that electrolytes were available, and to watch out for each other, and to watch for the signs of heat exhaustion. The question was put to the assembled group: What ARE the signs of heat exhaustion?

“Irritability!” someone shouted, irritably.

—

Of course, it might not just be heat exhaustion that causes irritability. I mean, this is a group of people who labors all day long in the sun, and again I mean realllly labors — digging, pounding, dragging, hammering, bending, you name it — and then at night carries on whole lot more. There might be a few PBRs consumed. There might be some Jameson quaffed. There also might be stories told in the morning about puking the night before.

And yet there they all are at the morning meeting, getting word about what’s on tap for the day. At 7:30 in the morning, and that’s AFTER breakfast. This is a tough crew. Read more »

Center camp is coming along mighty fast. In a little less than two weeks, it’s gone from simply flags in the dusty playa to the king posts being dug to the shade being hung.

Here’s a look at the progress along the way, right up to Friday morning. Read more »

There’s something about Polaroid pictures that says “vacation” to me. And Burning Man is a lot of things, and I guess vacation is one of them. So here’s a little collection of Polaroids to whet your appetite for the trip, and for the desert, and for the drive across Indian land, and for that feeling of excitement you’ll get in the pit of your stomach when you get off Route 80 in Wadsworth and head for the dust and the heat and the fun.

Be careful, though, especially if you haven’t been out this way before. There are a number of places that have reduced speed limits. You’ll really want to slow down to a crawl, unless you want to make a pricey contribution to the local traffic department budget.

When you head out Route 447, you are quickly reminded of how beautiful the desert is.