Newsflash: Burning Man is soon. (Cue panic…go on, panic. I’ll wait. Ok? Are you back? Great, read on.) A quick spin through the internet will tell you that it takes approximately 21-30 days to create a new habit. Even if you procrastinate for a few days (oh, you), there’s still time to get in the groove of some useful habits before the gates of Black Rock City (metaphorically…no actual gates, but lots of Gate) swing open to embrace your soon-to-be-dusty butt.

For what things should I be developing a pattern of behavior, you might inquire? I’m glad you asked.

Image by Olga Degtjarewsky

Ride Your Bike
That aforementioned butt will thank you. Begin by riding down to your locally-owned bike shop and getting your trusty steed a tuneup. Make sure you have an extra tube for on playa, while you’re at it. Then, go ride your bike, a little bit every day! Roll down a street you’ve never explored, run some errands, obtain a baguette and pedal home with it sticking out of your bike basket. If you don’t get used to riding your bike now, your first few biking days on playa will be sore ones. There should be certain cuss words reserved specifically for the feeling of mounting your bike first thing in the morning after riding a lot the day before, if you’re unused to being in the saddle. I bet there’s a German word for it. Read more »

The Man burned last night. Three of them, in fact. And I feel like I’ve been to Burning Man, circa 1993.

Here’s what happened: Read more »

Flags are everywhere.

Posts, beams, cables, spikes … eventually, all these flags will have something put in the ground where there are only flags now.

Surveyors have been out walking, consulting maps, stepping off distances, trying to make sure that drawings and plans become actual facts on the ground.

the orange flag marked the very center of where Center Camp is being constructed

Yesterday, Monique and Danny were working their way around the rim of Center Camp, repeating the same process over and over and over again: Go to the pink and green flag, put a stake on the digging machine, slowly rotate it into the ground,  adjust the sheath, put it in a little further, adjust the sheath again, then sink it so that only a  loop of steel was peeking out of the dust.

Later, cables will be attached to keep the shade sturdy.

Danny is very much like a lot of people out here: He’s got another life in the default word, but more and more the Burner life and the default world are intersecting.

Earlier this year, he went to Peru in the wake of the earthquake there to help put devastated villages back together again. He’s got a variety of skills — plumbing, electricity, carpentry — so he brings a lot to the party. He planned on spending a week helping out, then he’d spend a couple of weeks traveling around. “Two months later, I was still there,” he said.

Danny adjusts the sheath

The villagers were accustomed to having water for only an hour a day, and that was before the earthquake.  “But they were happy,” Danny said. “They’d just say, hey, it’s Peru.”  So he and the other Burners Without Borders were building concrete tanks that would gather water, so the villagers would have water when they needed it, not just when it was running.

So how does a guy find it possible to go helping people out around the world? “I sold a software company at the right time,” Danny said.

Monique in the cab

... and because we declared this flag day, here's one that seemed appropriate.

how we began the night

I’m told the raising of the “king posts” used to be a pretty big deal.

The king posts are the 11 big beams that hold up much of the rest of Center Camp. The whole shebang is really a stationary sail, Devo told me, and he oughta know. He’s not only been working on the Build for years, but he also knows his way around boats. (He’ll be teaching disadvantaged children the joys of sailing when the Burning Man event his finished.)

So last night, after the big barbecue at the Saloon hosted by Camp Q (and oh god was it good: ribs, chicken, steak, mashed potatoes … completely fantastic. Absolutely delicious. And  they worked liked dogs for four hours to  feed the DPW crew after another back-breaking, sun-baking day of labor. The lines for the food sucked, but hey, even the liquor was free, and what’s wrong with that? Nothing.)

laying them out

So after the big feast, we went back out to the playa in the gathering gloom. The sun was already down, and the big big sky had all those shades of pink and purple and blue that make a light show even before the first generator is fired up.

There was a time, Joe the Builder and Niko were telling me, that the raising of the beams was a pretty major deal. Everyone would be partying, and after each post was laid in the ground, it’d be time for another round. That didn’t sound too bad, honestly. Read more »

building the fence

The work was hot and dry and dusty and hard, but at the end of the day, there was an awful lot to show for it. ….

There were actually about five miles of fence to show for it. And the rest of the fence was going to be finished on Saturday. That’ll be NINE miles of fence built in two days!

If you haven’t heard already, the Burning Man footprint is a lot larger this year. In the past several years, the circumference of the perimeter fence was six miles. But now, as a crowd in excess of 40,000 is expected, everything has been pushed out — the Esplanade, the area around center camp, and the fence. So everyone will have more room, but it also means that everything is further apart. So you might want to make sure there’s air in your bike tires, because you’re definitely going to need it.

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The fence build is an amazing thing to behold. Everyone meets for a 6 am breakfast at Bruno’s, and Logan gives the rundown for the day: “Who wants to pound some fence??!!” he yells, and there are whoops and hollers throughout the room. Read more »