On September 6th I returned from Burning Man in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. If you've never heard of Burning Man, it's a huge (30,000+ people) week-long annual festival of art and community in the middle of an arid, dried-up lake bed, an "experiment in radical free expression and self-sufficiency". I urge you to check out
BurningMan.com to get some idea. It's really almost impossible to describe. This was my second burn, and it was just as spectacular as the first, and I can't wait until next year.
I drove the van up there, about five hours from the Bay Area. Black Rock Desert is about an hour outside of Reno. No more MapQuest thanks to the GPS. After it was unloaded, the van was used as a windblock, a power source, a jukebox, a kick-it spot, and my sleeping quarters.
This was our kitchen/patio. We parked the van against the awning to keep out the wind, which is blowing directly against the other side of the van. The winds out on the playa are INSANE. Dust storms and white-outs are common, and your camp will get blown to shit if you don't have stuff secured.
We ran the blacklight, rotating light ball (not the disco ball), and Christmas lights off of my inverter. The solar panels worked out all right; I only had to run the engine four times over the week, and we were running those lights (and sometimes music) for hours after dark. We also played music off and on for hours during the day.
Here you can see how we strapped a tarp to the awning frame, then draped it over the van and tied it at the bottom to keep the wind out at the sides of the awning. This also kept the interior of the van a bit cooler.
These are some shots of the interior, with the bed and makeshift couch. We kicked it in here a few times for cartoons and some smoke. You can see playa dust on some stuff... the shit gets everywhere. These pics were taken about halfway through the week, so it got a lot dustier.
It was also really great to have my music out there. I brought two Yamaha shelf system speakers and just plugged them into the USAcoustics amp (I didn't run the sub). Hours upon hours of chill, funky beats, with hardly any repeats.
Here's a couple shots from the gate of the traffic leaving Burning Man. All of these lanes are sqeezed onto a two-lane highway (one lane each direction). It took us about two hours to do the one or two miles from camp to the highway.
Want a taste of Burning Man? Go to the next page.
Page 1: Intro
Page 2: Audio, Multi-Media
Page 3: Power, wiring, lighting
Page 4: MP3Car.com Bay Area
Page 6: BRC2k4 Art Cars
