Monthly Archives: September 2009

Tuesday night – the right woman

 


 

Finally,
    I can talk about one of 

the most wonderful surprises I ever got. Any of you watching the Colony

tonight now know that my wonderful wife Diane showed up at the Colony

during our 8th week. It was a complete and beautiful surprise to me….

(and a very hard secret for me to keep for the past 4 months ! ) When I

left home in Feb I hadn’t expected to see any of my family until I was

done with the show..   Diane had no idea either, from what I now know,

Diane was invited to participate  several weeks after  I had already

started. I wrote her a silly card on her birthday (which she received

after the show) .. that said something like

Roses are red,
violets are blue
the Apocalypse is nice
but it would be better with you 

Ironically, that was the same day she got confirmation that she’d be on the show.

 

I 

seriously could not have been more surprised when Diane showed up. I

remember when Leilani came down and told me “John Cohn, your wife is

out there”.. my first reaction was …”how do you know my last name”

..   then it sunk in what she’d said..  when Diane came in I was

laughing and crying at the same time.. I had missed her SO much.. and

there she was.. ! My love was with me on this crazy adventure.

I

got about 3 minutes into showing her around when the water main broke..

and our Normal colony crazy existence resumed.. Diane fit in

immediately.. She became a calming, grounded, rational adviser to many

folks on the show.. sort of taking the role that George had played as

the peacemaker. She also is a damn good engineer and immedialy jumped

into helping with the builds.. I was so proud of her.. and so glad to

have her by my side..   Diane and I have always worked together well..

she showed that she could work together with everyone else very well,

too. She could not have been a more welcome add.. (and did I mention

that she’d smuggled us in some more coffee ? )

I want to

publicly thank all the folks who made it possible for Diane to come and

join us on the Colony.. Especially Tim and Jen for taking care of Gabe

and the dogs..

So.. now you know.. isn’t that a cool story !?!

 

I 

was pretty excited about Diane’s arrival on the show tonight.. but I

managed ot have a really productive day anyway.. On the way in early

this morning I saw Victor, the guy we’d met on the long trail

yesterday, hitchhiking into Richmond.. I picked him up and dropped him

in town..

When I got home after a long work day, I found Viktor 

at our house !. He’d come by to say hi and Diane had convinced him to

stay and join us for ‘Colony Night’ ant Jen and Jim’s .  .. Oh yeah..

and we have another big surprise, We have another cool surprise 

visitor..  I had some pictures of her yesterday.. but we wanted her visit to be a surprise tonight .. can you guess who it was ?

 


 

 

 

Amy from the Colony is here visiting . We all showed 

up at Jen and Jims..without telling folks we were bringing Amy.. Folks

loved it.. we had  3 colonists  in the room nowinstead of 1 !

We had a good turn out tonight.. nearly 30 folks..  They loved having Amy there.. and they loved seeing Diane arrive..

It was also fun having Victor, our random MIT 

backpacker guy there.. Amy had taken a picture of him reading about

himself in my blog from yesterday.. I took a picture of that picture…

 

and a picture of victor looking at that picture

 

… and a picture of victor looking at that picture

After the show we all came back and looked at folks comments and questions about  the show in the forums, facebook. myspace and twitter. .. I can see that Amy obsesses abotu the show as much as I do.. It was fun to have her here to do that with. 

OK.. That’s about it for today.. somehow it’s already 2 AM and I have a full day tomorrow. Gotta sleep !  . .Oh one more thing.. Please take a sec and check out this outtake clip (here’s a new link April 1 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjuLX-dLFgc&feature=youtu.be) we just found on the Discovery page tonight. It’s about Joey’s birthday. it’s a fun ‘behind the scenes’ piece about a real celebration we had for Joey’s 36th birthday.. 

 

 

Friday night / Saturday morning – on the playa at Burning Man (delayed post)

Folks.. here are some thoughts and pics from Friday night and Saturday

morning at Burning Man.. I couldn’t post them until today..

I’ll

start with a short recap of the timecycle car saga that I wrote to my

friend Bobby.. then try to add some descriptions to the pictures when I

can ..

From my note to Bobby B.
   … What a wild

ride it’s been… I’ll give it more depth in my blog.. but.. here’s

what happened..About 4 weeks ago I decided that I had red-lined and

would not be going to the burn this year.. I kept working on the

timecycle lights, but gave up on the idea of going to BRC  It was a

huge relief to be not stressing about i .. for awhile at least. . =
 The

vehicle left vt last Saturday, made it 500 miles then the trailer broke

down because of the weight. They dumped about a ton of stuff then

hobbled back to VT .. we ended up renting a ryder truck , repacked and

got them off on sunday. They got to the playa on wed AM….
   

Meanwhile.. on Wed my baby bro, billy and I started talking about 

going to the burn just for 2 days.. at 3pm on Thursday we decided.. why

the hell not.. He bought us airplane tix.. I spent all night on the

phone with some folks in Amsterdam who still had 2 will call tix.. At 6

am Friday  I was on a plane headed to Reno.   We met up there and got

to the playa at about 5:30.. The crew was just finishing the reassembly

of the timeframe.. At 7PM  Friday we got our DMV certification.. and

this was without the lights. I spent a couple of hours mounting about

half of the LEDS.. .. We took of for the playa at about 2 AM.. but on

the way, a malfunction with one of the machine;s hubs  chewed up all my

wires on the right side. Ugh. I spent about an hour on ladder at the

playa doing battlefield repairs and cursing the decision to go.. Around

3:30 AM we were back in business.. and believe it or not.. everything

worked !  We drove around until sunrise. Folks really, really dug the

design..  I’ll never forget driving into the sunrise with a full load

of riders, music going. lights working.. and a crowd following us like

the pied piper. It was memorable.    We went back to camp around 7..

but on the way we had a number of mechanical breakdowns… Two sheared

pins on the hydraulic motor, a chain sprocket dropped off, etc. but we

managed to improvise and got home for 4 hours of sleep. Sat afternoon 

i mounted the rest of the lights.. while the guys tried to figure out

why the diesel wouldn’t start.. Again.. me wondering about my decision

to be there… around 5  I was able to break free and go check things

out, visit friends and make a pilgrimage to the temple.. Which I needed

to do in Sam’s honor. That changed everything.. I came back recharged,

loving the fact that I was there with my friends and my brother.. and

ready to enjoy the burn.. Around 8 we were hit by a hellish sandstorm 

.. it got bad enough that they delayed the start of the burn.. around

10, things cleared up and we started up the machine and headed down to

the playa.   Just as we hit Esplanade, they torched the man in a spray

of fireworks. it was a perfect time to enter..   Somehow somebody was

looking out for us (Sam ? ).. because from that moment until Billy and

I had to leave at 2.. the timecycle worked flawlessly.. the motors

motored, the lights were beautiful, the chairs gracefully  went

around.. It could not have been more perfect.. !!!!  It was such a rush

seeing how much folks liked the device.. we had a huge line of folks

wanting to take the ride all night.. and the lights (if I may say so)..

were pretty cool and distinctive.. you could pick the thing out from

halfway across the playa..  I don’t know if it was an amazing change of

luck.. or our karma finally kicked in.. but whatever.. it all felt

right and worthwhile…  Around 2AM Billy and I hugged everybody and

headed out to the Reno airport for our trips home.. 
What an amazing 2 days…  

OK.. Here are some pictures.. Here’s what greets you when you get off the plane in reno

Billy

was there waiting for me.. He’d rented a car and raided a grocery

store.. We had enough food and supplies for a month stay… 

The drive from Reno to lack Rock was just under 3 hours.. really beautiful country.. Hot, arid, rocky, so unlike Vermont

We

were enjoying the scenery so much we got stopped by a local police guy

for follwing the car in front of us too closely (we wern’t). He let us

off with a brief warning…

It

seemed like in no time we were in Gerlach, the town 9 miles from lack

Rock City.. Ths town lives for the Burning man traffic…

Finally we were there… or ‘home’ as the Burner community says.. (so unlike home, though)

Since it was late friday afternoon, tehre were few other cars to get through.. last time I was here this place was packed

I went over to pick up the will call tickets I’d

ought at the last minute on Thursday night from Eva and Rick in

Amsterdam (thanks guys.. if you’re reading this).. The transfer papers

Eva put together worked fine and in a moment.. we had our two tix !

As a frist time runer, illy got to ring the new burner bell. 

Then we drove into the camp and looked for our crew at 8:30 and

Kinship.. (Black rock is arranged in a circle.. with radiating streets

named after the time on a clock face and concentric connecting streets

named theme related words that begin with hte letters A through I. )

We quickly found the camp and suprised the hell out

of the folks who saw us.. nobody there expected either of us to come..

I quickly introduced billy to everyone.. then Ben took us on bikes to

find the other guys. They were just finishing the assembly of the

TimeCycle.. They had to get the thing finsihed so it could get

registered.  

On the way we ran into one of my favoritepiueces from last year.. this

is a beutifuly crafted human powered dragon.. it’s pedal powered and

it’s graceful neck and head are all actuated by a complicated but

elegant set of cables. It has a flame thrower in it’s moth (of course)

… A cool feature is that it’s made entirely of aluminum backing

ware.. eg. cupcake tins, cookie sheets, etc.   Ben knew this guy.. so

we talked for awhile. He’s dreaming up some collaboration with

Homer..based on his first look at our car.  I can tell Homre will soon

be a legend here.

We found Homer, duane, Kris and Dave out on the playa

doign soem finishing touches.. They found a girl with a gas generator

welder to pin the exel into the clock work. It had turned on first try

and sheared off some of our wiring (.. yikes 1)

Soon we were assembled and under our own poer.. no

fancy lights, just some 12Volt car headlights.. It’s amazing.. that we

walked in at the exact right moment for the car’s maiden trip.. it was

late.. but running well enough to get registered at the DMV (department

of mutant vehicles). The DMV folks really dug the design. They gave us

a license on the stipulation that we get at least some of the lights up

tonight. The lights are as much a safty as they are an aesthetic

requirement.. both are regulated in BRC>

We then started takign in the night life and night art.. it’s just so amazing.. and so overwhelming.

Wre then drove back to camp, grabbed something to eat .. and I finished wiring the the two sets of lights that Carly had already mounted.. We took back off to the playa at 2:30 AM.. Miraculously, the lights survived the trip.. Things looked good !

That is.. until the hub mechanism snagged some wires and ripped out the rotating hub mechanism.. It was an awful moment.. Homer had to talk me into fixing it.. I was so frustrated/sad that this mechanical linkage hadn’t been tried out more.. kind of a shared problem.. but.. I pulled it together and did a duct tape battlefield repair..

Around 3 we got everything moving asgain. and it was beautiful.

Friday afternoon – (delayed post) Impulse control

…………

Folks..  I was without internet access from friday ’till today.. here’s what I tried to post on Friday…

The strangest thing happened to me today.. I found myself on

a plane heading out to Reno NV. OK, so it wasn’t  a complete surprise.. Yesterday afternoon my

brother and I hatched a schemed to go out and catch the last 2 days of Burning

Man at Black Rock City. Billy and I have talked about going before.. but I had

made up my mind not to go this year because of… well… because of everything.

I’d spent so much time and energy helping Homer and co. get ready for the trip

to Burning Man that I’d worn myself out, neglected my family and let stuff go

in various other important corners of my life..   that 

I decided about 4 weeks ago that I wasn’t going to go this year.

Deciding that lifted a huge burden from me.. I wasn’t dreading the prep, I

wasn’t feeling as bad about the time away from family, etc.. I still had

several weeks of working on the Burning Man vehicle.. but even that came easier

when I knew that I would be free of the stress (and of course the fun) of

going.   

   But then.,. .. I

Billy offered to help out on the plane tix, 

and sealed the deal by reminding me that going out there together would

be a life long memory and  good hang out

time for the two of us.. I was also wondering/worrying how Homer and the crew

were doing on the TimeCycle .. I know they’d gotten this far without me.. but I

still felt  considerable  ownership/pride/responsibility for this crazy

project.. . Add on top that there were some other friends out there I was eager

to see Mary, Raye, Ben,  Carlyn, Meg,

Peter, Jerry, Whit, Gadget, Scarlett,   Around  noon yesterday afternoon, Billy and  I decided we were going to do this.   I checked with Diane and Gabe.. and they were

ok with it.. so Billy’s friend and Admin Sharon found us the plane tickets.. but

there was still one hitch.. Burning man tickets were no longer on sale online

.. and the walk up sales ended at 6 pm yesterday.  It seemed there was no place left find

tickets.. and they have a strict no ticket.. no entry policy at Black Rock.. no

matter how far you’ve come.   We ran out

of ideas for a bit.. then I started looking online.. there’s a thing called

eplaya  where Burners tlak about the prep

for the event… There were tons of other folks there looking for tickets.. and

only a few folks offering them.. most of them single tickets for physical pick

up in far off cities.. and most of those already gone.. I was about to give up

when I saw a note only a few minutes old from a couple in the Netherlands.

They’d just gotten married and had hoped ot go to Burning man as part of their

honeymoon. .. Well.. that hadn’t worked out..  

I’ll spare you the long story.. but I talked, texted and emailed  with them on and off  through the night and managed to  transfer the tickets to us (Thanks Eva and

Rick !) …so  That’s hoe I find myself

about an hour out of Reno ,

     So.. now I’m

trying to figure out if I should congratulate myself for making this all work

out at the last minute.. and following my bliss and doing this very cool  spur of the moment trip.. or beat myself up

for not sticking to my decisions and running from responsibility…  Actually, 

I think I’ve just convinced myself not to think about it much at all..

and just enjoy it..   What do you think ?

.. ..

OK.. landing soon. I won’t be able to post my blocg

tomorrow.. I’ll write and post both sat and sun on Sunday on my way back. Unitl

then.. happy vacation folks..  Love oyu

Sam

-me