1) we still need help tomorrow morning (9AM) unloading the Time Cycle at Peter Markowski’s (462 Monkton Road, Vergennes, VT 05491. 802.877.2645). We have too much work and not enough hands. Please show up if you can…
2) our good friends at Talent Skate Park have been nominated for a $100,000 ShineALight grant from American Express . These grants are for small businesses that have done good community service. Talent does benefits for all sorts of good causes.. For example, they’ve held three benefits for the Friends of Sam charity to help make an injured snowboarder’s house wheel chair acceptable, they’ve helped reunite Somali families.. and more recently, they’ve helped Friends of Sam raise money to dig 3 wells in rural Cambodia. Talent also runs a summer skate camp which they make available for free to kids in need.
They are wonderfully generous with their time, their facility and their money.. They are so deserving of this grant. The grants are competitive.. the proposals wiht the highest number of endorsements win the awards. If you have a sec, please look at this link and read about the good work that Talent has done. If you agree that they are deserving, please add your vote by registering and submitting an endorsement for this nomination. Thanks !!
OK.. what else happened today… hmmm.. Oh, here’s soemthing cool, while I was working. Julie and Sam R dropped by with a copy of last weeks Times Argus. Gabe’s on the cove ! It’s a picture form last weekend’s Rail Jam at Bolton.
Here’s a better pic of that image.
It was a long hard work day.. so I was glad when it was time to knock off for the day. Diane. Gabe, Amy and I headed down town to do some shopping. Amy immediately wen for the Zombie books. Seems Zombies are everywhere in the post-post apocalypse !
We walker down to the waterfront to get some dinner.. but the Skinny pancake was closed AGAIN ! . So we wondered down the waterfront until we found another place.. the ‘Breakwater’ .. It was a nice place.. We ran into our old friends Ellen, Kenny and WIll (Diane was present at Will’s birth !)
It was a a great place to catch up on our lives and let them get to know Amy.. and watch the sky start to darken.
OK.. my eyes are darkening,. can’t stay awake.. so I’ll say good night.. Night folks, Night Sam ! -me
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..
Folks, Here are a few more pictures from last night at Burning Man.. I’m posting them from wireless on the plane from Salt Lake to Detroit.. wow.. US planes with internet More description later .. we’re landing
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.
