…………

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

I can’t believe that school starts tomorrow ! t’s been a good summer.. Gabe had fun.. we loved having max for august.. and we got in some cool projects.  It’ll be a completely new rhythm for the days.. I guess I’m sort of

looking forward to it as a change.. but I’ll miss the slightly lazier

mornings.  Gabe needs to be in his seat at 7:30AM.. what kind of people are awake at that hour.. ?!?!  Maybe I’ll learn to end work earlier since I’ll be starting earlier.. but that’s never worked.
  It’s about midnight and we just got home. As with all tuesday’s we went over to jen. Jim and Avery’s to watch The Colony with a bunch of friends. There was a nice.. but slightly smaller crowd there because  tonight is a ‘school night’.  It was a really cool episode this week. Its really fun for me to see what the editors choose to hilight.   Usually I have no idea what they will choose. Tonight there was so much in there.. I didn’t think they were goign to show the ‘ozonator’ (is that really a word ?).. since it’s a little hard to explain.. but i actually think they did a pretty good job of gettign the concepts across. It was a really fun build on many levels. I loved reusing the components of the transmitter.. I’m not sure this came across.. but I was able to switch back and forth between transmitting and ‘ozonating’ just by moving the high voltage tap from the capacitor and spark gap from the transmitter primary coil to the tap on the tesla coil transmitter. ..   I also loved the way the idea came up.. I was jonesing to build a tesla coil anyway since the transmitter got me 80 percent of the way there.. the water purification application was a really lucky and useful excuse.. Several folks asked me if I could have just used the arc from the car spark coil supply I used to fire the transmitter.. What kinda surprised me is that that arc didn’t geerate much ozone.. The tesla coil combined with teh pressurized ozone cell that Mike came up with generated tons of ozone.. I used a pump I pulled from an old blood pressure machine to pressurize the cell and blow the ozone through a porous stone from an old  aquarium aerator . The water absolutely reeked of ozone after a 30 minute dose. I also really liked working with Mike on this build.. he’s a really good fabricator.. by this point in the show we’d really figured out how to work together.. I learned alot by wathcing him work. (oh man was that a geeky paragraph)
    On the people side.. I was psyched to see more of the other colonists.. I like the way Johnny V came across . He is such a kind hearted guy.. He has this deep spiritual side.. coupled with the most insane and crazy sense of humor. He kept us laughing  all the time.. for example.. every morning we woke to the ‘Good Morning with Johny V’  ‘radio’ show.. he’d do some weird off the wall improv comedy to get us moving. I also liked seeign Morgan’s phonograph build.. it was very cool watching her work through how a phonograph worked.. she’d actually never seen one working .. and there she built one !  I’m glad to see them finally showing that the women did engineering builds all the time too !  Oh… and they worked in the soap that Allison and I made.. what you didn’t see there was that we’d put a samstone in the soap too.. ou also didn’t see that we tried to use it too soon a week or so earlier and it damn near took our skin off !  It was also funny to see all the rats !.. they really were everywhere.. Johnny V and Vlad were constantly .. uh… escorting them out of this world..   But by that point in the show.. they were definitely looking more like food. It was amazing to me what vlad was able to do with them (or anything for that matter).. I have to say they were very tasty.. and my body really needed the protein !!
   It’s so much fun to analyze these episodes..  I’m digitizing a bunch of the episodes as we speak which has caused my laptop to slow to a crawl. It’s gettign tough to keep writing.. so I’ll end here and get some sleep. 6AM will come very soon..

OK.. that’s all for now.. nite folks.. Nite Sam
-me