It was so nice to  be home with diane to celebrate our anniversary.

This is our 36th.. I am so very grateful that DIane is in my life.. she is my love, my friend.. and on projects like fluffy, my best collaborator.

Our anniversary and burning man often overlap.. in 2016, max, gabe and I did an anniversary toast to diane with the help of the burning man webcam operator motorbike mike.   here’s what we did in 2016

Thursday night – anniversay day on the playa (delayed post)

 

Diane .. I love you so much.. thanks for being my Wif’ ! (love your ‘band)

We had a fun day.. hiked duxbury window and feasted on fresh tomato sandwiches.. exactly  the day we both wanted !

 

Later that night we watched the burning man web cam to see if we could find fluffy .. .. We ended up watching it all week.. we saw fluffy a few times.. but not much .. we didn’t really know what was happening out there.. which was both fun and crazy

 

So nice to be at home with my girl !

I love you Diane !

nite all, nite sam

-me

ps. after the fact I did get some updates from my campmates on what happened this day.. They successfully got fluffy running and got day and night passes from the DMV. I heard our fire device got great reviews from the DMV FAST (Fire Affect Safety Team) coordinators.. they even brought their lead to see our rig. He said the wished everyone did it the way we did.. That was great to hear..

I also learned that there were some  problems with the lights on the driver side. I’m still not sure why they didn’t manage to debug them.. I can tell from the pics that it wasn’t hard to fix.. From what I hear though, the lights were fine on the other side and were well received

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I left camp about 2:30 AM.. and drove slowly around  the radial road “I” towards center camp.  (Black Rock City is set up like a clock with radial roads at the 30 (and  further out 15 ) minute intervals  we were at 9:15 and I) .. It was hard to see since there was a minor sandstorm going. I found the turn off to the access rode and followed the tattered flags to the greeters gate.. It was easy to loose the way as there really is no road to speak of., no other traffic and . and the blowing sand made it easy to loose the flags. Once past the gate  it got a little easier.. but the 5 miles ot the highway took me over 30 min. From there the road to Rneo was pretty empty.. I listened to podcasts (wait, wait dont tell me, this american life) to stay awake.

Aroudn 3:30 I got to a n all night carwash in reno.. I spent the next hour cleaning the car inside and out to avoid the mandatory $250 you-trashed-our-rental-car-on-the-desert fee.

By the time i was done it was after 4:30 am.. long after my hotel reservation had been forfeited.. Luckily the nice clerk made me a deal and for a few bucks they let me use a room to shower and get about 45 min of sleep before I had to leave for my 7 AM flight..

I got to the airport tired but clean and saw folks still leaving for the playa .. or lookign for ways to get there.

I got on the the first of 3 flights heading home.. and thats really the last thing I remember until getting  to Vermont.. I slept the whole way except for changing flights

 

 

diane picked me up just before midnight.. it was SO good to see her..   I really missed her this trip. she’s been such a part of the project.

she drove me home.. and I slept for 11 hours !

it’s so nice to  be home !

niote all, nite sam

-me

It was so great waking up with friends all around and the camp already working smoothly . Duaneswhirld is a really awesome  camp.. great people and great organization..

Flatmo came buy to check in on us.. We showed their fire guy frank  around our fire setup and got his approval which was so great to hear.

Despite all the fun distractions, For some of us.. Today was all about assembling Fluffy’s lights fire,. sound and overall making her playa worthy . We had to get everything on her in order to get her DMV day and night licenses  and her Fire certification.. I wouldn’t be around to help after today so I chose to dedicate my day  to working on fluffy..

it was intense work.. and kinda hard to concentrate with EDM music, naked hippies , old friends coming by.. but despite  appearances I loved it.. I had so many people come by and tell me to relax.. .. but I didnt want to relax.. I love this.. making beautiful technical  things..for peoples enjoyment..  it’s one of the things I most enjoy  in the world !

Rebar did the assembly of the fire..a nd that came together really smoothly..  H’es so amazing. He took these pics of the samstone at the business end of our poofer

The lighting was really tough work.. the distraction, the dust, the heat all made it even harder than it was.. and it’s still too complicated..  It is a complicated dance of Steins wood rok to hang the clouds, Maries placement maps to find the connectors and my cabling and software to tie them together.. This is only the 2nd time we’ve assembled completely..and each time we do it I see ways to simplify. Diane is interested in helping us further simplify.. that will be for next year ..

we worked all day and night and by midnight we had the passenger  side working pretty well..and the driver side about 1/3 done.

Max and Becky came by jsut as we were lighting things up !

 

Just as we got things going.. believe it or not.. it started to rain !..   Rain on the playa is never good.. the playa dust turns to cement. Tonight,  we heard stories of gale force winds and torrential rain coming so we quickly found tarps to cover fluffy.. She’s not that waterproof..

Max and becky had to leave before I got the sound set up.. I said goodbye to them.. seeing them out here was really special for me..   It’s the main reason I actually decided to come.  I’m glad we had at least a couple of hours spread across the two days to hang out.

The  threatened rain never came.. so I kept working to make sure the software , lights and audio were working.. Believe it or not.. I only took two  video.. and here they are.. I hope other folks get some vids

By this time it was about 2AM.. Drew handed me a grilled cheese.. (yum) .. I said good bye to everyone.. got in my rental van and headed back to reno..

SInce it was already ‘tomorrow’.. i’ll write about that for tuesday

nite all, nite sam

-me

Today was my first// and likely last  full day on the Playa this year and I made the most of it ..   I woke up early-ish and worked with Steven to fix up a couple of bikes.. I thien went off in search of max and becky

 

I found them at the fear beast.. a work led by Tigre.. and amazing artist / maker from Santa Fe. They were friends with many of our friends from Meow Wolf so it I was great seeing them.. I ran into Taz, Cathy, and a few other folks.  It was so great being able to work with and hang out with max and becky. Thsi was a really nice project they were drafted in to help late in production. max dfi a bunch of fab and welding for them.. while Becky worked her project management and artistic magic

 

I  worked with max and becky on and off through the day doing odd jobs, mostly clean up around their build.  I also helepd max wiht the dmx mapping a bit. A couple of time i headed out for a few hours to look at art and find firends..

I visited Illumination Village (Ill-Vill) to see if any of my freinds were there.. it’s my favorite flame makers group… I didn’t know anyone there.. but had fun seeign the art and talkign to soem other fire folks

I visited my good freinds at thunder gumbo and saw my good freinds Jac and Bruce.. and got to climb on my old freind BOOGA the 6 wheel beast thats part of their art car.. I

(here’s what Max and I once did with booga )

 

 

I enet and visited Duane and Micky at el pulpo  to see their brand new El Pulpo Magnifico !. Diuane has been so helpful to us in building our flame effects.. THey are so great !

Early afternoon the truck showed up with Gizzo and Rebar and others started showing up.. our camp was beginning  to come together

 

Our friend Kane did a masterful job of organizing all of us around putting up camp

We took a few moments to watch the amazing sunset…

We kept building past dark..   and watched our neighbors come to life.. Flatmo’s  El pulpo magnifico..  Is just down the road from us .. and it is truly magnifico !

AND THEN ….  !

at 10pm … we were wonderfully surprised to see Duane and Fluffy driving in..    just  5.  days  late   

FLUFFY MADE IT !!!!   We were so happy.

We immediately started to unload her and get gear ready for putting her together tomorrow.

 

Once all the stuff was ready to go, a bunch of us went out on bokes to check out the playa.. it was crowded now.. just like burning man is supposed to be !

I got to bed around 3.. super excited to begin gettign Fluffy ready to roll tomorrow

nite all, nite sam

-me