I cant believe it’s already September.. ! Max got in today, gabe’s coming late tonight. The boys are here for Kevin and Marge’s wedding.
We had a great day hanging out with Max
Meanwhile on the playa.. I got these pictures a bit later.. Here’s Fluffy out for deep playa beer delivery !
Looking forward to picking up Gabe tonight !
-nite all, nite sam
-me
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
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