Burning Man is the opposite of creature comfort. -- Dan
Greening
I left Burning Man two days after arriving. It wasn't that Burning
Man sucked this year, it's that the weather sucked. The art was
first-rate, and there were some pieces that had amazing promise, like
"The Three Faces of Man", with three 15' tall faces. One was steel and
cried fire, the second was wood and cried sand, and the last was covered
in sod (grass) and cried water. There was a 10' tall flaming heart.
There were literally hundreds of wonderful pieces of art on the playa.
Unfortunately, every day seemed to consist of a fairly steady dust
storm, alternating with light rain (just enough to create some mud).
Our 2 PVC geodesic domes held up fairly well, but the dust blew under
the domes onto our floor, which fairly soon was indistinguishable from
the desert floor. In heavy winds, the upwind side of the dome would
collapse inwards, only to bounce back out when the wind let up. After
the first night, we found that the rebar stakes holding down our tent
had cut through the loop cords, causing several walls of our structure
to flap about without support. Thankfully, the tent as a whole held
up, and we had repair cord.
We pulled all of the rebar and replaced it with plastic stakes, which
worked fairly well, but would occasionally pull out of the ground. This
we could deal with. You would be hanging out with friends in the shelter,
talking loud to be heard above the flapping of the dome in the wind,
when one wall would start flapping worse than the others. Two people
would get up, grab a sledge hammer, and go out into the storm. The sound
of pounding would be heard, and a few moments later the two would return,
eyebrows, lashes, and all body hair white with playa dust.
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(from left) Hez, Melissa, Andy,
Ron, Dan, and Brent at Camp Hole Club
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After a few days of this my hair was matted into a very cool mad scientist
explosion, my sleeping bag covered in dust, and baby wipes my only respite
from total scuzziness. I decided that I wanted a chance of scenery.
I told my campmates, who were very understanding, and on Friday morning
I drove south out of Burning Man, returning to Carson City. I expect
I missed a lot of great stuff, but my mind was elsewhere, worried about
preparing my van for the trip south.
In Carson City I've been busy making my van more liveable. I spent
about 2 hours in a do-it-yourself carwash cleaning off the damage from
the Black Rock Desert. I've mostly cleared the floor, shuffling things
around and repacking. By the time Jeanne gets here on Sunday I'll be
ready to go. I've decided that I'm a home body. If I'm going to be comfortable
on this trip, I need to make the van more homey. Clearing the floor
was a major step in this direction. Now I can actually get into the
van whenever I feel like it, without having to move stuff around. Even
though I pulled into the RV park on Friday night too late for a shower,
I slept a lot better than I had the past few nights.
Now I'm sitting in the parking lot of Kinko's, where I'm going to
connect to the internet and send this dispatch. As I'm sitting here,
Wade Hodges (http://www.goldexploration.com/
)
comes by to talk. I ran into Wade last time I was here at a laundromat
/ bar. Wade's rugged but outgoing, and looks like he should be a supporting
actor in a western. The sort of guy who could get the gal but instead
opts for a life on the range, the sort of guy who if he did get
the gal would Do The Right Thing and marry her, the sort of guy who
drinks hard but never gets mean.
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Wade Hodges, action geologist
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This time I find out more about Wade. He's a 'Consulting Exploration
Geologist' whose business card reads "Dedicated to the search for GOLD
using features of practical exploration significance...............
and a smile!" Wade tells me a story about doing some prospecting at
a small village in the Amazon Basin, upriver from Belem. He was drinking
at a small bar, just three adobe walls and beer, when two locals in
the corner got to disagreeing on something. Faster than Wade could see,
one had whipped his machete off of his back and slammed it deep into
the wooden table, severing the end of each finger on his companion's
hand. Then the guy with the machete started shooting. One bullet went
through Wade's jeep. Luckily none went through Wade. As Wade tells the
story, no one acted like this was terribly unusual.
Wade also told me a story about friends of his who were prospecting
in Colombia. They were warned by one faction or other a few times to
move along, but they didn't pay attention. They were found at the bottom
of a 3,000 foot ravine. It took two weeks to recover the bodies.
Now, strangely enough, these sorts of stories make me want to make
this trip more. One of the best things you can take back from
any sort of adventure is stories, and these were doozies. Granted, it
would have sucked if Wade had been killed. (No point in getting great
stories and then dying.) But he wasn't killed, and he shared
these great stories with me. I'd love to have some of these sorts of
stories to give my friends.
One time Dan and I were driving through Sequoia or Yellowstone or
one of those National Parks. We spotted two bear cubs off to one side
of a trail, and a big black momma bear off to the other. They were about
100' apart. The cubs were cavorting, as cubs do, and momma's attention
was centered squarely on Dan and I. I started moving down the trail.
As I got closer and closer to the line connecting momma and cubs, momma
got larger and larger. Her fur was expanding the same way an angry cat's
does. Now, I know this is a dumb-shit thing to do, but I was fascinated.
I wanted to see how big she would get and when she'd charge.
Dan eventually swooped in and pulled me away. I didn't think she'd
chase me for very long (after all, I would be running away from
the cubs), so I didn't think I was in that much danger. Maybe I was.
I definitely was getting an adrenalin rush. And I like the story. (And
so does Dan, who tells it more often than I do.)
The most memorable camping trips I've taken have been those where
someone has almost died. (They didn't, so the memories aren't tragic.)
Fear for your life, or that of someone else, has a fixitive quality.
I want some of those 'living on the edge' stories from this trip. (I
can imagine Jeanne reading this and saying "Oh shit!".) What fun would
it be to come back and say "Yup, the food was pretty good and we stayed
at some nice RV parks. I got diarrhea once, though."?
From where I'm sitting in my van, I can see snow on the hills outside
of Carson City. There is a cool breeze blowing through the door of the
van. It's a sunny day.
Ron
Just the facts
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Mileage driven today:
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174
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mi
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Mileage to date:
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890
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mi
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Distance from home:
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170
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mi (as the crow flies)
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Distance from Ushuaia:
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7146
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mi (as the crow flies)
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Altitude:
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4806
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ft
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Fuel bought today:
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30.3
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gallons
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Fuel cost today:
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$60.38
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Heard Believe by Cher:
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Grandma Hattie's Restaurant, men's restroom,
Carson City
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