Flickr fixed?

OK, for any and all of you what wanted to visit my flickr account but couldn't I hope that the problem is now fixed. I'm also hoping that you will NOT have to create an account just to view the photos.

I would like to take this opportunity to state that the flickr staff are fascist dogs and incompetent. I wrote to them to find out why my account seemed to be malfunctioning. Instead of telling me that my account had been censored because of some of partial nudity, they told me that they'd get right on finding out what was the matter. I didn't hear from them for a week. In the mean time I spent hours tracking down the problem myself.

My account is: www.flickr.com/photos/nomadphotos/ . Once my subscription runs out they'll only see my back as I'm leaving. They can bite my bottom.

The Trip Home

At some point on my ride west in the spring one of my tail lights has stopped working. I assumed it was just a loose connection and I'd just have to jiggle a wire. It didn't work. It wasn't the bulb either. I did all I was able to track the problem but I never got it fixed and resolved that I'd travel mostly during the day to avoid the faulty light from being spotted by the cops.

So when it came time to leave Burning Man I traveled mostly during the day and avoided driving til the wee hours of the night/morning as I usually do. It was nice to actually get decent sleep for once on this cross country trip. I was astonished when once in a while a cop would pass me by at night and NOT pull me over. I figured that an old VW bus would be high profile for carrying some weed and any thin excuse would be used as a pretext for getting a look inside the bus. They would be disappointed if they wanted to find any drugs inside the hippie bus, but I certainly didn't want a defective equipment ticket for the trouble.

It wasn't until I was at the PA/NY line that I realized that as of Sept 1, my bus was no longer registered. I didn't leave Nevada til Sept 10. Back in April I had sought to register my bus in advance but I was told that it was too far in advance. My plan was to have my father register it for me in August, but motorized transportation was not a big theme in the past 5 months of my life and so registration seemed like a distant abstract by the time I was driving home in Sept.

After I realized that I was unregistered I became so paranoid I might as well have been smoking big bags of weed. Unfortunately it was already past dark when I came to the realization that my bus could be impounded several hundred miles from home. For the next 50 miles, until I could find a place to park for the night, every pair of headlights that came up behind me was a potential cop that was going to pull me over.

It was a miracle that I somehow managed to drive from coast to coast in an unregistered '71 VW bus with a tail light out and not get pulled over. But in the end I arrived safe and sound mid day in Sanbornville, NH.

Post Event

I stayed for nine days after the event to help clean up the desert. Cleaning up the desert involves removing all traces of the event. First the participants go. The responsible ones do a fine job of leaving no trace. The irresponsible ones leave behind their garbage knowing that 'someone will take care of it'. What gets left behind is sometimes more than just a bag of garbage. Bicycles by the hundreds are left. There was even an abandoned vehicle - the engine was blown - and a camper was left as well at another location. All this stuff has to be removed somehow.

After all the participants have gone it's up to the remaining staff to remove all structures - trailers, small wooden buildings, all vehicles, container units, and massive generators. In addition all the cable that's been buried needs to be hauled back to the surface. Posts that were once a part of larger structures need to be pulled up. And of course there's the 17 miles of fence that needs to go.

While all that is going on there's another part of the clean up going on as well. Every little piece of MOOP (Matter Out Of Place) needs to be lifted from the dirt and removed. This is a meticulous job and has to be done over several square miles. I participated in doing this combing for debris over the area where we camped and I picked up even individual strands of hair at times. Nothing is felt if it is seen. The trouble often arises with all the shifting wind and dust we had that can bury things under a light layer. So we even raked the ground to help us find things that may have been missed the first time over.

After nine days, I decided it was time for me to hit the road. There was a staff that would stay til the beginning of October. But I'd been there for 5 weeks already. I'd been traveling since early April. I hit my wall and needed a change of scenery.

Burning Man and Photography

I got the opportunity to talk directly with two of the best known photographers on the playa. I asked each one of them for the one bit of advice they had for someone who is a beginner at working with people. It was great to see their different style and approach and listen to their advice. One of them snapped my photo while we were chatting and you can find it at: webbery.com/galleries/bu.../index15.html .

I also got the opportunity to work with some friends of mine who volunteered to model. I learned a great deal from the experience. I hope to be able to post some of the photos on-line soon. I have those to upload as well as thousands from the hiking trip.

I found it hard to go out and take as many photos as I wanted because of a combination of work schedule, dust condition, low energy, etc. It was a challenge this year.

Speaking of dusty conditions - one incident of note was a particularly bad dust storm we had this year. It started with a cyclone of dust that went right by my camp - just one hundred feet away. It was a opaque tower of swirling dust. About seventy feet up was a four-person tent. It's door was open and it had been plucked from the ground. The wind continued to keep it inflated so that it had little chance of coming down any time soon. I watched as it passed by and headed for the open desert. When I last saw it, it was about a thousand feet in the air and a quarter mile out still dancing around the shifting column of dust. It was at that point that a wall of dust overtook me from behind and blotted out everything that was more than twenty feet away. It didn't let up all afternoon after that.

Working Burning Man

Burning Man this year was a mixture of good and bad. From the working side it all went remarkably smoothly. The operation has been fine tuned over the years and is starting to run quite well.

I have worked on the radar for a number of years. In a nutshell I watch a radar screen and can spot people trying to enter the city from any direction other than the gate; thereby avoiding the cost of the ticket. I can spot vehicles, but also bicycles, and even pedestrians as far as two miles out walking across the open desert in the dead of night. The night shift is the one I enjoy most.

This year prior to the event the shifts were extremely uneventful and boring. One night for example the biggest excitement we had was one car load of stoned people who simply missed the turn and had to be redirected to the main entrance. They all had their tickets and so were definitely not trying to break in.

I expected the excitement to pick up once the event was actually going and people were arriving in far greater numbers. It never happened. Each shift passed by as slowly as the last. I work alone but I'm in radio contact with the folks outside the fence that do the actual chasing of the would-be fence crashers. To keep ourselves awake and amused we turned to writing haikus about working Perimeter. I didn't copy any down to share, but hopefully I will have some to print later.

My Quote For The Day

"You can't drink all day unless you start in the morning" --S.O.L. on the PCT

Playa Report - One Week To Event

It had to happen sooner or later. We've had two solid weeks of glorious weather - no wind or dust. Last night at about 10:00 the wind began and became a steady strong flow. It hasn't abated yet. Last night there were whiteout conditions. At this early hour it's still clear out for the most part, but once the sun warms the ground and there's some upward flow to the air I anticipate more dusty whiteout conditions this afternoon. It's predicted to stay like this for the next 2 days and then return to the same calm weather pattern.

Bring your dust masks. If you have the kind that use cartridges make sure you replace the onces from last year.

The Playa Report

OK all you Burners. I was actually out on the playa today and here's what I have to say.

Most of you know that the city is going to be a little bigger this year. I was out today helping set up the streets in the empty playa. There was a small cluster of work vehicles at what will be the Man base. I was out on the outer most street ( "K"). The cars looked like specks on the horizon. And the really mind-blowing things was that what I was perceiving was just the radius.

Remember all the dunes from last year? Well they didn't go away. But here's the little extra. The dunes haven't become solid over the year. They have a thin crust over the top of them but they are still piles of soft fluffy playa. Once these get all mashed up they are just piles ready to blow away. I saw a water truck actually get stuck in one of these soft dunes today. It will be interesting. So far though the wind has only been average so the dust hasn't been over the top.

I was told that the smoke from the California fires has been dense here, but since I've been here it's been clear. Who knows which way that will go during the week of the event. Hopefully it will continue to be smoke free. Dust AND thick smoke would be a bit much even for veterans.

I made it

I'm in the Black Rock Saloon. Work starts in the morning. The drive went without a hitch.

Another Rattler Story

I was spending a quiet afternoon inside my tent writing in my journal and waiting for my hiking partner to catch up. I caught a motion out of the corner of my eye and turned to spy the back portion of a rattle snake going by just 4 feet or so away. I've seen bigger by far - the ones on the Appalachian Trail easily reach 5 feet long and bigger through the middle than my wrist. But a rattler is a rattler and seeing one in the wild is always exciting. I moved to get a better look at it and the snake realized for the first time that I was nearby. Rattlers are not aggressive by nature though so it didn't coil and rattle at me, but rather it froze to assess the situation. I got out my camera and the snake started moving again. At one point it was only about 2 feet away. The photo is a bit grainy because I took it through the mesh in my tent, but here's the shot I took. You can see the edge of my tent in the upper part of the photo.




The following day I saw a rattler in the process of eating a bird. I hadn't seen so many snakes since the southern desert. It was surprised because I was traveling through a forested area and not in the open rocky desert where I was used to seeing rattlers.