Burning Man 2004
From crispyneurons
August 30 | August 31 | September 1 | September 2 | September 3 | September 4 | September 5 | September 6 | Saratonin's photos
This time the burn began long before August. We got our tickets in March. We began preparations for the theme camp mid-summer, and I spent the bulk of late July and all of August in a whirlwind of activity. Checklists, route planning and logistics were forefront for me. Heather focused on creating amazing costumes. Thanks to her, I had the warmest fur coat for the night playa and a fantastic irridescent sheer green gallibiya for the day.
Not long before I left for the burn, Saratonin asked me this:
can/would you find a site or diagramage of the night
sky for bm week
want to know the story in the sky bored on the
big dipping
And it got me to thinking... this would really fit with the theme this year: The Vault of Heaven. Which is, I'm sure, part or all of why she asked me.
I generated these diagrams to illustrate the night sky for each night of the burn: August 30th through September 6th. If you're curious, they are set to precisely midnight of each day, Universal Time, which is equivalent to seven hours prior on the playa.
My photography was integrated with the sky diagrams shortly after I returned.
[edit] August 30
The journey began at Diyafa in Solana Beach. Heather and I borrowed her parents' truck, and we spent all morning and the prior evening loading and securing it. The unfortunate part of this was that I came down with the flu about two days prior, and so instead of sleeping and trying to calm my fever, we had a lot of work to do. Heather did a tremendous amount of work and was very helpful.
Before we could begin our trip, I had to make an appearance at my classes for this term -- otherwise I would almost certainly be dropped. My efforts to communicate with the teachers in prior weeks hadn't shown much success; I had reached only one teacher. So go to school it was, at least for the morning. Heather went in to work for the morning and dropped me off.
Just after noon we were on the road, and making good time. The truck was absolutely packed, but we had managed to fit everything we needed. (Greg, a virgin burner, had generously offered to take the 10 ft. poles for the Massage Confessional that wouldn't fit in the truck.) Hours later we found ourselves in the arid emptiness of Highway 395.
Night fell, and while we had made good time, we had suffered a very late start. Heather had driven and was exhausted; I was wrecked from the flu. We decided to crash in Reno rather than make the final 2 hour push into BRC. Fortunately we had made reservations at a burner-friendly hotel casino in Reno before we left.
The 395 route to Reno had been a beautiful drive. My strongest memory is in the night, as we passed a lake by the full moon, partly obscured by thin black clouds. I loved how the cool moonlight gently lit the black lake. The photo below, time-elapse of the full moon from the moving truck, serves as a token of the moment.
The drive had been very, very smooth. Many of our friends had much more exciting adventures, involving trailers with shattered axles, RVs with overheating radiators, broken transmissions and flat tires, and more. Aside from our late start and being sick and tired, it was an long, easy, beautiful drive.
Next day: August 31...
