possibly the cutest font ever...

And it can be found here.... (without the pink... i added that)

A long lack of photos...

At first I didn't really like these costumes... but they've totally grown on me.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee nachos!

It's soo close! Bicho is on his way!

Camelback

Op, my office mate came through! I acquired another camelback, this one is an official US marines one - so if anyone needs it count on it.

Bicho's Burning Bounty

his list.

Search and consent...

I just watched a really interesting video somebody posted about police searching cars and houses. Actually it's an extremely boring and long video, but there were several things I really didn't know. For instance, did you know that if you are speeding and get pulled over you should not admit that you knew you were speeding? Anyway- the information about searching your home applies to tents and living space at burning man. Very interesting. Also, the info about the police stopping you as you are walking around could also come in handy.

Things to bring...

I heard Jimmy mention that he'd like to read a concise list of things to bring for yourself. Here goes... feel free to add on.

• Shelter- tent (It's nice to have a place to go and be alone.. BM can be a bit overwhelming at times)
  
• something to sleep on- air mattress/cot, pillow
  
• sleeping bag/blankets (The temp at night drops very low and it gets COLD! likewise during the day it gets really hot, making it almost impossible to sleep in your tent. A sheet helps. As does a portable fan. We've got the pluton (which will serve as Michaels bed, I believe) and two hammocks. Ear plugs. Eye mask. Sleeping medicine (if your like me and can't sleep in the sweltering heat without a little help)
  
• A bike. Extra bike tire tubes. A bike basket. A bike lock. Believe me, having your bike stolen when you are 2 miles away from your camp and really tired sucks. (This happened to me). Decorate your bike to make it recognizable. (Around center camps there are thousands of bikes... making it difficult to find even when you know where you parked it.) you might even stick a label on it with our camp name and address in case somebody finds it. Burning man is huge and some of the art is miles away from where you camp. I think everyone in our group has a bike, but if you don't put it as your top priority.
  
• Dust masks/goggles/gas mask. I've personally never used a gas mask... those regular dust masks work fine. However, gas masks look cool- but seem like they'd be really hot during the day.
• Light, loose clothing for the day. If you burn easily make sure you have something to cover your arms. Undies. A hat helps too. Plenty of sunscreen. Aloe. Lip gloss. Lotion or bag balm for playa foot. Lots of clean socks. Comfy shoes. Boots are best because they protect your feet from the alkali desert. I generally put a whole bunch of bag balm on my feet then put on new socks and then boots. I read this in some book about trench warfare. It works well. My feet have gotten so torn apart and blistered there it was extremely painful to walk.
  
• Warm clothing for the night. Long underwear, lots of layers, a heavy coat. It gets really really cold at night.
  
• Wet wipes- for daily washing. Biodegradable, earth friendly soap. Dr. Bronners is quite nice and utilitarian. Your hair will feel like straw and form into hitertoo unimaginable shapes.
• Flashlight/tent light. We all have glowy items now, I believe.
• A camping chair, hammock and stand. Folding chairs if anyone's got em. We have two 6ft tables, one for the eating area and one for the hanging out area. Really we need to be sure that we have plenty of seating.
• Something to do during the hottest times of the day-- books, games, cards etc.
• Camera-- store this in a plastic bag when not in use. EVERYTHING, your most intimate crevices that you didn't even know you had, everything in the cars, everything electronic will come out coated in dust. It has a very distinct smell, and you will smell of it for weeks.
• First Aid stuff- bandaids, antibiotic ointment, aloe. Or duct tape and windex if you are particular brawny.
  
• Food things- a plate, knife and fork/metal utilitarian spork. A pot and a skillet for cooking. Bring a cup with a handle and maybe a lid that can be attached to your camelbak. Lots of people set up bars but nobody provides cups, so having one you just carry around is quite fun.
• Enough food for the week. The first year we went we all took MRE's. Michael seemed to love this option. I felt like I was starving. Last year I overcompensated by having an elaborate meal plan for each day, which resulted in a lot of time devoted to cooking and clean-up. This year I aim for somewhere in the middle. A couple tasty dinner meals, but mostly snack food and light, pre-packaged (we have a vacuum packer at our house) easily prepared things. While we will have a community kitchen set up this year, everyone is responsible for their own meals. We are not doing community meals. It is virtually impossible for us anyway- considering Bobby's gluten allergy. Generally plan on a breakfast meal and a dinner meal, and snack through the middle of the day. Along with the extreme temperatures you will be exercising quite a bit with all the biking a walking. Also, with all the H20 consumption you need to make sure to eat lots of salt for electrolytes. Plus salty food tastes good on the playa.
  
• A cooler or two. Generally one for drinks and one for your food stuffs.
  
• Easy meal ideas-- Snacks- Cheese, hard sausage, crackers, tuna, canned chicken, hummus, salsa, chips, hard boiled eggs, beef jerky, cookies, granola bars, ramen noodles, jelly beans and other candy. Breakfast- Pancakes and bacon, scrambled eggs with potatoes and onion, omelettes, frozen fruit smoothies (provided we can acquire a battery operated blender), cereal. Soy milk or rice milk lasts longer in the desert, I think. You can also get powered milk or canned milk I believe. I personally abhor cereal. It's absolutely disgusting. Dinner- think protein and starch. Meat and potatoes. Baked potatoes, sour cream, bacon and cheese. Noodles are actually a bit of a pain in the ass, as are things with sauces. Kabobs. Tacos. Hot dogs. (The buns won't last very long). Hamburgers. Fried rice. Kielbasa sausage.
  
• Drinks- besides the ubiquitous water consider bringing soda, Crystal Lite, and whatever alcoholic beverages suit your fancy. Cans are better than glass because you can recycle cans at the Recycle camp. However we will be bringing Boulevard and Mikes which only appears to come in glass.
  

Try to avoid bringing- bread, fresh fruits and veggies that wilt quickly (grapes, non-frozen berries, lettuce etc.) Anything that is too messy (cleaning up dusty spaghetti sauce with paper towels and a micro-inch of H20 is a pain)

Things we have as a group- Two big domes, a half dome bar area, a trailer (somebody could probably sleep in there), a pimp shower, an evaporation pond, a camp kitchen complete with sink, a camping gas grill, a pluton, two hammocks with stands, solar power and night time neon lights.

Things we absolutely still need- enough camping chairs for everyone to sit and room for new friends. If you don't bring a chair expect to sit on the ground. Radical self reliance! Trashcan. Squirt bottle for kitchen. Rugs (2 or 3 20.00 rugs from Wally World)

Things that would be handy- A bike rack. Another pluton or larger camp chair. Another portable hammock (those things are NICE!). A charcoal grill (Bobby's parents have one we brought with us last time which we may consider bringing again). A burn barrel (we have a small barrel we found in our yard that might work... It'd be so damned handy to burn our burnable trash instead of hauling it back home). I just read on some other camps blog that they are bringing a fire pit like we have. Perhaps if we just stick a cement block in it, it'll be fine. A trash separator would come in handy here-- with compartments for trash, glass, cans and burnable material.

Burn some CDs to listen to during the event. I enjoy people's themed CD's. Our first year somebody played Johnny Cash for all of burn day, which was very appropriate. I know Michael is making a CD of both pirate tunes and music that has something to do with burning. A personal MP3 player is also very handy. I enjoy biking around listening to music and looking at stuff. Also, I'm sure personal music will be essential in the van on the way there.

Game stuff- poker chips, Magic cards, Cranium etc. Around 3 it gets so hot that everyone seems to wind up at the camp.

eyeball boobies.

Camp flag ideas

Which is better, rectangular or triangular? I've got several yards of flag fabric in pink, black and red. I think they would look swell in the entrance of bicho's bar. I love both types of skulls, so I think I will use both. Not very happy with my number font selections though.

There and back again, maps.

Our route. Google maps says it is 22 hours and 40 minutes. Since we'll be hauling the trailer we'll have to go slower. I've got it stuck in my mind that it's a 28 hour trip. Mabey not. Also, driving up through Denver the way the above map suggests is a bad plan, because around Denver the mountains come into play. This will piss off both the truck (who is very well behaved and deserves to be coddled) and the van. Going north into Wyoming via Nebraska puts us in hilly areas, but won't start really being an issue for longer.

Refer to green line on below map.
Nebraska is one hell of a boring state though.


Then we will be stopping in Winnemucca, Johns' least favorite town in the world, where we will be subject to mass hysteria and moody shopping. I plan on crying hysterically at least once here. There are a weird lack of good restaurants in Winnemuca. But many casinos. Here we will also purchase H20. Last time we purchased most of our H20 here, and they had plenty stocked up for the week. I have no idea how to calculate how much it costs to move a pound of stuff out there... but rest assured that it makes very little sense to haul H20 that far.

The Official 54th post on Camp 54.

Bicho's lovely pirate bar. I will also be making pink/black/red 54 banners with little pink skull and crossbones. Also, I think we should consider making this the entrance to our dome-home area.

Op. also, we need a trashcan or something.

Also, acquired yesterday... the wonderful... the glorious... the unfortunately terribly photographed "camp kitchen". It even has a sink feature and a place to hang H20 for watery goodness. And it folds into a handy box.

Not only an eclipse, but a meteor shower!!
Meteor Shower: Aurigids
Late Friday night-Early Sat morning Aug 31- Sep. 1:
Aurigids, a rare and spectacular meteor shower will be peaking at 4:36 a.m. in the east- north eastern skies. Visible from Nevada. It will last about 1.5 hours. Best to watch between 4 and 5 am, with up to 160 Aurigids meteors per hour.
http://aurigids.seti.org/
This very rare shower will occur again on 1 September 2007. A brief shower of tens of meteors will radiate from the constellation of Auriga, many as bright as the brighter stars in the sky. The Earth will be in the thick of it during the one hour centered on 04:36 a.m. PDT. The
shower will be visible by the naked eye from locations in the western United States.
Best viewing: Keep Moon out of field of view (best to block behind obstruction such as telephone pole, then watch whole sky), avoid city haze that scatters moonlight Best direction: East and Northeast Best time: Start one hour before peak, then see the rate of meteors increase and decrease while Earth travels through the shower.

One of the noobs needs to buy some cheap-o walkie-talkies. For the ride out.

Our trailer is reserved, courtesy of Mark.

Pluton

Our pimp seating. Doubles as my playa bed.

It's chances are high of becoming immolated. If it survives, yay for it!

Overload - Assets Continued

Ok, here's an ongoing list of shit we still need.

• Mailbox - the feds will not be happy - I'm on this


• New air filters - for both cars, this will increase our gas mileage on the way home


• coolers - I propose that you work out food storage with the people you live with. Noobs, don't bring more than 3 coolers.
  - Get yours!


• solar shower - simply putting the shroud together and then taking it apart. I need a length of velcro/some "flap shutting" solution and zipties.


• PVC for the second dome


• Rugs - Keep acquiring them, we have an awesome huge one that Vickie found for us, another two big ones would be swell - a few 19$ smaller ones from the 'marts would fill the void as well.


• Seats - camping chairs outside of the plywood furniture - noobs get some

Add anything you can think of.

Arrival

Ok, first, someone should post pictures of the shade structure bicho has created for the Bar. I e-mailed it to relevant parties but am too close to going to GWAR to post anything that's not ranty.

Order of business: topic: ARRIVAL!

Essentially I say we leave Lawrence at 12:01AM on the 26th. This places us at burning man near 2am the 27th barring unfortunate events.

Personally, I've felt it's wonderful to arrive on the playa when the gates open. This is typically when all of the theme camp placers are awake and present - sure they are busy, but it beats waiting 8 hours for them to wake up. Second, it will maximize the amount of time we get to sleep under the stars on the first evening. After a 26 hour car trip, landing on the 100 degree sunny playa trying to find someplace to sleep is not a good idea. Doing camp set up the morning after arriving after a 6 hour confusing sleep is always a good idea in my book.

Some say it's silly to wait through the crowds of the start and entrance - I've heard the crowds never get lighter until about Tuesday at 1am. They pick back up hardcore from then on (20k cars getting searched always means a line - and they are at their most efficient as greeters in the first 6 hours.) This basically negates that. Sure we'll be tired of sitting in the car, but there's nothing keeping you in the damn car once on the playa.

Further, for the sake of argument, there's the sheer number of people coming up highway 447 from reno - the cops will be present and will pull over a mighty .01% of the traffic. We're gonna win $1000 on the gasoline slot machines before they nab us. I assume the cop presence on these roads never lightens, but the traffic certainly does.

Anyway, if anybody has any conflicting opinions I say voice them! Otherwise the kapt'n requires no mutiny!

Lunar eclipse...

Apparently while on the playa there will be a total eclipse of the full moon. Thats pretty cool.
From the enviornmental blog: "From Mike with the BLM: “It should start about 1:00 to 12:00 PM on the 27th and end about 3:AM on the 28th. We will be able to see the entire eclipse at the Burning Man event. This will be the first ever total lunar eclipse at the event."

Too bad it's so damned early in the week-- we'll probably just be getting there. Or do we get there the morning of the 27th?

Also- I finished your coat Michael.

Needs cont.x2

Not a very inventive blog title for me today I am afraid.

Vicki just called and said she found another tent for $15 bucks. First one who claims it wins.
Also, I know Michael saw it but we got one huge 10ft by 10ft rug for one of the domes. She's still looking for more-- but we may need to have a couple of those $20 rugs from Walmart. Of course we've never had rugs before in the domes, so it's not a super-need.

We also have a bike rack that can hold up to 4 bikes. We can toss this on the van, hopefully.

Are we still thinking of making the plywood bike rack? It'd be handy. Depending on our money situation in a week or so, I may pone up for that.

Funny Shit

"h: on the environmental section
http://www.burningman.com/environment/resources/burning.html
<-- reading that due to its extreme relevance
Bicho: haha
lets see if we can burn everything listed under the "do not burn toxic stuff" category
h: hahahahahaha
Bicho: i'm planning on painting the bar sometime today
h: that is so awesome that it's noble"

The Pluton has a mattress, it looks suspiciously flammable. My bed is complete! The lighting fixtures are complete! All that is needed is to run wires around the camp and make a study little thing for the solar panel. The solar shower is next up on my list. What's the status on the other dome's PVC and rope?

Hep Kitten and Plutons

The Pluton is mostly finished! All that is needed is to steal a futon mattress from around Lawrence (EVERYONE be looking!) to round the edges, and to sand everything off.

I'm finishing the lighting fixtures this afternoon - they're very simple. I still need to make a little 2x4 support to put the solar panel atop the van.

I think that we are going to need to create some bike-carrying system for the uhaul - 8 bikes of different sizes will be interesting. We have the one for the back of the truck/van that Vickie brought out after we found the pup.

Oh, and our placer Hep Kitten gracefully requested this:
"HI all,

I have a small request to make. Please send a note to all your fellow theme camp mates to pose all questions to me through you.

Unfortunately with over 140 theme camps to help out if a few people in each of those camps sent me a message a day I would be completely overwhelmed with incoming messages.

I am happy to help where I can - but I still need some time to get my gear ready for the burn as well.

Thanks so much,

HepKitten"

Bicho's bar

Bicho's pimping slotted bar. Very well done.

Placement!

Placement was announced today! And we're FIRST on the list!

Camp: 54
Location: Estuary and 4:30
Size: 100 x 75
Contact: Hep Kitten

That's a block from the porta potties, slightly closer than Bicho and I camped last year, on the motherfucking 4:30 PLAZA road. Pimp-tact-ular. God Box is a block out from us!