Burning2000

Burningman 2000 Go to Burningman 2001 CLICK ON Some PHOTOS to enlarge www.motorizedcouch.com has videos from 2001
	We got there Wednesday evening and set up camp. I put the parachute over the whole truck to block some of the winds which were about, I don't know, 150 mph. I kept telling Karla the winds would die down as soon as it got dark but they never died down. The next day it started raining. I told Karla that this was going to be a lot of fun as soon as the hurricane was over. If I had known about the weather I would have brought a wind mill instead of the solar panel for sure. I would have made space suits instead of motorized arm chairs, and I would have gone anywhere else in the world but here. The Burningman people said it was sunny and warm during the day and cool at night. I think they lied just to get us up there. I used auto-adjust in Photoshop on all these photos. Photoshop could not believe they were as dark as they were, consequently these photos look as though the weather was tolerable. It wasn't. It was a freezing raining typooning hurricane of a tornado with floods and dust and the ground swallowed us up and I am not exaggerating I swear.
The odd thing is that nobody seemed to mind. Everyone seemed ecstatic with joy and love for their fellowman, damn them. The picture at right was taken on the last day which was the one day with good weather. Notice that my chairs are absent as they broke down Friday night after almost three days of driving around. We had to leave them out on the main road where they got a lot of attention. When we returned people were taking turns having their photos taken in them. My camera had frozen up by that time from the rip-the-skin-off-your-face dust storms so no pictures but it made me think that couches on the esplanade would be a great thing.
It was faster than the chairs but it was a workout to go into the wind. We had to anchor it when stopped to keep it from flying away into the sky. But it never broke down. The rubber tires became brittle because it was as cold as liquid nitrogen outside. Now I'm exaggerating.	Fortunately I also made an Emergency Backup Vehicle, EBV. It is rear wheel steered and independent front wheel drive, sociable three wheeler. Another feature is that it tips over around turns.


Other Vehicles: There were many vehicles. These are just a few of them. There was so many of them and most of them were so clever that it was overwhelming. I kept exclaiming, "Wow! Look at that. That's ingenious."
At right is one of my favorites. It was beautiful. Notice the jack shaft connecting the two front sets of gears. I think he said he only has two or three gears which is fine for flat playas.
For info on the building of the bike and chairs: Burning bicycle and Burning Chairs, the making of.
	At left is not a Rhoades car. But it is very similar. www.rhoadescar.com or www.quadracycleinc.com above photo is a bike with three rear wheels
		The Zebra chairs looked like they were home made. It seats three people, but only one pedals.
	Above is also one of my favorites. Small motor but high speed, well built and stable. It has a shade which can also be a sail. He was a really nice guy as well as was everyone we talked to.		The ones we didn't talk to, I'm not so sure about.
Gas Blender On Bike	Banana Bike


	That's my daughter Michelle, and her boy friend, Bruce. (The picture to the left!) They came up but didn't stay very long. I was disappointed, almost emotional, that they didn't get to drive the chairs. But what could I do? Above are other burning kids. No apparent damage from trauma but we should study them for 20 to 40 years.

We didn't find my friend Dan Delany until Friday. He said he was going to be on Sex drive. I said, "Yes but where are you camped?" I noticed his camp had its fair share of Sex Drive. (I've been working on that joke for 6 months) Friday morning I said lets start at one end of Sex drive and we'll see if we can see his couch on sex drive. It was better than looking on Anus Drive, although the weather looked like Uranus, no offense. (Did you know it rains diamonds on Neptune) Within 30 seconds Dan came running out and flagged us down. That was miraculous. The storm was becoming particularly Plutonian just then so we all ran into his tent which was a marvelous geodesic dome which withstood the cyclonic winds very well. It was built by his friend, Ben. We all huddled in there and tried to shout over the howling, screaming Koyanisquasty winds. It quickly drove us all mad. You can see his couch is very well built. Click on it for a larger picture. If I had met him earlier I probably would have copied his design. He had the blender and lamp with shade. Our lamp shade and umbrella didn't last 5 minutes. He says his couch got up to 25 mph. Last year he won the contest for fastest living room furniture and brought home a large trophy. That is very impressive. The only mechanical problem he had was the small front wheels from Harbor Freight failed a few times, same as the front wheels of our chairs. Bearings fried on ours.

Burning people say that the bad weather is part of the experience of Burningman. I understand that Larry Harvey wants to punish himself for the way he treated his old girl friend but its been 15 years he should get over it. The bad weather does NOT add to the experience. The bad weather turns it into a nightmare, huddled in tiny shelters, shivering, wet and miserable for days, waiting for the fun to end. "When will it end?" Sleeping in mud, you can't open your eyes which are red and swollen and mud is in your mouth and in your coffee and even in your Tupper wear.
I also have to mention that the Porta potties were overflowing: toilet paper piled up over the seat tops for several days. I thought this was just a little incompetent especially since when we entered, they made such a point of threatening us with arrest if we urinated on the playa. For two days there were no toilets. What's up with that? I went and complained at the front gate. I was practically pounding on the desk, "These people are just trying to go to the bathroom." Was that too righteous? I think they called up the porta potty people and told them to take another day off. Recently, I have been told and I believe them, that people were throwing non- disolvables in the potties. These items would clog the pumps and slow down the cleanup. They also promised that 2001 would be better.



We made it to the end, just barely. We loaded up the truck for departure before the man burned. We drove the truck out onto the Playa, right past a Ranger who did not ask to see our Mutant Vehicle permit, and we picked up the broken down motorized chairs with the homemade crane. That night, on the playa, I was thankful they burned the man early. As he was engulfed in flames and fireballs we began backing up. We watched the fireworks over our shoulder. The man fell over and we were half way to the truck. While he smoldered we drove out of Dodge, our hair like mud encrusted barbed wire, my thousand dollar camera: an artifact of a previous time, and the smell of my clothes; holy Mary mother of all that can save us in our hour of need. When we got home the weather was so beautiful I couldn't believe it. It was just so beautiful, it almost made me cry. There really is no place like home.



We caved. We bought an Airstream