That be 3 of my younger sisters circa 1980?
The one in the middle was the youngest but she was the only one that knew how to read so she was reading them a christmass story.
Sad to say the other two went on to both be Dr.'s one a medical and the other a PhD.
And as far as I can tell they still dont know how to read.
The other went on to greater things, she is a Nurse saving peoples lifes and making them much better!
although the Medical Dr. did send me some Viagra one time!
Ok the picture above is of my Grandparents about 25 years ago. They both passed away a few years ago. This picture was taken by Dad in about 1981 or so. That model T is one of the many vehicles he restored. Another is sitting in my moms garage that is hers. (it was her dad and mom)
So the other day I had laser eye surgery. It was the first time I have ever had the drug valium so I blame this on that.
The night after my surgery I had a pretty wild dream. Now normally I wouldn’t talk about my dreams in any forum were my mom might read it. There are just some things you don’t talk to your mom about duhhh.
I guess since I have been blogging about Burning Man and I was on valium it makes since.
I am at burning man and who is there with me? My grandparents. What I can remember is Granddad going over to talk to some people about there art car. Perfectly normal! Me and Nanny (that’s what we called her) went around the corner to the pink pancake theme camp to get some breakfast but the topless girl that was cleaning up said we missed them. So we found granddad talking to some folks (he was talking to some people just like the time him and I in real life had gone to some salvage yards hunting some old parts for cars) and informed him and we decided that since they had not brought food or water that they should go on into reno and stay there. Then I woke up.
This whole thing was real freaky on several levels.
One just my grandparents going to burning man. Enough said I think there.
Then, Nanny not worred about the topless girl. She was worried about the food. Now she should have been worried about the food but I know in real life the topless chick at the pink pancake would have uhhh well lets say I don’t think it would have been a calm affair! (and there was not a pink pancake theme camp that I knew of but there were camps that gave away food some mornings)
And then having a dream with my grandparents in it. They are the only close people that have passed away and it’s the second time I have dreamed about them (the other time it was a George Bush inauguration ceremony, and that is weirder than Burning Man!)
To tell the truth though it was real nice to see my grandparents and talk to them. Yea yea it was a dream but it was real pleasant. Not that I am gonna take valium to get the dream again (Actually I think the valium had worn off, I was just tired)
Oh and notice how much I look like my grandfather. I have been told I look like his dad even more. Also his wife and my wife have the same name. welcome to the twilight zone!
What a day, what a day.
This photo is right after we parked and right before the Vaseline incident, facing the back of the DFT theme camp, with my back to the Rainforest Refugees (which are not there yet) That is pharaoh on top of the trailer, he was one of the leads for the DFT camp. The girl in the shirt is Paullina not 20 minutes after arriving! The brown thing is the community shower. The camp is not even half way set up at this point. No music, no bar, no front signs, no pilloasis, there was a lot of work to do.
So we threw off some bikes then walked over to meet the guys and gals working hard at setting up the DFT camp. I ended up helping them build there camp all day long! I ran lights, Built the bar, got the DJ booth all plugged in.
First started just as the gopher. If I saw someone doing a task and I understood what they were doing I jumped up and did it so they could go onto something else. It does not take a genius to run lights, but it takes a creative person to know were to run them. Hey you point it out and I will do it!
Setting up a camp in the middle of the dessert with limited resources can be a challenge and everyone pitched in. Some more than others but everyone pretty much gave it there all.
I had to get everyone’s name about 20 times before I could remember it and some I still cant remember. At one point one of the ladies that was “in charge” at the dft had asked me to do some stuff and I did. After about the 5th thing I did for her I asked her name and she said “Katy”…I hollered with joy “Katy? Hell my wifes name is katy, I can remember your name and I do what katy says so I am your beatch for the week!” oh and she is red headed and I know from experience don’t argue or fight with a redhead!
I realized right off that this theme camp was my type of people. They were all from Houston and Austin with a few from the Dallas area. And Texans, well at least the ones there at the DFT camp, know how to fix things, and build things and are not afraid of hard work. Plus the heat sure didn’t bother us. For us it was nice and cool. No humidity! Can you imagine!
Getting the DJ booth working was a challenge. I had never worked on one before but after a little studying me and DJ Darius from the Rainforest Refugees (he showed up about 10 minutes after we did) got it working and we had tunes to work with.
About 7 pm or so I was up on the ladder to the dft trailer running some lights and looked down and saw the guy in charge of the rainforest camp….and thus a great story begins….
So we gave our ticket, and were welcomed home. We knew were our theme camp was.
Paulina asked us to drop her off at the dang fricken Texans. (from here on refered to as DFT and they are not really the dang fricken but it will do)
the DFT's were suppose to be between 4 and 4:30 on Gestalt street and we were between 4 and 4:30 on Fetish.
The way the streets are layed out 4 to 4:30 is huge. about a long city block long.
so we drive to gestalt and find the DFT's about 4:20. get out meet them and in talking with them told them were we were suppose to be with. they said that we were right behind them and damned if we weren't.
Was quit funny, Paulina who for 2 days was worried she wouldnt find her camp ended up camping 22 feet from mine! I actually set up my tent on the property line between DFT and the Rainforest Refugees who I was suppose to camp with and right next the DFW and Beyond camp.
This photo is were I parked my truck for the week. the car is were Rainforest main tent went.
so we get out of the truck and Tom and I started unloaded stuff, just moving kinda slow. and what happened next was quit shocking to say the least.
One of the girls walks up wearing a scarf as a top (I loaned her the scarf as her stuff was in another vehicle) and what I call work out panties. no biggy we had already seen some nude people and it was hot. But what she did next was.
she hands Tom a jar of vaoline with the lid off and ask him to hold it. Then hands me the lid then she drops her panties.
Ok yes we were floored. Just what in the heck are you doing. Tom and I are both married, its the middle of the desert and your handing vasoline to us and dropping your panties. DAMN girl just what the hell is going on.
so Tom and are standing there with our jaws on the ground not knowing what to say or think and she proceeds to rub vasoline between her thighs explaing that she read in the BM survival guide that it helps with chafing in the dry desert. They also recommend putting it up your nose to keep it from drying out. I did neither and was fine but I grew up in the dry desert air.
Me and Tom although we didnt really mind the view were both quit relieved that this was all it was.
it was the last time I was suprised until the next sat. Not the last time I was shocked but last time suprised.
Not burning man related sorry...
Friday I went and had Lasik surgery on my eyeballs. I now have 20/20 vision without glasses, can actually see better at night compared to wearing glasses at night.
was not to painful, just kind of weird. Its not every day that you take a hit of valium, some guy cuts a flap in your cornea (and you see him do it) a laser buzzes your eye for a few seconds and you can see better because of it.
I wont go into details about laser eye surgery, you can google that and find out more info than you care to.
I will talk about some other things though.
Way back mom was worried I was gonna use drugs. What she never knew was I was to damn paranoid. I always had this fear of getting busted and ending up in prison with a cell mate named bubba that liked to rape his cellmate. So I pretty much stayed out of trouble not from fear of mom or dad but big time fear of Bubba.
And then the few times I took legal pain medication I did not care for the felling I got from it. I dont like the felling of being out of touch like that.
So right before I got into surgery they give me half a pill (10mg was the full pill) of valium then you stick the other part under your tongue. so 10 min later they help me up to go into the laser room, I can hardly walk and the nurse says how do you fell? "like wow man i fell stoned!" So the stupid DR. (all Dr. are pretty much stupid) say ok I am gonna do this and that and are you ok? hell doc, I dont care what you do just be quiet and let me rest man!
I do not see how people get addicted to valium. That stuff sucks. Your out of touch, your sleepy groggy kinda. I will pass thank you very much.
And again the DR. proved my theory. The nurses and admins run the show, the DR.'s are there to be the token stupid person. The Dr. made me fell as comfortable as a whore in church, but the nurses were awesome. they explained what was going on, what I would fell in human terms were this Dr. (who had the personality of a dead orangutan) was ugly for one thing, and the one joke he said came out dumb as anything. why cant Dr's act normal? because there not. There freaks dam it. (all but my dumb sister who is a dr. she is not a dumb dr. she is a dumb sister, there is a big difference. She is probably a good dr. but still a dumb sister)
so I have to put drops of stuff in my eyes about 12 times a day or some crap for the next two weeks. But I wont be putting on any glasses except sunglasses beatches!
About a quarter mile past the ticket station is the greeter station. These are volunteers who welcome you to Burning Man and make sure you know what your in for.
They mention or ask several things.
Do you have water and food? Shelter?
Don’t put anything that does not come out of your body into the porta poties.
Are you with a theme camp? (in our case since I was the first one there for Rainforest Refugees, they took me to another guy who made sure we set up in the correct place.)
The first thing a greete says is welcome home. Kinda funny since 3 of the 4 of us had never been. But it actually makes since to me. Just because you had never been there does not mean its not your home.
My greeter was a woman somewere between the age of 25 and 35 I would guess. She was wearing combat boots and orange stretch panties and nothing else. She was having a blast. But she did get serious when she asked all the important questions or talked about the porta poties.
They have a bell you can ring if you want for virgin burners. And if you ask they will give you a spanking. It use to be tradition that virgins got a spanking there first time, but alas someone sued and it’s no more. (to some of us the man represents Lawyers and we burn that SOB down!)
The greeters is were the party starts. They are having a blast and make sure you do too. Having fun is very contagious and it started right there at the greeters. It was like ok here is the rules…first have fun, then scream, then have more fun, then act goofy. Woohoo party time..ohh and don’t put nothing that don’t come out of you body into the porta poties..oh and have fun!
The Ticket Station.
This is were you gave up your ticket and got "IN"
Did I mention that 99% of all people working at burning man are volunteers? they are. You can volunteer for anything from Ticket taker to a Real DR. they need everything. and its amazing how many volunteer. more volunteer than opening are available.
I volunteered for Greeters but they didnt need anymore. The greeters shifts were 4 hours each about 25 per shift 24 hours a day from Saturday until Friday at midnight and they were full on volunteers about mid June!
Whats great about everyone being a volunteer is you could come dressed as you wanted (one of the greeters not the ticket takers was not wearing anything..more on that next time) so you could come dressed how you wanted and if you wanted to sit down you just did. If you wanted to act crazy they did.
Now the ticket takers did take there job serious but they had fun with it. Its not like they could get fired! Sure they could be told that there services were not needed anymore but you wouldnt care since you were not getting paid anyway!
They searched our truck for stow aways and said go on in! that easy!
now tickets...I bought my ticket for 175 bucks on Jan 5th at 1pm central time when they went on sale. the ticket structure is set up this way.
the first 10,000 tickets were 175
the next 10,000 were 200
the next 5,000 were 225 and after that they were unlimted number at 250.
you dont get anything diffrent with each kind of ticket. they all just admit one person. No ticket sold after friday night and no more admited either. if your not in by friday before the man burns your out!
for the cost of the ticket you get to come in and use the port a poties and thats about it as far as what they supply.
since its on federal land they have to pay the Govt for each person that is onsite each day. I think its about 4 bucks a person per day. I was there 8 days so that was 32 bucks. then they have to have porta poties that the federal gov deems adequate.
I will say they were very adequate as far as porta poties go. fig thats about 40 bucks for my share.
then they have to bring in electricity for center camp, build the man, buy supplies to build the street signs, greeters station, ticket takers fence cones etc.
they also give away several hundred thousand dollars in art grants. anyone can apply for one.
they dont make money on the event.
they make about 7 mill on tickets and spend every bit of it.
think of this, if they wanted to get Budwieser to sponser the event they could. An easy estimate would be ok Bud you pay us 3 million dollars and you can be the official beer, plus we get one buck off each beer sold. an easy estimate of the take would be in the 10 million dollar range. so they drop the ticket price to say 75 bucks, and bring in 10million off beer sales alone! But the whole idea is none commercialzation, so they dont. one of the biggest reasons I went! I didnt have budweiser in my face all week saying buy me! or any other vendor. I did have people say "want a beer?" as they hand it to you and walk away, not expecting anything in return!
ok so anyway, they have taken our ticket and we next goto the greeter station....
The long road into Burning Man. windy and dusty.
there were goofy signs every 20 feet or so. One of the many internet rumors is that the man gets smaller every year and when he disapears burning man is over. So these signs were pretty funny if you had heard that rumor.
The day we arrived Sunday.
Friday we were on the road from 6am until about 10:30pm. We drove from Fort Worth to Durango Colorado. We swapped riders and drivers around and got to know one another.
Saturday we drove from 9 or so in the morning until 11pm that night stopping in Fallen NV. About 2.5 hours south of were Burning Man is held. By this time we had started to get on each others nerves. Not bad as everyone was adults and acted that way but it was tenser than the day before.
Sunday we get up late (9am) ate some breakfast and reloaded the trucks. Mark took Rob and they drove into Reno to pick up 4 more people that flew in that were staying with DFW and beyond theme camp (Marks theme camp) one lady flew in from Florida!
Tom, Serena, Paullina and me all packed into my truck and drove to the local Wally world and Safeway and bought last minutes supplies like water and booze! I guess we did buy some food. And Serena got a reply on an email on the way and ended up needing a business outfit because she had to fly out the next Monday to Penn. for a job interview so she bought an outfit at Wally world.
The Safeway was packed with "Hippies" like us buying water and food and lots of booze. These were my first true burners I saw. Multi colored clothes, dreadlocks etc what you would expect burners to look like in public. It was a fun atmosphere in the store!
Out in the parking lot loading up and waiting for individuals to finish we all started getting nervous and excited. None drivers, that is everyone but me opened a beer!
We piled the 4 of us cramped in big time into the truck. The 2 girls in the back with there knees touching there chins and me and toms seats moved all the way forward. It was going to be tough ride the next 2 hours!
I could tell we were all nervous, excited, and on top of that tired from driving and tired of each other plus we were cramped in like sardines. So I got Paullina who lived in Russia until she was 20 and who graduated from a University there to give us a Russian History lesson. This was a life saver. Got our minds off everything and learned a lot!
It was wall to wall vehicles the last 2 hours. Welcome to the desert! The last 45 minutes or so was real good. We got to see our first view of the event.
sign on the highway. Notice the burning man drawn on the trailer.
we turned off onto a dirt road right after this.
A tourist walks into a curio shop and sees a life-like bronze statue of a rat.
He asks the salesmen, "How much?"
The salesman replied, "12 bucks for the rat and 100 bucks for the story."
The tourist says, "I'll just take the rat, thanks."
As soon as the tourist leaves the shop rats started crawling out of the sewers. There were a hundred rats, then a thousand, and then millions.
The tourist was running as fast as he could. He ran to the end of the pier and threw the bronze rat as far out into the lake as he could. All the other rats jumped after it and drowned.
The tourist walked back to the store.
The salesmen says, "Came back for the story, eh?"
The tourist replies, "No but I was wondering, do you have a statue of a Republican?"
this is were we stopped in Utah to let my breaks cool and to eat a bite. Also I got extra keys made of my truck and passed them out. some of the simpliest things like keys need to be remmbered for burning man. There is no locksmith or key maker so if you lose your keys you have to go 120 miles into Reno for help! That can be quiet expensive!
Day two on the road.
We drove into
Allot happened this day.
We left
Then we cut across
In
Coming out of the city after lunch these deer just crossed the highway in front of us! Was pretty amazing!
Day one still. about 10 hours on the road now. Welcome to New Mexico.
We changed up riders several times. everyone got along real good the whole way. Yes there were trying times, mostly at night after driving 18 hours each day. But not as trying as it is with family. when you have a group of people with one goal everyone works towards that goal and things actually get done.
We stopped just north of albequqe for dinner. Kinda hassle but not too bad.
we stopped at a casino (Indian) one for grub but mark and I couldnt find anything we like so we made sandwiches out of his trailer while most ate inside the restraunt. Was about 6pm when we stopped for dinner.
was another 4 hours until we stopped for the night in Durango were we met up with toms wifes parents and left her. split hotel room, big rooms cheap. Getting a room was kinda hassle everyone butt ass tired and grouchy but we all came thru.
Up the next morning and on the road by 9am.
This is the 97 dodge dakota supercab that I borrowed from my Mother-in-Law.
Everything I would need it piled on it!
I brought 3 extra bikes for people flying in from New York. the people from New York were camping at the same them camp as I was and I volunteed to take them bikes.
The group from new york didnt know me at all so when they got to Reno (closest airport) they bought 3 used bikes themselves. This worked out great because Paulina and Tom didnt bring bikes, so woohoo now they had some and then the girls that sat up next to me had flown in from England (thats right the country England like across the ocean england) and they too had bought bikes but one of them wasnt worth spit, so the 3rd bike got a great home.
The only thing I had not packed/bought yet was water. We would pick that up in Fallen NV. the last big city before BM.
Stopped for Lunch in Amarillo.
This was our first major stop. Lunch in Amarillo Texas. I had met Mark, Tom, Rob and Serena one other time at Mark's meet and greet. visited about an hour before this. we changed riders all the way to BM. Serena drove my truck for about an hour after we left amarillo. I drove the rest of the way there. Rob and Serena were the only ones that knew how to drive a standard and since both trucks were standards left our options limited.
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