Friday 06/29/2007
Today was an interesting day. Most of my team was laid off today. To celebrate or to cast them off properly, we all went to a bar after work. While at the bar, another co-worker mentioned that he was going to Critical Massive (a regional Burning Man event) that evening. I hadn't been to any kind of BM event in years and I really missed it. We started talking about it and it turned out that the record store down the street had tickets available. I said goodbye to everybody and we abruptly left the bar. After getting tickets, he dropped me off at the transit center so I could take the bus home. I got home around 7:30pm, packed up my camping gear, took a shower, and was out the door by 8pm. The event was about 30 miles away in Maple Valley at a Masonic property. I half expected to see Illuminati references everywhere, but surprising, there were none.
I got to the event just as it was starting to get dark and quickly set up my tent. I camped with the Space Virgins and Mission to Mars camps (they pretty much camped together). Since I didn't have any time to prepare for the event, I had no costumes or anything. I quickly met a lot of the people camping with us. They were all incredibly friendly and helpful. I once again remembered why I liked BM so much.
The first night I pretty much just wandered around, not knowing where anything was, and found the sound systems and enjoyed the people, the music, and the environment. I ended up going to bed a couple of hours before sunrise.
I have no pics from the first night, so just pretend that everything I say here is true. But keep in mind that it all could be an elaborate (well, not really all that elaborate) hoax.
Saturday 06/030/2007
I woke up rather early in the morning after just a couple of hours of sleep. I was still a bit excited from the evening before and decided to go walk around to see exactly what it was that I was sloshing through the previous night - it had been raining all week. Most of the place was quiet, not a lot of people were up. I found my way out to the beach. There is a river running though the back of the property. There were a bunch of rocks sitting on end along the beach. There was also a cliff across the river that some people had climbed and were now descending.
Look! Rocks!!!
I tried sleeping a few more times during the day and got a couple of small naps in. I spent most of the day hanging out at camp talking with folks and just wandering around. It turns out that a good chunk of the people that I was camping with work at MS as well.
It turns out that a lot of the people I'm camping with are involved in the fashion show taking place today. Not really much to say other than that there are some pics that explain it a lot better than I do.
These are the pics I mentioned:
Right after the fashion show was the power tool racing. Essentionally, people took standard power tools (radial saws, drills, etc...) and modified them to 'race' along a wooden race track. Again, it is difficult to explain, so I'll just show the pics.
Please note, these are the pics for the races, not for the fashion show discussed above.
These are movies:
(right-click and pick save as. I've been having problems getting them to play correctly when just clicking on the movie link)
PTRaces01.wmv 4.4MB
PTRaces02.wmv 1.9MB
PTRaces03.wmv 1.4MB
After the races it was just a bunch of wandering around, dancing (well, very little dancing for me), and talking with random folk that I ran into. Probably the highlight of the evening started around 3am. There was a huge fire pit about halfway between one of the dj's and the power tool racing. I was sitting around there for a while (because it was warm and I was cold) when this woman stood up and starting telling a story. I don't remember the details of the story, but it had something to do with her life as a clown. She was an amazing story teller type person. And, apparently, she actually was a clown. Occassionaly to break the silence, someone would start rattling off how many ????? does it take to screw in a light bulb. I met met a girl named Heather (I think) and talked with her for a while. She lives just a few blocks from me. She cuts hair freelance. She is also camping near me - about 6 feet away from my tent. It is a small world, right? I stayed up to watch the sunrise, but there were too many trees to actually see it.
Here are some random pictures from the night that have nothing to do with what I just wrote.
These are movies:
(right-click and pick save as. I've been having problems getting them to play correctly when just clicking on the movie link)
Moon.wmv 0.9MB
BeachTripod.wmv 2.1MB
After sleeping for about an hour or two, I noticed that people were starting to break camp. I helped take down and load the Space Virgin's stuff. I was amazed that I could even walk considering I had not had much sleep in the last couple of days. It took us a few hours to take down and load everything, but I had a good time. I forget at times how much I enjoy just doing stuff with folk. It has been a while since I've had much of a social life. It seems that things are starting to get better. :)
Yeah, no pics. Get over it.
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