The TechNomad Journals - Southwest Road Trip to Burning Man

The TechNomad Journals - Southwest Road Trip and Burning Man

Friday, September 30th 2005

It’s 3:49am. My flight is in 7 hours and 36 minutes. My bags are packed. You know that I would not go on a new mission without finding (and sharing) proper closure to the last one. So my friends, from a 60 foot high wrought-iron balcony of an old Los Angeles Brewery I will weave my honey dipped tales. This is the sweetest of many artist lofts in the 500+ unit complex (Thank you Adam + Co), in front of me is a vast, bright and alive train yard and beyond that the intense lights of downtown. A warm Santa Ana breeze is blowing and I am feeling decidedly tweaky…

The last couple of months have been insanely motion filled; I have befriended many couches and floors, used many different shampoos in a range of showers, sampled miles of toilet paper and completed web work from locations as diverse as my car in the Nevada desert to a new clients office in LA.

After some way-too-intense consecutive weeks of interface programming in San Miguel, Mexico I relaxed in Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta and realized that too much tequila can instigate external belligerence at night and internal wars in the morning. I returned to the US in late August and stayed in Dallas for two days with Papa Luddite. Everyone’s favorite Puerto Rican, Hector ‘The Face’ Alvarez met me in Dallas and we promptly left for our three-day road trip from Dallas to Black Rock City – 1900 miles due north west. BRC is the home to a yearly event called Burning Man and is located on the infinite salt flats north of Reno, NV. To try to describe it in words is to fail immediately but below I will do my best. The pictures are perhaps the craziest that I’ve ever taken, and at 10,000 photos over 9 years that’s a pretty fresh statement.

So where am I going in 7 hours and 9 minutes? I’ll give you a hint: the plane ride from LA is 11-13 hours.

Dios Grande, San Miguel seems so long ago it seems like I’m already dooming it to a contrived mish mosh of story stew. So screw it all to hell I want you to imagine a fast paced musical score while vividly juxtaposed imagery flashes by:

Doug arrives in Leon, drives through desert to small hacienda on hill above San Miguel, bags drop, tacos – tequila. Working at a desk, maid surprises him as the first human contact in days – he learns to look forward to the completely unintelligible gesticulations and head nodding. Books get read, year long to-do’s get done. Some Castilian Spanish is learnt from tape, promptly forgotten as the dialect gets ridiculed. Caterpillar eats vine outside, disappears, vine grows back bushier. Poncho, the gardener, claims a cat is destroying the rose buds and is not believed - Poncho kills cat with rusty machete as proof of integrity and smiles with large false dentures. Frog hops across living room, realization that there’s a hole behind the bed leading to the street, explains how scorpion bit sleeping madre. Night out finally, he promptly makes mortal enemies with best friend’s girlfriend – sarcasm doesn’t translate - alone again – finds hot older woman who’s tattooed ex beat her, consolation and then information: he’s at the same bar grinding with her 13 year old daughter – back exit quickly found. Working at desk, flies everywhere – rampage with blue smiley face fly swatter – humming bird gets stuck in house and keeps flying into windows. Mother returns from trip to UK – work is now segmented by the best meals in weeks where the topic is usually men and sex - which is strangely normal to him. Sun is coming up, why won’t the code syntax work? Self hatred, tears, hours more – bed, wakes up and solves the problem in minutes. Clara the maid likes to steal little things – Jojo hides cookies in drawer. Sunday morning 5 am, explosions signal praise to some saint that’s up at that hour – curses and cultural slurs ensue. Quartet music in the theatre – whiskey and amaretto is called a Godfather. Brain feels weird from too much computer time – categorizing social interactions into tree structures and folders – more tequila. 3 minute hot showers gotten down to a science, beetle removed from bed. No gas, no electricity, no phone – 1 week, 1 day, 2 weeks. More fireworks explode, lit up church – only on weekends though when Jesus comes. Dueling gangs of mariachi in town square. Spicy sauces – beer with lemon juice and salt – guacamole skills honed. Future business plans formulated under a pomegranate tree – textures and colors unique to every surface – leathery faces, chubby bodies in tight clothing. Finish work – pack – leave.

Seriously it felt like that. All at the same time my mom left back to Europe, Zane left back for the US and I continued west towards Guadalajara. I can honestly say what I found was my favorite city in Mexico. Guadalajara washed away that small town feel with a vibrancy previously not found south of the border. My friend and excellent tour guide Paty showed me around but I sadly had to leave after only a couple of days - bound for Puerto Vallarta.

Some serious relaxing. Drinks in the pool, jungle hikes, drinks on the boat, waterfall cool off, drinks by the beach. I invited Jules “Dimples Magee” Schaller to come down and she truly proved to be a worthy adventurer – even catching a 5-foot sailfish while deep sea fishing. I was sun burnt and sea sick on the bow of the boat. Her father has an array of dead animals in his house in San Jose, and being a daughter of a similar ilk paid to have the carcass stuffed and mounted.

Now let’s get serious: I love meat. Jules’ family came to America and began a deli empire. The girl has her name on a variety of mustards. I knew I liked her after about a minute of talking to her. She’s no pushover and likes large sunglasses. She’s also impossible to track down and I never saw her again.

But anyway, I’m about to be 1000’s of miles away from most of my friends – 6 hours 20 minutes till lift off and the sun is rising in the east…

OK what do you get when you drop 40,000 people in the middle of nowhere and there is no currency but good will and no responsibility but good karma? You get a yearly event billed as an ‘experimental community’ but more commonly called Burning Man. Started years ago with just a handful of people the event has exponentially grown and evolved into a week long display of radical self expression and total self reliance.

While you can survive off of the generosity of other ‘burners’, it is far better to come prepared with all you’ll need for the week as the ONLY thing to get sold at the event is coffee and ice. You can interact as much as you like on many different levels. Whether you’re an old, fat and very naked hippy or a candy colored dance fiend people coexist quite happily.

There is no large music acts or other ‘real world’ connections, and that’s partially why what goes on here is so impossibly recreated elsewhere.

100 miles north of Reno on a salt flat near Gerlach called the playa. There really is nothing around for miles. The venue is arranged in a circular pattern, concentrically emanating from The Man and split at intervals of 1/2 hours of a clock face. The entire space covered is 7 square miles and so a bike is recommended. We didn’t bring bikes and were instantly quite sad about that fact.

40ft tall and mounted on top of a 30 ft human maze, he is the centerpiece of the event. While there are fire shows and installations every night everyone is waiting for him to raise his arms at the end of the weeks, signaling that he is getting ready to be flamed.

Hector and myself, being industrial design magicians planned out our shade structure on the fly at home depot. Amazingly it was assembled with less pieces missing than that piece of crap Ikea couch in your living room.

It would be an understatement to say people kind of go crazy when it comes to their structures, but many of these seasoned burners know that they’re going to be there for a week so you might as well have conjoined geodesic domes, hammocks, mood lighting and sound systems. These camps transcend the typical camping setups; they become places to perform acts, show art, take in weary burners, socialize, get your sex on, mellow out and of course party damn, damn hard.

There are many theme camps that can have upwards of 50 people involved and they usually host the best gatherings. Themes range from flagrantly sexual to sedately relaxing and basely humorous to more seriously spiritual, and there is more than you could ever see in one week.

This place attracts the whole gamut of the human melting pot. Some are here just to observe, others partake to varying levels of interaction but at no time does it seem like a competition. (Like for example the gay parade in Santa Monica with a bunch of queens trying to out do each other.)

The costumes range from animalia to mad max clones and from fully painted to fully naked but one thing is for sure, as the week goes on everyone starts to acquire a shade of dusty beige.

Cars are not allowed to drive on the playa after you setup but bikes, scooters, unicycles, segways and art-cars are. Everybody (who has one) adorns their bike with decorations, some highly detailed, and this is their primary means of transportation. Art-cars can be as simple as a regular car with the panels torn off to a huge Spanish galleon with hidden wheels that sails through the desert. Many of them have propane tanks and shoot fire into the night sky. Others have sound systems and are just rolling parties. You can jump on some of these rolling art creations (some, like the giraffe that walks to techno tunes is just to look at) and get taken somewhere random and dropped off. Big Red knows what his destiny is, and loves it…

The days were not as hot as I expected, but the sun could still be quite severe as a lot of time was spent walking around to different camps and installations throughout the day. There was constantly things going on at the center camp and this was often where we’d spend some time recovering from the night before. The day was really about relaxing for the nighttime…

Everything is glowing! A sea of lights surrounds you. Everybody is wearing glowing things - not just for cool effect but also so that you don’t get run over by an art car on the open playa! The nights were incredibly dark but interrupted by crazy events going on all around you.

At night The Man glowed neon and if you stood out by him the lights from the first concentric ring, almost a mile away, looked like a distant city, surrounding you almost 360 degrees! People gathered in groups, explored things solo, stood by fires and throughout the whole time there I only felt good and positive vibes. Someone brought dozens of frizbees that glowed and put them on the playa – it was amazing to stand back and watch lights fly around your entire field of vision.

There are two final big deals. On the second to last night, after sun down The Man raises his arms in defiance. People gather around in a huge circle. Firedancers line the perimeter, drums reach a frenzy and all of a sudden (there was me thinking it would be gradual) the entire base that The Man is on EXPLODES! Fireworks shoot everywhere and massively huge fires engulf the man and bring him down in minutes. When he does fall, people run toward the embers and as they cool down people take mementos of metal remnants. Whether he symbolizes something or not, there was a huge feeling a community spirit.

The last night there is a final large burning. Throughout the week people have been placing prayers, pictures and writing all over a structure far out on the playa called the temple. On the last night this all gets burned and left quite a strong impression. There was also some sadness here for the pure fact that this was really the end of the week and life would be returning to normal soon… or would it?

Yes it is over, but immediately Hector and myself were talking about BM 2006. What are we going to do (besides bring goddamn bikes)? What kind of a team do we need to assemble to make next year bigger and better?

Also can the spirit be carried on through the year? Well obviously, as some nearby hippy failed to realize – this dream society was just that – a dream and while it could not possibly sustain itself past the growing garbage, lessening food and water and other factors that would start to build up after a week – you can bring something good back home. Not every gift you give to somebody needs to have an expectation attached. Not every action you do even needs to have a logical reason. We’re here for a short time so goddamn enjoy it.

The hours are closing in to flight time, 4 hours, 30 mins - so where the hell am I going now you ask?

I am picking up my laptop, grabbing my hugely filtered down belongings and starting a two and a half month tour of Asia. I am continuing experiments in productive mobility, which is as I see it, a future that many of us will one day enjoy. I see a future where technology will be so enabling that it will be totally feasible to work from anywhere on earth – that is unless we implode and destroy ourselves first. But hey, I guess I’m a utopian kinda guy.

Japan – Living with Ray Horacek, RISD-Alum, Puma Design Guru in Tokyo. Attending CEATEC Technology Conference.

Korea – In Seoul for a week - almost totally friendless out there, but maybe I will meet some cool cats at the KES (Korean Electronics Show) that like to get down and get bizzeee. Or maybe not.

Hong Kong – Will be my base to explore the mainland. I am not sure where/how I’ll be living yet. I basically just need an internet connection. I know one or two people there, and have absolutely no idea what the hell to expect.

Shanghai – Beijing – no tickets yet, but I have the ‘Time Out – Shanghai’ handbook so I’ll probably be fine.

No plans quite yet for the final weeks in Asia although I have a strong inclination to find some hot Lady Boy action in Thailand. Just joking, I really mean underage girls. Mom, totally kidding, you know I’m only into hetero-bondage.

I’ll be back to the land of the Patriot Act and vote fudgery on December 15^th.

If you need to reach me obviously email is always a good choice and you can call me for just local rates (that will transfer to me in asia) at:

Throughout the trip I will be splitting my time between web work and cultural cahoots and I will have some great finished projects as time goes on. I wanted to have some links to include with this email so I didn’t appear to be a total slacker but I have three projects 99% finished and three more in the works. Two highlights:

Ink still wet on the contract! Just signed today to do a website for an LA movie poster and motion graphics house. They’ve been around for 30 years and you may know some of the films they’ve done… E.T., Batman Begins. All I can say right now is it’s going to be fresh, projectFRESH baby.

OK – this is kind of my passion. I love getting artists online so they can show off their sexy pants creations. It really is the only way to do it these days. Even more important is to empower the artists, through a very easy to use interface, to keep their sites updated and yes, fresh. Some people can afford to pay a premium for a highly unique site but for most people can’t. I am planning a customizable but simple structure so that I can charge as little as possible to get clients ‘online’. Features will be a la carte and the sites will be flexible enough to be able to be upgraded down the line.

In fact I am looking I am looking to assemble a remote team of ambitious and excitable programmers so pass this on if you know someone. Right now I am outsourcing work to India and while cheap they are mainly just production people, not creative thinkers.

3 hours, 24 minutes till flight time and I need to shower, finish packing and get to the airport. So sorry for spelling errors