I Drew a Blank and Put it in a Frame: Burning Man 2019

So...

Burning Man...

We grabbed Christian and Greg, bought some groceries, stopped by some thrift stores for tutus and other silly things, grabbed our rental bikes and headed to the playa.

Not sure how we fit everything in and on the Saturn...

The drive in was a breeze. We got to the gate right after the gate opened and were looking for a spot to camp in 2.5 hours (usually it takes 5-6 hours).

By time camp was setup, it was almost sunrise so we road our bikes around the playa to get oriented before it got too crazy. Then the sun came up and we took a well-deserved nap.

And then the burn commenced. Lots of things happened...

Photos from here on out are credited to myself, Camille, Greg and Kevin. Don't ask me which ones are which, I don't know.

This art was one of our favorites. It was filled with rooms with different themes and things to look at and explore. They burned it down Friday night.

Bunch of cool art.

We ended up helping a camp finish the fabrication of their art car. It was a giant bee covered in flowers and LEDs.

El Pulpo Mechanico made a brilliant return to Burning Man after taking a few years off. All of the arms, mouths and eyes move and it shoots fire from basically everywhere.

We snuck into the 747 in the beginning of the week and got to play around in the cockpit. Pretty surreal experience sitting in the pilot's seat.

Lots of swinging and spinning things.

El Pulpo stopped by the bar that we were at. Was nice getting to look at it during the day and admire all of the little details up close.

Our camp at sunset. We made a cozy little place for the week. It stayed surprisingly cool and handled all of the dust storms magnificently.

Camille always wanted to try riding a mechanical bull. We happened to ride our bikes past a camp that had one! It wasn't operating at the time but they were nice enough to get it going for us.

The 747 was towed around the playa all week. Kinda crazy seeing an airplane full of dancing people slowly make its way around the desert.

Camille and I found this really cool piece of art. They had a keyboard in the front where they keys were connected to various windows in the building. When you pressed the keys different windows would shoot fire.

Camille and I did some roller skating too. She was much better than I.

We were at a wine and cheese event near our camp and some friendly Italians across the street kept bringing over fresh handmade pizzas. I asked them about bringing some cheese from the event back to their camp to make a 4 cheese pizza. They let me make it myself.

It came out pretty good!

A view of part of the city from some scaffolding.

There was a birthday cake art sculpture that was burned on Thursday night. It came with a fantastic fireworks show!

Then the little western town art burned. It came with a huge turnout of people, very similar to the man burn.

And then the man burned Saturday night.

Afterwards we went back to camp with our friendly Dutch neighbors. We all realized we had tons of booze leftover so we decided to make our own bar to mix fresh drinks for anyone passing by. It was fun to have a little party and give out a bunch of drinks. A perfect way to end the week.

We took a power nap and headed out just after sunrise. Once again getting off the playa was thankfully smooth and easy. We drove straight to Truckee CA to jump in Donner Lake and wash ourselves off followed by some rock scrambling/hiking at Donner Summit.