Sunday, September 4, 2011

Sunday Funday

I woke up with the scratchy throat and a headache...perhaps a tiny fever...so here's my tardy grab bag of thoughts.

I've always wanted to go to Burning Man out on the Black Rock Desert's playa. About ten years ago, I saw a photo of a Burning Man Art "Car" in the paper. It was a mobile living room, sofa, coffee table, end tables, console TV and a floor lamp on a carpeted floor only 6-7 inches above the playa...it just about broke my funny bone!

Tickets sold out for this year's festival in July despite the $300 price tag. It looked windy on the playa from the photos in the Reno paper.

Saturday night I watched the Man Burn streamed live on the internet. This year's effigy was the tallest yet at 120ft. Before the Man ignited there was 15-20 minutes of Civic-Level 4th of July-Style Fireworks emanating from the Man's base...so that's where $300 X 53,341 went!

Nitpicker's please note: All 27,000 discount tier tickets sold out by noon the day after sales began.

Truckee and Reno are packed for the holiday weekend, so packed that my DSL dropped off a couple of times Saturday, and just before 11AM Sunday. The stream from the Black Rock last night was pretty slow, and the Reno Gazette Journal's man on the scene complains about the turtle-slow internet out at the event. He didn't say how long it took to upload 90 photos from Black Rock City.

Well, the internet was in and out for about a half an hour before 1PM this afternoon....could be all the departing Burners are firing up the smart phones, iPads at Starbucks, and the smart well-heeled burners are checking into their hotels for unlimited showers and WiFi.

I was trying to stream the KNBR Giants Pre-Game Show, but internet traffic wasn't havin' it. Burning Man is a San Francisco-Centric event, so I imagine thousands of departing Burners are firing up their MLB.TV Apps to check on the Giants' progress and to watch today's game. It's STAR WARS Day out at the ball park. I imagine there's a lot of STAR WARS Fans coming off the playa today.

I'm afraid my Giants are gonna have to find some Jedi Mind Tricks in the bat bag if they're going to get into the playoffs!

2 comments:

  1. When I lived on the eAst Side of Cali off of 395 we use to watch the playa dust ladden vehicles straggle by after the fest. Easy pickins for the rural cops.

    I hear that one can never get that Black Rock Desert dust outta the vehicle, it penetrates every nook and cranny. So if you do go, bring an ole beater.

    Streamin the Burning Man. Hmmm. Didn't this fest start as some sort of man quest? Hmmm. Funny how things get turned around.

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  2. Burning Man? BFD. I'd rather hitch a wild trout on Mill Creek.

    $300? Blow me.

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