Burning Man 2008 - To go or not go

I've been going back and forth for sometime about whether I want to go to the Playa again this year.

Last year was my first trip to Burning Man and I had a pretty good time. I loved the art. It is amazing to me that people spend so much time, money and effort to carry these large (and I mean very large) art project out to the middle of the dessert and build them only to tear them down or worse burn them at the end of the week.



I really enjoyed meeting all the unique and fun people that I met throughout the week. The weather was hot but not too unbearable. The fire truck was so awesome. Yea we had a fire truck that shot fire instead of water. It was pretty cool and the New York folks that owned the truck were awesome.

Honestly we camped with a pretty cushy camp. We had really good meals every evening, snacks, food and drink available 24/7, our own camp porta potty, showers and nice comfy chill space to hang out in during the hottest hours of the days. For the first couple days we even had our own coffee bar until our espresso machine finally gave up the ghost. Yay lattes!

Richard and I had a really cool tent setup. We two identical square tents that we connected together with a fabric tube. The outer tent was our dressing and storage tent and the inner tent was our bedroom. The whole structure was covered with mesh shade structure. The whole setup was pretty nice and we even had fans in the tents to keep it cooler than normal and blow the hot air out.

From what I have been told 2007 was a great year to go for the first time. Many unique things happened in 2007. The man burned early, there was a lunar eclipse and an amazing rainbow over the playa after a rain storm.

Burning Man is a photographers dream and my best memories were of going out first thing in the morning while the sun was still low with Richard and visiting the art projects and taking photos.

Those were great times. Richard and I had some great bonding experiences on the playa.

But there were also some negative things that happened. There were some emotional things that I really don't want to spend too much time thinking about but I think it's fair to mention that I had a few emotional and even lonely moments.

The day we left, the transmission went out of our van one mile down the road from the entrance to Black Rock City. That was a traumatic thing in one case but it also proved to be a great bonding experience for Richard and I. We managed to get home to Seattle that night thanks to our dear friend Barry but Richard and I had to turn around and drive back to Black Rock City 2 days later to empty the van and arrange to have it towed to Reno for repair. So I guess in a way, I went to the Playa twice in one year. :-)

I definately know that I want to go back to Burning Man again someday. I just don't think I have the energy to do again so soon. The amount of thought and preperation that goes into this event is mind boggling. I can't believe that some people do this every year. I know a lot of people that live and breath burning may 365 days a year. I just can't be one of those people. Besides, I have a limited amount of time off each year and there are other things I want and need to do with my time off.

Maybe every other year would be good.

BTW did I happen to mention that on our return trip to the playa to take care of the van, we ran into Larry Harvey, the BM founder, at the cafe in Gerlach? Yea that was kind of cool.