Getting to Burning Man Drama Rama

The few days we had between getting home from Calgary and leaving for Burning Man were complete chaos. We did tons of shopping and list making and running around. Hitoshi had to build the box for the back of the truck we were taking, and build the turtle art car that we wanted to cruise the Playa on.

Hitoshi got a huge block of styrofoam on Thursday and started carving it. I helped him with what I could. The first step was taking this big cube shaped block and turning it into the general shape of a turtle shell. Of course Hitoshi has all the tools to do this since he has done tons of sculpting with styrofoam for work. We used these two wooden sticks that you hold in either hand, and each one has a screw in the top. There is a thin metal wire wrapped around each screw, so when you hold the wood about a foot apart the wire is pulled tight. The wire has an electrical current running through it, so when it is turned on it gets incredibly hot really fast. So I held one and Hitoshi held the other and we went on either side of the block and started carving. In no time we had the basic shape of a turtle shell and a turtle head.

Hitoshi worked on it after that while I did tons of running around and packing. He smoothed out the shell, then used a dremel to carve in the detail. I could help with that since it was just following the lines. After that the next step was to coat it in hard plastic but when Hitoshi got to the store it was closed. So he started working on the box for the truck. Luckily he had his friend Sailor to help him, since for that project I was only useful in standing and looking cute for a picture.

Hitoshi got the supplies he needed to make the plastic cover Saturday morning and then the race was on (since we were planning on leaving Saturday morning or early afternoon). To make the hard plastic coating you have to make a half and half mix from two bottles. The mixture hardens in 45 seconds, so you pour a tiny bit of each into a cup and use a paint brush to brush it on the styrofoam as fast as you can. In 45 seconds it hardens and you have to throw the cup and paint brush away and do it all over again. So it is time consuming (and wasteful, I know!!) but I got to work on it as fast as I could. Hitoshi had bent a piece of rebar to put in the back that would stop the second person sitting on the turtle from falling off. I tried to coat those areas in the thickest plastic to make sure it would stay in.

After it was completely coated, Hitoshi got to work on painting it. It was originally a sea turtle, but I found a picture of the cutest tortoise called an African Sulcata which actually lives in the desert so I thought it was perfect. He painted it and put it back together and it looked so cute!

Once that was done, we loaded it into the truck with all my camping supplies that were in the studio and came home to finish packing. We finally pulled out of here at almost 11:00 pm on Saturday, only 12 hours behind schedule. Which didn't matter since we were expecting it would only take us 16 hours to get down there, so we would arrive at a great time to meet up with everyone.

It didn't quite work out like that..we were so tired we had to stop and pass out for a little while, and the truck would only go a max of 80 km and hour, and we lost the gas cap - twice! So by the following night at about 12:30 am we were still two hours from Reno so we passed out in a hotel and decided to drive in the next day. The crew in Reno got a bit of a head start on us, so we didn't end up meeting them in Reno. We finished our shopping and started the drive from Reno to the Black Rock Desert, when we realized we didn't have a map and I had to call my dad and ask him to Mapquest where we were going (thanks Dad, we had missed the turn off, but only by about 10 minutes!).

We finally can see Black Rock City in the distance and there is a long line of cars waiting to get in. At Burning Man they don't search the car for anything, they basically as if you have fire arms and give a quick look to see if you are sneaking other people in. So the line does move fast, but they also have Greaters waiting to say hello, and especially if it is your first time and you have to ring the bell it can take a while.

We were in line around an hour, which was fine cause we had the mini dvd player and we were watching movies, but I was going crazy cause I had needed to go pee since we left Reno. So the line felt like it was crawling along and finally as we get near the Greaters Station I see a port a potty of in the distance and I make a break for it.

When I came back I was feeling so much better, and so glad we made it, and excited to see the city up ahead..and the Hitoshi handed me a cheeseburger that someone in line had gave him. I knew I was home.