Kimbal's Blog

Twittering from SpaceX - Falcon 1, Vehicle 4

I'm at SpaceX today for the launch of Falcon 1, Vehicle 4. Add me on Twitter to follow along.

http://www.twitter.com/kimbal

The After-Burn...

Man, it takes time to recover from Burning Man.  10 days in the desert can do a lot of things to you physically and mentally.  Add in dancing, the craziest art you've ever seen, and lots of lots of burning things, it's a wonder I recover at all.

It's been now two weeks and I'm can feel myself getting back to my normal self.  Looking back I would have to say that this was one of the best Burning Man's for me yet.  Being there for ten days was actually great (I was dreading it before I left).  I was totally disconnected from the real world and spent the days either setting up the art installation, reading or cooking.  I think if I have a choice, that's how I'll do it from now on. 

Setting up Apple TV

Oh yeah baby.

I've been waiting to do this for a long time.  No more cable, just HD OnDemand all the way.  I've been holding out ever since NBC pulled themselves off the iTunes network.  But then I couldn't wait any longer, decided to get it set up, low and behold NBC is back.  Awesome.

Thanks to Brian from OneButtonLife for setting it up.  Those guys rock.

The Pool Crew

The Pool Crew consisted of a super bunch of guys and girls.  It takes a special something to wake up at 6am and agree to go out in the sun and dig 106 holes in the ground.

The Burn in pictures

For a bit of fun, here's a quick photo-essay on the Burn...

Art Cars at Burning Man

I thought I'd use Pictobrowser for my photos here.  Courtesy  of Diego (AKA Tomahawk) who hung with us at Burning Man.

Packing up

It's been an amazing week, but every good thing comes to an end.  After the Burn we headed over to the Pool for some midnight pack-up action.  It went quickly and by 1am we were done and we headed back to camp for an early wake up.

Packing up The Pool, one pod at a time

Packing it into the Penske

Cleaning up our campsite at 1am

As I write this I'm sitting in the 3 hour line to get out of the City. Mass exodus as people get ready to enter society again.  For those that stay tonight, the Temple will burn at 9pm.  I've never stayed for the Temple, but hear that it's a more mellow experience and a chilled out way to end the week with more flames.

Burning Man, we'll see you next year!

Definitely Saturday

It's the day of the Burn and the Playa got engulfed in another bitching dust storm.  It started at 10am and kept going past 9pm.  The Man was supposed to Burn at 9pm, but got pushed back to 11pm after the storm settled.

The burn really kicked ass this time.  The Man was a lot higher than before, sitting on a huge structure that people could climb up, covered in flags from around the world.  I would guess over 150 feet high.

Waiting as the Burners get ready to Burn the Man

We had the same fireworks and burn, but this year they added huge explosions to great effect.  They kicked off the burn with one that got the whole crowd psyched.  After a few more and close to the end of the burn they fired off another one that shook the ground all around us.  Just awesome to watch.

It's amazing to see 50,000 people, with art cars and LED lights all over the place, in the middle of the desert surrounding a giant, burning, exploding wooden man.  The energy is just amazing.

Crowds waiting for the Burn to happen

Fireworks kick it off!

Followed by Huuuuuge explosions and more fireworks

Until finally the Man is all but burnt.

About 5 minutes later, the whole structure collapsed as the fire ate through all the remaining wooden foundation.  An awesome Burn.  One of the best I think.

Friday, I think...

Friday is the big night for Burning Man.  While the Saturday Burn is what the festival is famous for, the night before is when the top music goes down.  In for the night top DJs from around the world came in.  Rumors of Paul Oakenfold at the Sound Domes and Carl Cox at the Opulent Temple got everyone pumped for the night.

We hit the town and went to a burning of the Pyramid.  (a replica of the Aztec pyramids set up on the Playa).  It's always fun to start the night off with lots and lots of flames.  We then headed to the Thunderdome again for some Mad Max fighting action.  It was Mother and Son time, so anyone who could get their mother to join them in the Dome would get to jump the line to the front.  As strange as it sounds, there were plenty of Mothers in line to beat up their Sons.  Truly the fight wasn't fair.  Basically the sons just did there best to prevent the mother's from taking out a lifetime of frustration on them.  But it's always fun to watch.

Opulent Temple was next.  When we got there, the power had failed them. They had one of the best DJ line-ups of the year (compared to anywhere) and they had lost their power.  So we hung out for a bit over at some neighboring camps.  It's amazing to realize that everything at Burning Man is self-managed.  That is, you bring everything with you.  You have no access to anything at all from Burning Man other than Porta-Potties.  Some of these Theme Camps must cost over $250K for the week.

Thankfully the party got started about an hour later and we had a blast dancing to some of the best tunes on the planet.

Day ???

Days turned to a blur after being in Burning Man this long.  We are now on our way out of Burning Man, in the two hour line to get out.  Plenty of time to catch up on my blogging.  :)

The party really got started on Thursday night.  Our Art Car (a rocket courtesy of our friends at SpaceX) arrived with a bunch of friends we hadn't seen since last Burning Man.  We got our act together early with a quick dinner and Pool set-up before dark.

We started the night at The Pool for a party thrown by The Pink Spot, a really cool theme camp with an awesome DJ Art Car (an Art Car that had a full high-powered sound system).  We then headed to the Opulent Temple for some rocking dancing.  The Opulent Temple was the biggest DJ party on the Playa.  Holding about 2,000 people on rope and metal structures, with flames shooting out of the posts every now and then. 

After some fun dancing, we went to see the show Cirque de Flambe.  This show consisted of about 50 circus acrobats and flame twirlers wearing fire-proof suits and launching fireworks from their hands.  The fireworks went up, sideways and everywhere, leading the eventual burn of the camp itself.  It's really awesome watching fireworks that close up, but you do start to realize why there are rules about this sort of thing in the real world.