Burning Man 2000 Camp Vermeer

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Burning Man 2000 Camp Vermeer

Camp Vermeer was one edge of a series of camps around an empty square, our social piazza. The following shows our camp from the vantage point of someone walking down the street. Unlike previous years our camp was set up parallel to the street. From left to right you see Carolin's car, then a series of six or eight water containers tied together with a cat's cradle of rope and strobe lights (amazing to see at night), and then Ranger Lefty's truck covered with the parachutes. We individually lock our bicyles to a huge motorcycle cable chain which itself is connected to the truck's axle.

This year we used two parachutes, the one we used in 1998 and another one just purchased at Twin Cities. Because I forgot to buy a large centerpole the entire structure was more like a soggy igloo than the taut tents of yesteryear. But our Rube Goldberg structure survived the high winds and driving rains with nothing more than a few tugs on the guy ropes to tighten them.

The following panorama shows the supplies we kept near at hand, under the tent but outside the truck, by the rear tire. From left to right you can see my black geek bag, pots, a kettle, and my lip balm on a car-camping stove, white gas camping fuel, the headset for my radio, drinking water, baby wipes (in lieu of a shower), my radio, more fuel, a garbage bag, and a towel (see "The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy" for discussions about the utility of towels while on the go).

Due to the failure of both of the car batteries Ranger Lefty brought (neither seemed to be able to hold a charge) we never strung the lights around the parachutes. Next year, perhaps.

We used the inside of Ranger Lefty's truck as a storage locker, and we lived outside all the time. (Okay, okay, so there was this one night when Ranger Lefty was exhausted and he crashed in the truck, but that was unusual.) We had Ranger Lefty's bags on the left side, my bags on the right side, with the food that we hadn't stored outside kept near the door. I also rigged a station for us to leave flashlights and other nighttime supplies right against the rear door. Once a day I'd visit the front seat to download pictures and video from my digital camera to my PowerBook. That's also where I recharged the camera's batteries.

In the first paragraph of this page I mentioned Carolin. She's Ranger Lefty's girlfriend, who came up from San Francisco for a few days of the event.

I'm not sure she was prepared for all the gritty desert wierdness of Burning Man, but she adapted gracefully under pressure. I can't help but thinking that she would have been happier trying on Feragamo shoes at Nieman-Marcus than having meals sprinkled with playa dust in the commisary, but she was charming about the extreme environment in which she found herself.

She didn't even lose her cool when faced with this year's portable toilets horror. A trooper. I was just coming off shift and getting ready to sleep when Carolin and Ranger Lefty started waking.

One can see from the following panorama that the city density never approached that of years past. Without such density we never approached the critical mass for community. It was a problem I found all over Black Rock City. I think it was a combination of the bizarre weather and the policies of the city planners.

Camp Vermeer didn't look as we had planned. We never got the power for the lights working, and we never hung the Vermeer paintings we had brought up - the weather) never calmed down enough to keep them from going airborne.

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