Friday, September 4, 2026
Morning dawned mostly clear with some high puffy clouds, no dust, and a bit of wind. Oh yeah, and a lot of mud. Mud everywhere. It had rained a lot overnight, so the top several inches of the playa were water logged. When playa dust gets wet it turns into very sticky mud.
River tried heading out on her bike, but the tires picked up the mud and clogged her forks. She walked instead.
The city was shut down. No driving. No entry. No exit. The airport closed. It was eerie. Few people walked because to walk meant building up a lot of mud on one’s shoes, like wooden clogs. River came back soon after she left, saying everything was closed.
So we hunkered down again and listened to BMIR, the pirate radio station, for updates.
In the late afternoon it was clear that things were drying out and firming up. The weather was fantastic, and since it had rained, there was no dust.
We decided to try for a couple of different burns, including the night’s biggie, burning Titanic. River went to an ASL event and I debugged the art car to try and fix some annoying lighting issues on the right door. I found and fixed them, eventually.
River came back and we headed out, late, in the art car. We drove to the huge gathering around Titanic (it was built in two pieces, looking like it had already split apart and was sinking into the playa). The burn was to be at 10 PM but it was obvious that even arriving late, we were very early. We parked the art car way back from the fire ring, and found a spot to sit one row back from the ring. (We’d actually stopped behind a guy on his bike who was really close to the ring, but several large federal officers and at least one BM person talked to him, and directed him to move his bike back for safety (in case people needed to leave quickly); we were right behind him, and when he moved, a LEO asked if we’d like to sit down where he just was, so we did.)
After the destruction we headed out in the art car. We looked for a particular installation that River was interested in, but didn’t find it. Two pedestrians flagged us down and asked for a ride. Mutant vehicles are supposed to give people rides, if there’s room. Our little buggy didn’t have a lot of room, but we managed to fit the couple (newly married!) and drive down to The Man, where we were headed anyway. The guy had leg problems and it was hard for him to walk, which was why they flagged us down.
We wanted to climb The Man but it was already shut down in preparation for tomorrow night’s burn. Oh well.
Pub Crawl
River turned 21 this week, the fifth time she’d had a birthday in the desert. We wanted to do a pub crawl on her birthday but the weather wasn’t good. But tonight, the weather was great! So we hit some places at 7:30 and then 9:00 (the streets), and ended up going to bed at 6 AM (the actual time).
There are bars everywhere. They look like normal bars, mostly, though they’re all fairly rough due to it being dusty and muddy and the end of the week. Each one is run by a camp and usually has a theme of some kind, and usually has music. We were doing this late enough that nobody had live music, just drunk bartenders and drunk patrons.
Doing a bar crawl at Burning Man requires a cup. So we each brought a camp cup.
At the last place, Campoline, we stayed for about 3 hours talking with a bartender and a couple of other customers. River talked languages, we all talked philosophy and some politics and generally burned the night away.
