Tag Archives: RV

Apr 18 2014

Going to Burning Man Without an RV

tonyedwardswidget2Comedian, Mac Genius and double-digit Burner Tony Edwards has put together a very useful blog post on alternatives to RV’s for Burning Man.

Reblogged from ohtony.com:

Going to Burning Man is a pain in the ass. Two of the biggest challenges are transportation and shelter. This is why the Recreational Vehicle is the king of Burning Man shelter, it’s the easiest way to go. Well, actually, the absolute easiest way to go to Burning Man is to have someone drive an RV to the playa for you, while you fly into BRC airport. Unless you actually own an RV, it’s also the most expensive, which is why it’s called “Rockstarring”.

 

To rent an RV, you can figure on costs starting at about $3000 and going up from there. That’s not including fuel and cleaning fees. Not everyone can afford that, but, there are other, less expensive ways to bring shelter with you to Burning Man. However, there are some very important requirements to meet for the perfect Burning Man shelter.

 

1. It must be able to withstand gale-force winds.

 

2. It should be able to be erected fairly easily and quickly by a small number of people. If you arrive after driving 10 hours straight (not recommended, BTW), you are going to want to get your shelter ready fast so that you can take a nap. Also, you don’t want to be struggling with it while the wind is blowing hard. The faster it goes up, the sooner you can hunker down if need be.

 

tent-dust3. It should be dust-resistant. The dust at Burning Man is called playa dust. It has the texture of coarse talcum powder. It is also extremely corrosive and alkaline. It gets everywhere. You do not want to come in from the playa, looking forward to a little sleep and find your bed and everything in your tent covered with a thick layer of dust.

 

4. Roomier is better. Also, being able to stand up straight is a big plus. Imagine trying to get dressed while bent over.

 

5. You will need shade. Burning Man is a strenuous event. You are going to want to be able to get lots of rest when you need it. Let’s say you go out for the evening and return to your camp just before sunrise, which is also the coldest time of day on the playa. You crawl into bed in your tent at 6am. But, once the sun comes up, the temperature rises very quickly. Within a couple of hours, your tent goes from being a freezer to an oven…unless it’s under shade.

 

Here are some possibilities.

 

Tents

 

 

_DSC0522

The tent is the shelter of choice for the 99% at Burning Man. It’s the cheapest, in terms of cost and transportation. But, you have to choose your tent wisely and take precautions. We have done tents at Burning Man several times. My first year, I brought a small, two-person tent. Not good. See requirements 3, 4 and 5. I ended up sleeping in my car (more on that later…).

 

When considering a tent, try to find one with no mesh panels. In 2012, I found the tent pictured above for an excellent price. It had a couple of mesh panel in the roof, so I sealed them with Gorilla tape and extra nylon fabric. That, combined with the rain fly, partial cover and protection from an adjacent RV made for a comfortable one-person Playa home..

 

When choosing a tent, you want to give yourself some headroom and floor space in the tent.

 

I STRONGLY suggest against using any kind of tent without shade.

 

rebarDo not use the tent stakes that came with your tent. The wind will pull them out and send your tent flying. Get extra long, heavy duty metal ones. The best solution is to use reinforcing bar or rebar, for short. If you can find some with the bend at the top, or have some bent like a candy cane, that’s even better. Note: You will probably need to bring/borrow a sledge hammer to drive the rebar into the playa, and vise grips to pull them out. And something to put over tops so that people don’t trip on them and gouge there ankle, like tennis balls with slits cut in them. Oh yeah, bring work gloves, too. See what I mean? Pain in the ass.

 

One year, we struck upon what ended up being a great tent setup. We will probably use this solution this year.

 

First, the tent:

Big Ass Tent

 

This Trek tent has a foot print of 10’ X 20’, which is why we lovingly call it the “Big Ass Tent”. You can find it online selling anywhere from $250 to $300. Here’s why this tent rocks:

 

1. Every window and door have both mesh closing and solid closings. That means, when it’s all zipped up, there is no way for dust to get in! But, if the weather is nice, you can open them up and get a breeze.

 

2. I can walk in standing straight up! (I’m 5’10”). And, I can remain standing in about 80% of the tent.

 

3. It has metal poles that won’t break in a high wind and lot’s of stake-down loops.

 

4. It has a full, reinforced floor with a threshold at the door.

 

5. It has 3 three rooms. There are room divider fabrics built in. Use one room for the bed, the middle room as a living area and the third room for storage.

 

6. Going to another multi-day festival or just camping? You are all set!

 

The only part missing is the shade, which is why we also borrowed a legendary Burning Man shelter, the Costco car canopy:

 

canopy

 

This car tent’s dimensions are…10’ X 20’! Put this tent up, then put the canopy over it. You get extra dust protection and plenty of shade. Air circulates between the canopy and the tent, so you can basically sleep in the middle of the day.

 

DSC_0084

 

Yeah, I know, I look cranky. But look how cute Laura is in the mirror. You can look inside and see how dark it is in the middle of the day.

 

Anyway, you could use a smaller tent and/or different shade solution. But, trust me, if you are doing a tent, you need shade.

 

 

Vehicles

 

 

me@bm2002

 

 

I don’t suggest living out of your vehicle unless it was made for camping. This is a picture of me the first year at Burning Man, 2002. I was going to sleep in the tent on the right, but after the first morning, I switched to the car. Someone gave me reflective material to put over the windows to help with the sun. I slept in the car and put my stuff in the tent.

 

Let’s say that you take something bigger that a car, like a van. A van is great because it takes care of shelter and transportation, you can carry all of your stuff in it. But, you can basically only sleep in it. You are constantly getting in and out of the van, so it’s going to get a lot of playa dust in it. If you rented the van, the rental company is probably going to ream you for extra cleaning costs, even if you try to clean it yourself first.

 

You know how you aren’t supposed to leave dogs in a car with the windows closed on a sunny day. If you sleep in your vehicle, you are that dog, unless you have shade. If you added a Costco canopy to the mix, that would help with shade, but I still don’t think camping like that is ideal.

 

Campers and Trailers

 

burningmanrv-723321

 

Campers and trailers make for great Burning Man shelter because that’s what they were designed for. If you don’t own one, see if some kind friend or family member will letyou borrow their’s for the week (Just be prepared to spend a couple of additional days cleaning it up when you get home.)

 

If you are thinking about using a pop-up camper, make sure that it can be sealed off from the dust. They have a tendency to use a lot of mesh windows.

 

The main down side to campers and trailers is getting them to the playa. You will be using much more fuel towing the camper, the  trip will take longer and you will be stressing the towing vehicle much more. But, if that’s not a problem, then rock on!

 

Yurts

 

Hexayurt_at_BurningMan_cropped_2010

 

A yurt is kind of like a tent, but with solid sides. Most yurts you see at Burning Man are hexayurts; small six-sided shelters built with rigid insulation. The Hexayurt can be made from about $300 of materials from Home Depot, plus about $100-150 of mail-ordered tape. Depending on the construction technique, it takes about 8 hours to prepare at home and 0.5-4 hours of assembly on the playa. I’ve never camped in a hexayurt, but I have seen them and helped assemble one at Burning Man.

 

The upside of a yurt is that they are COOL, as in keeps the cool air inside. By just spraying mist in the air, you can drop the temperature down 10 degrees. They also require no shade. And they look cool, in geeky kind of way.

 

Two challenges to using a hexayurt are the construction and assembly. Unless I had someone helping me who had put one together before, I’m pretty sure that I would be frustrated trying to put one together at Burning Man. Because of the size of the pieces, they need to be transported in a larger vehicle. Lastly, unless you build a tall (and way more susceptible to wind) hexayurt, you will have to bend over every time you go in or out. And, once you are in, you will only be able to stand up in a circular area in the middle off the hexayurt.

 

So, if you are handy, have a truck available for transport and want to make sure you are a cool as a cucumber, try a hexayurt. Here’s link to get you started. Appropedia.org

 

 

U-Haul

 

uhaultrailer

 

Last year, Laura and I decided to go to Burning Man three days before we left! We drove up with our friend Rich, who was towing a 6 X 12 U-Haul trailer for the camp. We had brought with us a tent that I had used the year before (the one with the lights pictured above) at Burning Man. It wasn’t bad, but I was concerned about the amount of space for two people. After we arrived and unpacked the camp, we looked inside the trailer and thought to ourselves, “Hmm, that’s a lot of room in there…”

 

Since the trailer wasn’t set to be used that week, we moved in and used the tent as extra storage. It actually worked quite well.  After figuring out how to insulate ourselves from the cold floor at night, we found that we could sleep in as late as we wanted. We could close the doors almost completely when the dust blew. It was oddly romantic.

 

 

 

IMG_1992

 

I know a couple of people who flew in to San Francisco from London, rented a U-Haul truck, went to thrift stores and got a cheap sofa, bed and other stuff. They then drove to the playa and had their own hotel room on wheels in the back of the truck!

 

Of course, if you don’t want to rent a U-Haul to just sleep in it, consider offering to take other people’s stuff for a fee, or the stuff for your camp for reimbursement. Another option.

 

Sani-Hut

 

offbld_DSC_0061_large

 

If you have ever visited a construction site, you’ve probably seen one of these portable offices. Sani-Hut is a company which supplies all sorts of temporary buildings for construction and events. They also contract a lot of work with Burning Man. But here’s the deal; You can call them up and reserve an office like the one above. They will then deliver it to you on the playa! For cheaper than an RV! Oh, did I mention the AIR CONDITIONING?

I’ve had friends do the U-Haul truck thing at Burning Man before. It’s good, up until about 10am. After that it’s almost unbearably hot. You could get around this by building some sort of shade structure over the truck.

Personally, after years of renting RV’s I bought an old one on eBay for a great price. It’s survived 3 burns and 1 JuPlaya so far, about 30 days in total on the Playa. I’m not sure how many it has left in it, but it’s been to other great parties too, and on lots of fun road trips. It more than paid for itself compared to rental options, and the plus is I can leave it stocked with all the glowsticks, feathers, glitter, booze, and whatever else we didn’t consume at the festival. Of course, if you believe the burnier-than-thous, you’re supposed to just make your own yurt, sleep in that, and spend the RV money on Gifting to randoms. Make a statue and burn it, why have a nice RV with air conditioning and a bathroom that you get a lot of use out of? Goddamn rich people, screwing up our burn…

Jan 18 2014

Vehicle Pass FAQ Up

we be jammin'!

we be jammin’!

The latest JRS announces Burning Man’s new FAQ for Vehicle Passes. Unfortunately, it raises more questions than it answers.

Usually, FAQ’s are there to make it easier for the user; they achieve this by putting all the frequently asked questions and answers in one place, so you can quickly get the information you need. Burning Man’s one is more like a library, you have to dig into each individual question to get the answer, and the answers seem to be conflicting in some cases. They also provide another FAQ about this in a different section of their web site, with different information again.

We’ve been through them all, to try to piece together a clear picture of what the rules actually are. Here are some of the issues we see:

What is a Vehicle Pass?

This says “In 2014 every vehicle entering Black Rock City will be required to have a Vehicle Pass”. The wording is different from the FAQ on their blog (which is another FAQ in a different section of their web site, with different information), which says:

Q. Do I have to pay for a Vehicle Pass for my Mutant Vehicle?
A. If you are bringing your Mutant Vehicle in on a trailer, you do not need to have a Vehicle Pass for it. If you are driving it in, you need a Pass. Each stand-alone vehicle that drives through the gate must have a Vehicle Pass.

This is much more clear. Every vehicle that DRIVES in needs the pass – except, jumping back to yet another section of these sprawling FAQs, motorcycles. Art cars don’t need one if they’re on a trailer, they will still need to register with the Department of Mutant Vehicles though.

The blog FAQ, however, says the jury’s still out on motorcycles:

Q. Do motorcycles have to pay for a Vehicle Pass?
A. To be determined, but not at this time.

Why is there a limit to the number of vehicle passes?

Without any limit on the number of passes the program would be pretty much meaningless.  We must make some real progress on addressing the traffic issue and we need everyone to be part of the solution.

The program appears to be relatively meaningless anyway, since it is capping the number of vehicles at about what last year’s was, and doing nothing to prevent single-occupancy vehicles. Not only that, later in this edition of their vehicle pass FAQ’s, they say:

Based on demand, we may also have a separate late-season Vehicle Pass only sale.

…which seems to be leaving the door open for more vehicle passes in an “OMG! Vehicle Pass sale” if the program causes problems. A good thing for Burners, if people are screaming that they can’t get to the event because they have 4 people who want to go in one vehicle, but none of them can get a pass.

As for everyone being part of the solution, we’ve seen lots of great ideas from Burners online, such as offering vehicles with 3 or more passengers in for free, or a discount; or making high polluting RVs or single-occupancy vehicles pay more. The main problem with these ideas seems to be a financial one, rather than to do with their practicality.

Back to the “other” FAQ:

Q. Why not have an HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lane for cars with multiple passengers?
A. An HOV lane is under consideration but comes with its own logistical challenges (like having a way to prevent low occupancy vehicles from using the lane). 

…so, as many Burners have pointed out in the online discussions about this, their vehicle pass system does not prevent low/single occupancy vehicles in any way.

Q. Why not just charge a larger fee for RVs?
A. The issue isn’t the size or type of the vehicle but the number of vehicles using roads leading to the event — regardless of what kind of vehicle you drive, it’s another vehicle creating traffic and doing damage to the roads. We need all participants to examine how they get to and from the playa and work together to reduce traffic on the highways. Other large events have a footprint shortage. For now, we don’t. It’s our roadways that are limited.

This spells it out. There’s no shortage of room for Burners at the event, only a limit to size from the highways. They really are not concerned with emissions, or encouraging ride sharing. They just want an easy way for them to cap the number of vehicles (and make another million or two by doing so)…so that the population cap can increase. It appears the roadways being full is now the main impediment to them selling more tickets. As Maid Marian said in 2012, “the desert could accomodate 100,000 people”. It’s just the roads that can’t. 40,000 more tickets would be another $15,200,000 to this “non” profit – without any additional costs, this would go straight to their bottom line.

What about people with Low-Income Tickets? Confusingly, we have a couple of different answers for them to choose from:

If you have been accepted to the Low Income Ticket Program you will be given the option of purchasing a Vehicle Pass when you pay for your ticket

and

If you are awarded a Low Income ticket and need a vehicle pass, you may purchase one at the box office when you pick up your Low Income ticket at will call.

This seems to be two different answers to a single question. And it raises another point: they’ll be selling vehicle passes at the gate. It’d be awfully tempting for someone to let a few more in…who’s counting the counters? The vehicles are off the road at that point, sending them back onto the road would just make the situation worse. Much worse! Each additional 2500 vehicle passes is another $100,000…cash.

What about the big question? Can you buy more vehicle passes than tickets? Well, they haven’t done anything to clear up their confusing language, and they don’t directly address it, but reading between the lines, it appears that – as we predicted – yes, you can.

you may buy up to as many Vehicle Passes as the maximum allowable number of tickets you may purchase in any given sale, i.e. in the Pre-Sale the ticket limit is up to four (4) per person, hence you could buy up to four (4) Vehicle Passes, and in all other sales the ticket limit is up to two (2) per person and you may buy up to two (2) Vehicle Passes

and

Are the passes assigned to a specific vehicle?  

No, they’re not assigned to a specific vehicle. 

and

What if I am gifted a ticket? How should I buy a Vehicle Passes?

If you are gifted a ticket you may register for a ticket sale and only purchase a vehicle pass. We also anticipate folks will be able to find Vehicle Passes recirculating at face value in the community.

and

Can Vehicle Passes be bought/sold through STEP?  

No, at this time we do not have a centralized system for reselling and buying vehicle passes. Participants are encouraged to buy and sell them for face value within the community.

Conclusion? Vehicle passes aren’t linked to vehicles, you can buy them without buying tickets, you can buy 4 at a time if you register now, or 2 at a time in the subsequent sales. Burning Man fully expects there to be an aftermarket for these, and expects that people will be selling them for more than face value – they just “encourage” people not to make profits from them. 

Finally, some Burners have suggested that Gerlach might turn into a massive parking lot.

Gerlach5Can I park on the road in Gerlach and walk in to avoid the Vehicle Pass?

No. This is extraordinarily dangerous on many levels (the risk of getting hit by a car, dehydration, sun stroke, exposure, etc.), and counter to the entire purpose of the program to minimize traffic on the roadways impacted by people traveling to Black Rock City.

Although they say “no”, it’s hard to see how they are going to enforce this. Arrest people for walking on Federal land?  Limiting access through the gate to only people with motorized vehicles would seem to be counter-productive to the supposed purpose of this new tax.
Aug 7 2013

Einstein Goes to Burning Man

by Whatsblem the Pro
[With apologies to James ‘Kibo’ Parry]

WELCOME TO BURNING MAN!

WELCOME TO BURNING MAN!

We’ve written before about the increasingly cultish aspects of Burning Man. Recently, a good deal of controversy has begun flying in the Burning Man group on Facebook over “plug ‘n’ play” camping, a scheme in which a Burning Man attendee pays to have a nice RV with all the amenities waiting for him or her when they arrive on the playa, parked in a fully-equipped theme camp that may even have paid hirelings to attend to their needs.

*      *      *      *      *

Albert Einstein showed up for his very first visit to Black Rock City, all ready for his hard-earned week’s vacation from the mathematics factory where he rolled fat numbers for corporate fatcats all day. “Home,” Einstein intoned nostalgically to the empty air as the grinning Gate people snap-tightened their filthy latex gloves and pulled him out of his car by his famous hair.

MOUSTACHE RIDES, FIVE CENTS

MOUSTACHE RIDES, FIVE CENTS

Later, having found his camp, Einstein settled into his plug-n-play RV to do some real math, for fun, like he always did on vacation. Last year he had flown down to Puerto Vallarta to relax by the seaside, and ended up inventing nuclear math candy. The year before, he’d gone to Banff to ski, and came home with plans for a new kind of television that would allow viewers to sense what was on the screen as a powerful burning sensation on the skin, so they could watch TV with their eyes closed (for a few seconds). He poured himself a big ice-cold glass of Krug, slathered a bagel with caviar and whipped cream, and settled in to think about times tables and other math things.

Just as he was about to come up with a Unified Field Theory of Bacon, Einstein heard a pounding on his RV door. “COME OUT OF THERE AND BE SELF-RELIANT,” boomed a voice through the layers of laminated plasticized chipboard that made up the wall of the behemoth luxury vehicle. The shock drove the lovely, elegant equations right out of Einstein’s head. Just as the final wisp of his Unified Field Theory of Bacon leaked out his ears, the door of the RV burst inward and disappeared in a hazy cloud of plasticized splinters, and a phalanx of bullhorn-carrying, angry-looking young people with terrible sunburns and cups attached to their belt loops on carabiners came barging in like they owned the place.

“WE ARE THE SELF-RELIANCE POLICE,” said the one who was obviously in charge to Einstein. Through his bullhorn. From a quarter of an inch away. Eleven times. “DEATH TO PLUG ‘N’ PLAY HERETICS!” screamed another, filth-caked fist held high. She was wearing a sandwich board sign with the Ten Principles written on it, and nothing else. “WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR FUDGY THE WHALE BLEACHED?” inquired a third, proffering a large mixing bowl full of what was apparently ass bleach. A fourth, grinning nastily, brandished what looked like a branding iron in the shape of a Burning Man logo.

Einstein was tongue-tied as they seized him, bound his wrists to his ankles (not with his tongue, thank god), and carried him outside to watch the group rummage through his stuff and set his RV on fire. As the flames rose and roared into the sky, they danced around the burning recreational vehicle, chanting “HO-LY, HO-LY, HO-LY FIRE! UNBELIEVER’S FUNERAL PYRE! HO-LY, HO-LY, HO-LY FIRE!”

“YOU SEE,” explained their leader to Einstein through his bullhorn as he wolfed down the great scientist’s entire week’s supply of bacon, “YOU HAVE TO BE SELF-RELIANT OUT HERE, OR YOU’RE NOT BEING A BURNER. WE CAN’T HAVE THAT; BURNING MAN IS A PLACE TO DO WHATEVER YOU WANT, SO IF YOU COME OUT HERE THINKING YOU CAN JUST DO SOMETHING ELSE INSTEAD, WE HAVE TO CORRECT YOU.” At that point, his bullhorn became too clogged with bacon to continue functioning, so he put it down and began putting the delicious strips of cured pork directly into his mouth instead.

When the fire had burned down to embers and they had consumed all his food and water and booze, the invaders stripped Einstein naked, shaved off all his hair, pointed him toward the open desert, and slapped him smartly on his ass (which now sported a cute, pink, clean-looking Fudgy the Whale, and a painfully fresh brand on one cheek). Einstein yelped and trotted out onto the vast, flat, talcum-covered expanse. “I guess I’d better get busy digging a well, or growing some food, or something,” thought the freshly-shaven genius glumly.

Just then, a massive, solid-gold, diamond-encrusted recreational vehicle to end all recreational vehicles pulled up right in front of him. The door swung open with a BANG! and a tall, spectrally-pale man in a really nice Stetson hat stepped down onto the playa, crushing an entire family of fairy shrimp with one stylish Tony Lama cowboy boot. He looked like the product of an unspeakable menage-a-deux between Marshall Applewhite and Boo Berry, the General Mills cereal ghost.

“Hi, Einstein!” said the man around his enormous Havana cigar. “I’m Larry Harvey! Welcome to Burning Man! Glad to see you’re being so self-reliant.”

An unspeakable menage-a-deux

An unspeakable menage-a-deux

Harvey snapped his fingers, and a large spider-like creature wearing a double-breasted suit and power tie on its ungainly arachnoid body scuttled out of the RV behind him, a folded piece of paper clenched in its terrifying mandibles. A smile seemed to cross the thing’s. . . face? as it thrust the paper rudely at Einstein, who grasped it gingerly between two fingers as though it might also bite. As the malevolent-looking horror retreated once more into the air-conditioned shade of the RV, Einstein clumsily unfolded the document in his hands while trying not to actually touch it.

A subpoena?

“Sorry about the lawsuit, Einstein, but we just can’t have people going around infringing on our intellectual property like that,” frowned the soft-spoken cult leader as he disapprovingly eyed the fresh brand on Einstein’s ass. “Oh, by the way,” added Harvey, his eyebrows raised in sudden afterthought, “have you done any good math lately? If you’ll read the back of your ticket, you’ll see that we actually own that, too. Don’t forget to register any Unified Field Theories of Bacon you happen to run across with the Math Mecca people!” And with that, Harvey gave a jaunty wave and vanished into thin air. The diamond-encrusted solid-gold RV chuffed disdainfully as its air brakes were released, and rolled off into the shimmering superheated distance.

Einstein stared dumbly at the subpoena, then at the brand of the Man on his ass, then at the subpoena again. He couldn’t do any relaxing vacation math without Larry Harvey and his friends taking ownership of it away from him, and his ass already belonged to them! Burning Man was ruined!

Or was it?

On the verge of tears over his sad plight, Einstein almost failed to notice the discarded bullhorn at his feet. Wonderingly, he picked it up, held it to his lips, and pushed the TALK button. His words came booming out of the bell, amplified into a stentorian command voice that sounded like it would brook no insolence from anyone: “YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.” Einstein lowered the bullhorn from his mouth and gazed at it, deep in thought, then looked up toward the horizon, where he could see a group of people erecting a giant wooden statue of Josef Stalin sporting an enormous hard-on. He looked again at the bullhorn in his hands, and again at the statue-erectors, and a grim, purposeful grimace stretched his ancient face across his skull. He knew what he must do. Burning Man was saved!