Burning Man is the largest Leave No Trace event in the world. Right now volunteers are doing the final sweeps to restore the desert back to a relatively pristine state so that Burning Man will be permitted to return again next year. They have a cool map showing where they’ve found Material Out Of Place (MOOP). Green means they were able to sweep through quickly, no MOOP. We made sure to clean our camp space thoroughly before we left, happy to see it confirmed on their MOOP Map. 🙂
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We’ve been scrambling to finish last-minute planning, building, preparation and logistics for our trip out the Nevada desert. We leave tomorrow for Reno, where some families from First Church of Christ, Scientist Reno will be hosting us Saturday night. We’re planning on attending church on Sunday, answering questions and doing final shopping & prep, then leaving for the playa early Sunday morning, probably around 4am so we can arrive at sunrise. THANK YOU to everyone who has been supporting our efforts, and we are welcoming online donations to help cover costs if you’re so inclined. Our Prayer Watch calendar is filling up for the week, feel free to add your name and sign up for a slot.
Yesterday we setup our 30′ Playa Dome for the first time. We selected the Berkeley Marina again, since it’s a nice windy place, and we wanted to see what that would be like. It took 4 of us (Grant, Julian, Drea, and Gabriel) about an hour and a half to get it fully assembled. We broke 4 of the supports (they supply extras thankfully) and we’ll replenish those before we take the dome to Burning Man. One key learning was to use the outer connector pieces for the circular support level instead of inner — the circumference was too tight to get the final piece in. We’ll be at Burning Man in 1 week!!!
We took our central shade column and spinnaker to the Berkeley Marina to test how it would all come together and hold up in the face of wind. We discovered that it was probably not going to work to use it. Being designed to catch wind, it was hard to stabilize, and was very loud and noisy, not the environment we’re looking to create. We may still install it on the playa as an art project though! 🙂
We did final construction / assembly for the central 6’x6′ x 12′ tall column for our shade structure today.
Our initial attempts to cut the metal lath material we’re using for increasing surface area on our evapotron were not pretty — dull tin snips were not the right tool for that job. Thankfully we were able to consult with Gabriel’s brother-in-law Mike, who runs a pre-fabrication shop in San Francisco, and he knew exactly what would be best to cut the material. He also offered to make the cuts, which was a definite blessing.
We were given 2 blown-up sailing spinnakers (from Bodacious+ and Sea Star) to use in our camp at Burning Man. Today we washed them and opened them up. We’re hoping to use them for shade, but since they’re already damaged, we’ll have to see how that works. 🙂
Last night Julian, Grant, Gabriel and Amanda met at the Berkeley CSO to get some good work done on our camp preparations. We worked on our shower structure (aka the “Tower of Shower”) and an evapotron of our own design (to help evaporate used water at the camp). We also got our 30′ dome actually ordered so it should be on its way soon! It was a lot of fun and we’re really looking forward to the next 2 weeks of preparation before we drive out to the playa. As always, we welcome your thoughts, prayers and good intentions!
We’ve been researching options for shelter at Burning Man and want to create an inviting, protected space where we can share Christian Science with other Burners. We decided tonight on a 30′ geodesic dome from Shelter Systems (a local company) which should give us good room for sharing and growing in the next couple of years.
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