Burning Man!

The Burn was another good one. I hadn't been since 2008 and it was definitely bigger this time. Alex rode down with me as a first-timer and will apparently be going back next year. :)

Burning Man is hard for me to sum up in writing as it is something that has to be experienced to truly understand its purpose. There was awesome art. Awesome art cars (the VW Bus built on a firetruck chassis was my favorite). Awesome music (a little Theivery Corporation here… some Infected Mushroom there …). Every time I go I will try to convince you to go too. So watch out 2013!!

This year was spent with Camp Monkey Business - an amusing group of folks who love their banana suits. The morning mix of Banana Phone, Peanut-Butter-Jelly-Time, Amazing Horse (Weebles-stuff extended version) and the afternoon soft rock happy hour became quite the awesome daily ritual. Also, purely by chance, across our street was a large shopping cart art car – 25ish people in banana suits stuffed in a shopping cart driving to center camp to crash the Santa-con meet-up. One of the weekly highlights. :)

I played some Flaming Tether-Ball too - and managed to damage a friend of mine in the process. Oh, and then there was that treasure hunt caused by a mailbox discovered during a dust-storm.

On the way down outside of Klamath Falls my car lost power. I was unable to climb hills faster than 40mph and some became 25mph crawls. We decided to press-on and deal with any fallout once the event was over. I thought being stuck on the desert after an epic week of fun was much better than being stuck in some small town waiting for parts for a couple days and missing most of the event – the car still moved even towing 1000lbs of trailer. We were going to head to Reno on Monday for repairs but I was reminded by a camp-mate that Monday was a holiday – I began tearing my engine apart to find the problem. I discovered the hose coming out of the intercooler had separated heading to the throttle body, eliminating any turbo-boost and probably about 20HP. The o-ring was also damaged in the process. With Alex providing rubber-goop from his bicycle-tire repair kit, I was able to salvage the o-ring, MacGyver everything back together best I could, and we had a functioning turbo for the trip home.

The unpacking continues tomorrow.