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Woop woop.  I really need some new pictures on here.  However, I have been working a lot and of course I got sick so I’ve been dealing with that on top of everything else.  Blah blah blah complain complain.

Dan Hodges why on Earth would you go anywhere near the Salton Sea?  I have heard terrible things about that place.  If you want to camp in the desert just come to Burning Man next year…At least the ground there is solid enough to drive on, and it isn’t covered in dead fish. Although I do admire your adventurous spirit and intent, and I can’t wait to hear the full story after seeing those pictures. Ok that’s all, this is really just a test post anyways, geez.

Sorry no pictures today, definitely will post some soon, I promise.  I’ve actually been pretty busy here since I’ve come in to Seattle.  Right now I am in a coffee shop on Capitol Hill (the coolest neighborhood, where I hope to live if I stay here) and they are blaring Nirvana.  How stereotypical right?

A few things happened today:

1.  I tried out riding the bus because trying to drive and park in Seattle is just terrible.  Turns out it was really easy, nice and fast, so that is a big plus.

2.  I put labels on 1200 coffee bags for 10 bucks and hour.  Woooo…!

3.  I had a little phone interview for a job which resulted in me adding a little “before and after” editing section to my main website, which I probably should have done a while ago anyways.  I don’t know if I’ll get the job, but at least it got me to do that and at least I finally heard back from someone.

4.  It was cloudy today.  Apparently Seattle is really, really nice in September.  I thought it rained every day here, but I have been in the Northwest for kind of a long time now and I haven’t seen a drop of rain yet.  Actually, this was the first legitimate overcast day I’ve experienced.  I guess it actually does rain like every day starting in a month or so though, which I am ok with.

So that’s a little update on my life.  I am staying with my brother’s old friend Caleb Woods here in Capitol Hill.  I really like the area.  I hope something works out soon, I am getting sick of being all up in the air about everything and whatnot.  I’m starting to get a little dizzy from life.

Yay for two updates in one day! Here is Mt. Rainier in all its mountainous glory.

 

Waterfall.

 

A bear! RAWROMNONOMNOMNOM!!!!!

 

Charlie told me there are marmots here. I now have photographic evidence confirming this. Look closely. He was awesome.

 

 

 

I know all this nice weather is a lie…but I still like it here. MORE updates coming soon, but I think this is all for today. Whew.

 

On saturday night the man burned. Sunday morning I woke up and I knew it was time for me to get out of the desert. I was feeling pretty beat down. I needed to get rid of all the dust that covered me and everything I owned. So I got in my car and drove north all day, through northern California and into Oregon. I found a Best Western, took the greatest shower of my life and slept for about twelve hours. I felt pretty awesome the next day, so I continued driving. I gave Ali a call to let her know I was in Oregon, and she said she was there too! I headed over to 101 and started driving up the coast to meet her and her friend Rachel. We met in Lincoln City, and headed to the nearest beach:

 

 

 

There was a huuge sand dune there that we climbed.

 

So worth it.

 

 

 

 

 

We then pressed on further north and found a beach to camp on. It was some good times…

 

 

 

The next day…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Someday I will live here.

 

…or here, I haven’t decided yet.

 

Coffee shop.

 

Buddafeeod

 

Stole my $2 flip flop!! A crime!

 

Cool place #456

 

A lighthouse.

 

The end.

 

After all that adventuring, I followed Ali up to Ashford, where I have been recovering (cleaning all my crap, getting my car fixed…etc.), and looking for a job in Seattle/Portland (if anyone knows of any, LET ME KNOW!!). Stay tuned for some Mt. Rainier pictures!

So let’s see…when was it…like two weeks ago almost, I left my house, went to Ann Arbor, picked up some guy I had never met (a random dude who was on a hitchhiking adventure across the country), drove 26 hours to Utah, hung out with my brother, and that’s where I left you with my last post. Well I have been through quite a bit since then. Right now I am sitting in a coffee shop in Ashford, WA, trying to sort through all these freaking pictures. I am near the entrance to Mt. Rainier National Park. It is a clear day and Mt. Rainier looks awesome. It is HUGE! Wow. I have never been to the Northwest before and I am loving it. After camping for a week in the desert for burning man I randomly met up with Ali on the Oregon Coast (which is pretty much the most beautiful place I have ever been btw), and decided it would be a good idea to…go camping again! Yay! But the pictures and stories from that are for part 2 of this most epic post. Now I know you are all waiting to hear and see things from my Burning Man adventure, so here goes:

Monday morning I woke up at 3 a.m. and got right in the car to continue on my journey westward. It was about twelve more hours to the Burning Man location. We passed through Salt Lake City as the sun rose behind us over the lake. It was a beautiful sight, but I must say, the Great Salt Lake does not have a very pleasant smell to it. In fact, it smells absolutely terrible. Like a giant field of dead fish. The air was also filled with swarms of weird bugs. My passenger remarked “Bugs, dead fish smell, desert…only the Mormons would come here and be like: ‘Paradise!’” So we pressed on as fast as we could. Next up was a drive across the Bonneville Salt Flats which was incredible. Miles and miles of straight road over white, perfectly flat ground as far as the eye could see. Crazy. It was a preview of the type of environment I was about to spend a week in. After the Salt Flats there is the boring state of Nevada. Not much to say about that except that I was really glad my car didn’t fall apart. I was in such an incredible state of anticipation by the time we reached our exit off I-80 that I noticed my hands had actually developed pretty thick callouses just from gripping the steering wheel so hard for so long. I got my last tank of fuel that would take me past Gerlach into the desert, and we headed into the unknown. By this time almost everyone on the road with us was headed to Burning Man, so things had gotten very interesting. We all drove north past Pyramid Lake in a line of biodiesel buses, RV’s, trailers, trucks, and hybrid cars packed full of interesting people, bicycles, generators, booze, and all kinds of incredibly random artful things for which I’m sure no one could give a good reason for bringing to the middle of a desert. We descended on the confused residents of Gerlach by the thousands, stocking up on gas, food, and supplies before our week long adventure. Looking north, all I could see was an enormous cloud of dust, and I knew that was where I was headed. Just a few miles north of Gerlach was a sign pointing to a bumpy, temporary gravel road which led us off the map and onto the open playa. Almost instantly we were surrounded by dust. It wasn’t long before it was nearly impossible to see even a car five feet in front of us. We were arriving with a dust storm at the worst possible time. I had heard so many stories about how you never experience anything like the weather out there, and it is true that nothing can prepare you for it. When a window is rolled down or a door is opened, nothing can stop the dust from blowing in and coating absolutely everything in the car. Soon it was coming out of the air vents, and my poor car’s engine was struggling to stay alive. As we passed through the gate, we were greeted by a topless woman in a dust mask and goggles directing traffic, which of course did not seem strange at all by that point. My traveling companion bravely got out on foot to help me find my way for about two miles to the greeter’s station at the actual entrance to the city. At this point we were told we had to stop. No one was allowed to drive in because visibility was so poor. So my passenger took his backpack (which is all he brought with him), and decided to walk the rest of the way in. I was on my own to figure the rest out. Everyone who wasn’t on foot or on a bike ended up having to stay at the greeter’s station for about three hours until things calmed down. No one let this stop the party from starting! Clothes were removed, beer was opened, bikes were brought out and the city seemed to spring up right there in line out of nowhere. Clearly dust storms are just another part of the Burning Man experience which everyone simply makes the best of. For me, it was a baptism in playa dust. After a half hour or so, an older, overweight man wearing a pink thong came up to my car and gave me a map of the city and told me how to get to my camp. I eventually left my car and wandered around with my dust mask, hat and goggles on to take in my surroundings for a while. By about 7 p.m. the wind finally started to settle down. Everyone just started yelling and running back to their cars. We were finally ready to head into the city. It is easy to find your way around, and I quickly found my way to P-Cubed Oasis at Corvair and 8:00 (this will make sense if you know how the city is laid out, which is pretty cool. Look it up). I saw the two story bar, which looked beautiful, and was nearly completed. There were just a couple of people at the camp, so I set up my tent by myself next to Lauren’s geodesic dome. The first thing I did was get a huge blister on my hand which is still healing from pounding in my rebar tent stakes. Ouch. After awkwardly finishing my tent set up, and some wandering around, I was feeling extremely overwhelmed and exhausted, so I passed out in my tent as the wind continued to pound it all night.

It is kind of hard to piece together a linear stream of events from the rest of the week…I will say that I had an amazing time. It was a very challenging experience in many ways. Through the course of each day’s wandering, I easily covered several miles on foot and on my bike. Everything was bigger and more elaborate than I could have imagined. I met more people than I would normally meet in an entire year and they were from all over the world and were all very interesting. I know I hated it when people said things like this before I went to Burning Man, but: if you really want to know what goes on there, and what it is really like, you just have to go check it out for yourself. I really hope to go again next year, so if anyone wants to join me, let me know and maybe we can set something cool up. For now I will just let my pictures tell the rest of the story. Also keep checking this blog the next few days for pictures from my more recent adventures. I have a lot of work to do still. Enjoy! (Btw, the art theme this year was “The American Dream.”)

 

 

 

 

 

Inside out piano?

 

 

 

Little Thingies.

 

Press a button…see what happens.

 

Flowers at 9:00

 

Fambly

 

Tape deck art car.

 

Nautilus.

 

Ping…

 

More art cars!

 

Duck art car!

 

Bug art car!

 

Ship art car!

 

This thing was right out of star wars…it was huge and actually could walk around. Crazy!

 

Dragon art car!

 

 

 

Yes, it breathed fire.

 

Calm dusk view of P-Cubed Oasis bar (camp I was staying at).

 

Sunset from bar.

 

View from bar.

 

Party at P-Cubed!

 

The Dept. of Spontaneous Combustion visits P-Cubed!

 

Party at Mal Mart.

 

Random camp and art car.

 

Little houses! I want one of these.

 

Solar recharging station. I thought I was gonna be pretty cool with a solar powered Ipod charger…

 

Nighttime begins.

 

Fire dancing.

 

Fire ping pong!

 

The Man! at night.

 

 

 

More fire dancing. Everyone at Burning Man loves fire a lot.

 

Night triangles.

 

Day again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The American Express.

 

Bummer from afar

 

Bummer.

 

Big tall random thing…for me to climb on!

 

Hello from below.

 

Climb an old fire truck ladder! Dangerous? Of course! Weee!

 

Approaching dust storm.

 

Tandem bike & dust.

 

The ten story steel building…yeah.

 

Huge.

 

View from inside.

 

 

 

View from the top.

 

 

 

The temple.

 

 

 

Inside the temple.

 

Inside the temple you are free to leave artifacts and write messages to people you have lost or miss. On Sunday they burn the whole thing.

 

 

 

View of path to man from temple.

 

People chilling.

 

Temple interior.

 

More stuff.

 

 

 

Please keep us together.

 

The best sunset. The end.

 

So there you have it. Those are my Burning Man pictures. I wish I could have taken my camera out more but I was really nervous because of all the dust. People say “If you don’t want something to get completely destroyed, DON’T bring it to Burning Man.” Thankfully my camera is still in working order, even though it did get pretty dusty, like everything else. Also I wish I could have captured the nights better somehow. The city at night is a completely different entity. One of my favorite things to watch at night were the trails of balloon LED’s that gently curved hundreds of feet into the clear night sky, blending in with the stars (you can see a LOT of stars out there too). Very cool. Anyways, I now have to begin work on my next post! Check back soon!