Burning Man Decom aka FDLM

This year, we decided to take Delilah with us to the San Diego Burning Man Decom.
Delilah LOVED it - said that she had the best day of her life, with all the people giving her stuff, and being friendly and so attentive to her. Interesting that there are definitely folks that TOTALLY focus on the kid - as I was walking with D, they would walk up to us, and look just at Delilah, like I wasn't even there. Lots of folks tossing her little trinkets or giving her stuff - glowing whistles, to elephant outfits. We mostly spend time at the art booth there, D painting her pony pink, and me working on pimping out stuff.

One evening, we made Tom Kah soup (as always), and when we shared it with some walkers by, Delilah really impressed them with her friendly hugs - giving one gal a "Koala Hug" (sort of a tackling the leg with legs wrapped around deal). They laughed at the Koala hug name. When I went to one of the art displays the next day it was a wishing well where you wrote your name on one side of a rock, and your wish on the other side - then took someone elses to see if you could help make their wish real. I was just reading some of the rocks - and one of them said that they wanted another koala hug!

Having Delilah there definitely changed the flavor of the event for Barbara and I, since we couldn't both do the late night catting around with kidlet in the RV. It was fun, but something that we'll probably wait on for a few years before we bring D again, unless we have a live in assistant :)


FDLM (Feuago De Los Meurtos) is at the Telemagic Site at Jacumba - which is also a railroad museum of sorts - or perhaps more of a staging area for Carizo Gorge RR down the way.
This was the "Create!" Art Camp - lots of stuff, and tools and materials - just go do your own thing. Pretty awesome stuff.


Delilah with the Elephant Costume that she was gifted.



One of the funky vehicles - a bus with a suspended cage ala Mad Max.
The hot spring pools there were new this year - four pools of different temps. Picture taken when not in use, since, um, well, people might not want their pict taken bathing!

This was a "Godzilla" reinactment - two guys in flaming robot suits duked it out and distroyed a mini-city - one has a flame thrower on his head, the other on his arm.
Head shot!
Art made with glow sticks. Pretty cool stuff.
A tent with a flaming top. Yeah, it's a little Burning Man thing...
Naughtia and Barbara (awoken from a meditiative trance)!
One of our camp mates

Burning Man - 2009

Ok, since you can't really explain Burning Man to someone that hasn't been there, pictures are at least an easy way to get some of the story, so I'll mostly focus on that.
General overview - a great and amazing time. It was windy and dusty this year, so several days we were more inside than last year. That didn't stop us from having all sorts of adventures just the same! The event was smaller (both physically and attendance - I think I heard 45k this year, vs. almost 49 last year) largely from the economy. We still managed to have a vibrant and fun camp. We spent a bit more time around our camp also, because we had such fun camp mates - and such great food!

A few particular memories -
* A giant slide made of Astro-turf that you could slide down on cardboard
* A 60ish foot tall, '50s vintage rocket that you could actually climb in. It was slated for take off Friday night, but they had, um, technical problems (on a colossal scale)
* Hammocks on the playa - napping in the shade
* Jazz camp at 2 AM, one guy in a Scuby Doo suit that was the best trombonest ever, another nude guy playing as well on the alto sax, his oiled rear gleaming oddly in the light, as they took shots of absynth and played on into the night
* Tom Kah Guy Soup, Salmon, Brockely Salad, Margaritas... Did I mention we ate well?
* A gal named Molly wandering into our camp in a wind storm
* Cowboy hats, bandanas and goggles

The line heading in
Windy/dusty, but still so amazing
Welcome "home" :)
Our camp mates on Monday.
Evening Adventure on the Pedi-Trike - with B in back, and me peddling... oh my aching knees! :)
The temple at the far side of the playa. We circumnavigated the playa that night along the esplanade.
The Playa at night.
Giant Rubics cube (Like 20 feet across) and othe camps
A panaroma of the Playa

Cube close up. It "digitally" rotated - by changing colors on the panels.
Flower ball tea - Bob's signature tea
A stilt camp/party
And a Super Stilter!
The Man during the day
Giant legos - made from wood... they made over 300 of them...
The 6 o'clock path to the man.
One of the MANY art cars - this a giant, 6 wheeled Cady cruiser...
.
The theme was "Evolution" - so a platypus works well...
Ok, this one is for any gear-headed gal, that works on her own car... (Laura R, where are you? A wedding???)
7:30 road where we were camped was a hotbed of Playa Culture!
Cooking at Bacon Camp. Turns out Bacon is great with Beer... I don't even usually like beer, but man did I cook some fine bacon!
Our entire camp with fine food (one of many lovely meals we shared).
Pinky, Barbara, Patrick, Naughtia, Bob, Marietta, and Lourdes.
A giant dragon boat the size of, well, a boat!

A full size '50s vintage rocket, ready for blast off
And the same rocket, 2 hours later, still ready for blast off! Wind storms et al.
The wings - yes i finished them, but they were so big and unwieldy (they kept unfurling) I didn't wear them much. Need to pasivate them better, and - next year... Some tail action there
Wings spread
With friends (less Patric who was adventuring)




And an ultra short video - wind and wings. Don't blink!

On the way to Burning Man - 2009

This year's Burning Man trip had a few kinks in the planning, but all worked out in spades in the end. We had a last minute change of plans regarding who was going to watch Delilah, but Dianne, B's mom, was able to do the watching on short notice, and Julie drove her down from San Marcos, literally hours later. Different plan next year!

But, once we got on the road, good times happened as always! We met up with Yen, Marilee and Alicia, and with Delilah in tow, spent a few days in the central coast, before Joe drove up and picked up Yen and all the kids, and returned them home.

Some picts from that part of the adventure follow;
Montanya De Oro State Park, near Morro Bay.

Yen hanging out
Ranger Judy with the kids and gals
Adventures at the beach
Nice thing with an RV, is you can change out of those wet clothes...
California Sea Otters. You Otter Sea em! :)
Barbara's beloved thistle
With a thistle condom on it... That thing blew fluffies everywhere!