The Pepper Conduit - Burning Man Theme Camp 2008

On the plus side, no one was badly injured, maimed, or killed.

Other than that....

...this is the Cliff Notes(!) version of Bill and Marta's Vacation From Hell (TM), written from Marta's perspective:

1.) Wednesday, August 20th - In preparation for our departure for Burning Man (Bill's 8th and my 11th), Bill loads truck and trailer in pouring rain and freezing cold--a typical Seattle August afternoon. Since I have no rain gear, he very kindly encourages me to hide in the house while he works (have I mentioned how much I love him?). Later that same day, we arrive in Junction City, OR (population: 4500; number of cops on patrol at any given time: 1), to visit my mother and shop for food and supplies in nearby Eugene. Caveat: 'nearby' in that area means the towns are separated by 14 miles of RV dealerships, open farmland, auto wreckers, and lumberyards.

2.) Thursday, August 21st - We disengage the trailer, then use the truck to shop for supplies in Eugene. At about 5:55 p.m., we discover a screw sticking out of the left rear tire; the tire is rapidly losing air, and not safe to drive on. Les Schwab has just closed, so no help there. Because the spare is on the trailer (which is not with us), we have to call my mother and have her and my stepdad deliver the spare to us from Junction City, 14 miles away.

3.) Thursday, August 21st - That same evening, after Bill changes the tire, we limp home and have dinner with my mother and stepfather at their house, which is on a quiet, well-lit street in a squeaky-clean, all-American suburban development with perfect yards and big shiny trucks parked in all the driveways. Two hours later, I step outside to remove something from the truck, and discover that while the trailer is still there, the (locked) truck and contents have been brazenly stolen--including the custom fiberglass camper canopy that Bill spent months building, and which we use for camping and kayaking at other times of the year. Gone are all our shade structures, our observation tower, camp tables, solar panels, newly purchased battery, newly purchased dry foods, new LED lights from China, camp chairs, sleeping bags, pillows, camelbaks, respirators, sun hats, giveaway Playa gifts, wine/champagne, cameras, rain gear, most of our personal clothing, and thousands of dollars worth of art pieces, mostly Bill's. It's years worth of accumulated gear, and thousands of hours of labor. The loss costs are staggering. Bill is crushed.

4.) Friday, August 22nd - A friend of Bill's (who has my official nomination for sainthood), offers to loan us a vehicle to continue on to Burning Man. We gratefully accept, and begin frantically running around town, spending a LOT of money to replace a fraction of the stolen gear. While waiting in lines at places like REI, we hear stories from other residents of Lane County that theft is worse there than in more populous areas and bigger cities where they have lived.

5.) Saturday, August 23rd - A neighbor west of Eugene spots the truck abandoned in a hay field, where it had been sitting since Friday morning, apparently. He runs the plate online, and calls Bill's cell phone. Thanks to the neighbor's directions and my knowledge of the area, we locate the field, but the truck is completely stripped--even missing the catalytic converter and bumper, and the gas has been siphoned out. There are muddy footprints on the hood where the tweakers (presumably), climbed on it to get the canopy off. The only things they left (oddly), were Bill's hat and sunglasses, the stereo, his passport, and a pair of my shoes. The local county sheriffs laugh at Bill's suggestion that they look for fingerprints, and say, "that only happens on TV--where they have a budget." Bill manages to put enough gas in the now leaking tank to get the truck back to mom's place, where he pulls out the battery.

6.) Sunday, August 24th - After two days of shopping at many locations (we even had to replace our stolen clothing), we finally depart the Eugene area, and spend the night at Summer Lake Hot Springs.

7.) Monday, August 25th - We arrive at Burning Man, two days late, and have lost our theme camp positioning as a result. After a four-hour wait in the entry line, we end up camping on the outer rings of a city of 50,000 people, which is now 9 miles in circumference. The usually hard-packed and easily biked Playa turns out to be sandy mush, so bicycling is incredibly difficult at best. On the plus side, due to our late arrival, we miss Monday's day-long white-out dust storm.

8.) Tuesday, August 26th - The ever-amazing "MacGyver" Bill cobbles together a shade structure for us out of the remaining structure pieces that weren't stolen and replacement tarps we bought at a hardware store. The newly purchased tent just barely fits inside. While cutting new nylon rope pieces and burning the ends with a propane torch to finish them, I manage to accidentally hit the tip of the hot torch with my left arm, causing a 2-inch third-degree burn.

9.) Tuesday, August 26th - First-time Burners Ken and Jen arrive and manage to find our camp to park next to us. They have a fantastic time throughout the event, much to our delight, and are wonderfully supportive company.

10.) Tuesday, August 26th, evening - Bill, exhausted, falls asleep in our new tent, and I ride out at 1 a.m. to look at art pieces on the open Playa. I step inside a sound sculpture dome for less than 5 minutes, listen to some cool jamming and check out the interior lasers. I then step out to discover that my brightly lit Playa bike has vanished--stolen. I spend hours walking the open playa looking for it, but it's never found...adding insult to injury.

11.) Wednesday, August 27th - Outraged, Bill sets out in the morning to search for my stolen bike (have I mentioned yet how much I love him?). While he is sweetly riding around looking for it, a kind stranger named Eliot (a denizen of uber-cool Camp Inspiratum), hears our tale from Bill and offers to give me one of his loaners outright, which we gratefully accept. While en route to his camp, in a bit of Playa-dipity, we come across an unset combination bike lock laying in the road dust--things are looking up. Later, when I stop by to thank Eliot for the gift, he offers me ice cream and fresh baked lasagna. Anyone know a nice Burner lady from Northern CA I could fix him up with?

12.) Thursday, August 28th - We mostly bike and walk and nap, alternately exploring the city as much as we can, then resting. The neighbors across the street build a scaffold and invite us to climb it whenever we want, partially making up for our lost observation tower. I blow up our punching bag schmoo and place it at the edge of the street, with a note inviting people to punch it to their heart's content (I hammer on it myself a bit, too). That evening, we play with the huge Flaming Lotus Girls' sculpture, titled Mutopia. It's a magnificent piece--mostly copper, very organic looking (like giant flowers and roots), and plumbed with propane. When we locate and push the small silver levers on the sculpture, it shoots flames.

13.) Friday, August 29th - We take a plane flight (which I paid for in advance), over Black Rock City with Burning Sky, who bring a skydive jump plane from Davis, CA. It ROCKS. We meet up with them at their camp, ride a slow-moving art car to the airstrip, and don parachutes, for safety reasons. The plane spirals up 14,000 feet (10,000 feet above the Playa). The door rattles open, and 6 jumpers in shorts, t-shirts, and really big grins parachute out. The rest of us (the observers, or fireflies), watch and take pictures of both them and the city below. Burning Sky has a lot of rounds to make, so once the door rattles closed, the pilot (Ray), puts the plane into a steep dive, aiming straight for the ground. It's like something from a WWII movie, with wind and engines howling. This is met with a loud chorus of "WAHOO!!" from everyone.

14.) Saturday, August 30th - A white-out dust storm nearly postpones the Burning of the Man, but just after sunset, the wind calms down, and it's a beautiful evening. We walk out to the Playa and watch the Man burn from the Flaming Lotus Girls' sculpture. The pyrotechnics are impressive, and the height of the platform makes it much easier to see than in previous years.

15.) Sunday, August 31st - Early in the morning, we ride out onto the Playa to take pictures of the art pieces before they start to come down. During the ride, the new chip in my brand new replacement camera fails, losing all my pictures. Bill kindly loans me his camera to use. In the afternoon, a white-out dust storm strikes again (the wind now coming from the north instead of the west), and lasts most of the day and into the evening. We miss the Sunday night temple burn as a result. Not because it doesn't burn, but because we don't feel like dealing with the long walk in the dust--and the temperature is dropping. The dust calms down very late in the evening, and the temperature plummets. We dress in our Goodwill-purchased fleece and shiver in our alleged zero-degree replacement sleeping bags, which were far too cheap on sale to actually BE zero-degree bags.

16.) Monday, September 1st - Ken and Jen depart early in the morning. Someone runs over the punching schmoo with an art car and pops it (no great loss, though). At some point during the day, the combo bike lock vanishes off Bill's bike and into the Playa dust, never to be seen again--the Playa giveth, and the Playa taketh away. We watch the city dismantle, and begin our own camp strike. The temperature never warms up all day, even in direct sunlight. That night, as we hear later, ice forms on some of the windshields. Without our camper and down sleeping bags, we shiver a LOT.

17.) Tuesday, September 2nd - We finish our camp strike and pull away from the Playa, gradually warming up as we drive north. We stop briefly in Cedarville for food at the Surprise Valley Cafe (highly recommended), then later in Lakeview at Jerry's Diner for dinner food (also highly recommended--the ham and eggs we ordered there on the way down included a ham steak that belonged on The Flintstones; I thought the table was going to snap under its weight). Once again, we camp overnight at the beautiful Summer Lake Hot Springs. Some other Burners passing through have great fun using the remainder of their dry ice to make water-bombs in the hot springs soaking pool. After sunset, coyotes yip and howl in the nearby hills.

18.) Wednesday, September 3rd - We return to the Eugene area, have dinner at McMenamin's 19th Street Cafe, then spend the night in Junction City with Mom.

19.) Thursday, September 4th - At the Eugene Radio Shack where I bought the camera and chip, a sales grunt tries to give me grief because I don't still have the original packaging for the defective chip (hell-o? We were ROBBED! And we were CAMPING!). I convince him to let me call a manager at another store, who ok's an exchange for a new working chip (eye roll--yes, that phrase was just for you, Chad). But that doesn't change the fact that my pictures are still gone. Later, friends invite us over for cocktails, and the neighbors across the street turn out to have enormous turkeys that are fluffed up for mating--blue and red heads, huge black feathers. They're stunning creatures, and I take lots of pictures. We drive back out to Junction City to spend the night.

20.) Friday, September 5th - In the morning, the toilet backs up at my mother's place, overflowing onto poor Bill's feet and creating a colossal mess for us to clean up. After cleaning that up and scrubbing our borrowed car, we climb Spencer's Butte to blow off some steam. Later, we go to hear some live music outdoors in Eugene, performed by friends of friends. Afterward, we go over to the friends' house for cocktails. Much later, realizing that we've had a tad too much to drink (and who could blame us, at this point), we stay the night there rather than drive.

21.) Saturday, September 6th - The friends in Eugene that we stayed with the night before are realtors who own two planes (they also loaned us the vehicle). We drive to the Creswell airport, indulge in a local pancake breakfast, and then Dave (did I mention that he's a saint?), takes Bill on a flight over West Eugene to try to spot the bright white stolen camper. They spy plenty of meth labs and poverty-stricken redneck junk heaps from the air, as well as the hayfield where the truck was dumped. But the camper is not found. Pam (Dave's wife), helps me engage in some retail therapy on the ground. After the guys land, we all have a somewhat dispirited lunch, then part company. I take Bill driving through miles and miles of once-beloved rolling hills on the outskirts of my hometown--both to relax, and also as a last-ditch effort to find any trace of our missing stuff. Of course, we find nothing. And home no longer feels like home to me.

22.) Sunday, September 7th - We finally and sadly return to Seattle, having never recovered any of our stolen gear except the truck itself, and for the first time ever, not having had a great time at Burning Man. (At least this time, Mom didn't check into the hospital to have a kidney removed without telling me, like she did last year).

23.) Monday, September 8th - Bill makes plans to drive back down to Eugene *today* to return the loaner and pick up the recovered pickup truck, to drive it back to Seattle tomorrow for insurance review. I make him pledge to drive very, very carefully. A dear friend hears the tale, and invites me over for scotch and ice cream. I do believe that sounds like a lovely idea.

24.) Tuesday, September 9th - Bill returns to Seattle from Eugene, having driven:

[a] From Eugene to Seattle on Sunday.

[b] From Seattle to Eugene on Monday, to drop off the borrowed vehicle.

[c] From Eugene to Seattle on Tuesday, bringing back the recovered truck after jury-rigging a new pipe to the muffler in place of the catalytic converter.

I swear - the man is Hercules, both in body and heart.

Did I mention how much I love him? :-)

FOOTNOTE:

As of 11/30/2008, we are still dealing with insurance and replacing the stolen gear. However, Bill and I are stubborn peeps, and we don't easily give up on a good time--especially not Burning Man! We have vowed to be back next year, with a rebuilt theme camp and a new name. You'll just have to wait and see what we've cooked up. Trust me when I say that it will be a lot of fun.

As many folks know, the Pepper Conduit theme camp's main vehicle, shade structures, art pieces, and other camp pieces were stolen from Junction City, Oregon, on Thursday, August 21st, 2008. Tonight, we got a phone call from someone who had seen the truck abandoned in a hay field and ran the plate. We recovered the truck, but it was almost completely stripped--pretty much all that was left were the wheels. They even stole the muffler, the catalytic converter, and the trailer hitch. All in all, it was over $7000 worth of years of collected gear and custom built art pieces, almost none of it valuable to anyone except us.

Yet they took it all, including the custom canopy that my S.O. created (which was our sleeping space). He spent months and months building it, and it had been to Burning Man several times already. Here's a photo.

The custom canopy looks like the popemobile, and will probably fit any small pickup truck...but it's a completely custom design, very unusual looking. If anyone sees it going down the road on another truck, please report it to the police as stolen property.

So, due to the circumstances, the Pepper Conduit will have very little to give away this year--our giveaways (except the stickers), were stolen along with the truck, and haven't been recovered. Hopefully, we'll be able to do some giveaways next year.

This has been very hard for us (not to mention heinously expensive). Thanks, all, for your warmth and support.

The Pepper Conduit is a Burning Man theme camp for 2008. Experienced Burners (and one sacrifical virgin), from up and down the West Coast unite at the apex of Camp Peppermill and Camp Conduit, in the twin American dreams of alternative energy and freedom of expression. Stop by to whack our punching schmoo! Ask The Voice very nicely, and it may grant you a trip to the view tower. Or ask for a tour of our alternative energy usage and grey water recycling…receive a dance lesson, or take in a spoken word performance. On a chilly evening, join us at the chiminea for flaming heat and and a belly-warming cocktail. And don’t forget to pick up one of Camp Conduit’s free bumper stickers!