Here's where I am and the fun stuff I'm up to — checking in from the road.
Packing the city away — Last Supper Sep 12, wheels out Sep 13
When the event ends the real work starts again: strike. The city comes down and gets packed back into the containers, the playa combed clean. Saturday the 12th the crew sits down together for the Last Supper, and on Sunday the 13th — off the playa, and the long road home.
Sunday night — the Temple burns in silence
The opposite of Saturday: the Temple, filled all week with letters and memories and grief, burns on Sunday night while tens of thousands stand in near-total silence. The heaviest, most beautiful hour of the year.
Saturday night — the Man burns
Saturday night the whole city converges on the center. Fire spinners ring the pavilion, fireworks split the sky, and then the Man goes up in a column of flame while eighty thousand people roar.
Gates open — the city comes alive through Labor Day
Gates open Sunday, August 30th, and Black Rock City fills up — art cars, sound camps, rivers of bicycles, dust storms and sunrises. A full week of the strangest, warmest city on Earth, running through Labor Day, Monday the 7th.
Raising a city out of the dust — someone else's build
Build Week begins the morning after Early Man. Rebar and shade structure, scaffolding and generators, whiteouts and water trucks — a week of hard, dusty, joyful work raising a temporary city in the desert. It's happening all around him, but it belongs to another department; his own containers and shade are already up.
The early-crew burn under the desert stars
Before the gates, before the crowds — the crews who build the city gather for a burn of their own. Early Man, Saturday the 22nd: a smaller fire, ten thousand stars, and the people who make Black Rock City real.
Containers emptied, shade raised — right up to Early Man
From Moving Day until Early Man, this is the job: empty the containers, haul out everything that's been sleeping in them since last year, and get shade up over all of it. Unload, sort, build — and at the end of the season pack the whole thing back down again. Simple, physical, and the reason the city gets to exist at all.
Aug 12 — the whole operation moves out onto the open playa
Moving Day. Everything that's been staged in town gets loaded up and driven out onto the open lakebed, and that's home for the next month. There's no city yet — just survey flags, work trucks, dust devils, and the early crew who conjure a city out of nothing flat.
Three days of Burning Man Org training, living at Shoreline
Before any of the heavy lifting: Burning Man Org training. Three days of it, living out at Shoreline — survey tasks and the rest of the groundwork that has to happen before a city can be laid out on an empty lakebed. Learn the systems, learn the people, then go build.
Roll in, get credentials — and teach a workshop if the timing holds
Gerlach: population small, dust everywhere, and the last real town before the playa. Pull in on the 8th, get checked in and credentialed. If the rig rolls in early enough there's a NuCamp workshop to teach from nine to one — a morning of code before a month of desert.
Two long days of truck, trailer, and high desert
I-5 down past Olympia and Portland, then east to the dry side and US-97 straight down the spine of Oregon — Madras, Bend, Klamath Falls. Over into the far northeast corner of California, across Cedar Pass into Surprise Valley, and finally NV-447 through the sage toward Gerlach. Towing changes the whole feel of a drive: slower, heavier, and you notice everything.
5:30 AM out of Leavenworth — a one-ton truck, then a trailer
Out the door at 5:30 in the morning and over Stevens Pass in the dark. A one-ton truck waiting in Kent at 7:30, then south over the Narrows to Gig Harbor for the trailer — an RV this time, a real bed and a door that shuts, instead of a tent full of playa dust. Hitch it up around ten and point the whole rig south.
Dad turned 80 — and it was great
A run over the Cascades to Tacoma for the big one: Dad's 80th. Cake, stories, the whole family around one table — the kind of evening you drive four hours each way for without thinking twice. It was great. Then the long quiet drive back home through the mountains.
AS 2299 into Pangborn (EAT) — 11:59 pm Mon Jul 20
Fly back across the country — AS 31 out of JFK at 4:29 pm Eastern, a three-hour Seattle layover, then AS 2299 into Pangborn, wheels down 11:59 pm Pacific, Monday night July 20 — and home to the Cascades. Home sweet home. (Pickup crew: look up Alaska 2299 from Seattle.)
Called off — the fire spin with Frank didn't happen
The plan was a fire circle in New York on the 18th: poi, staff, and good people throwing flame after dark, a chance to spin again on the far side of the world. It got canceled. Some nights the schedule wins — the rope dart stays in the bag and the trip rolls on.
Rush tickets, Row F — Rocky Horror at Studio 54
A thirty-dollar rush ticket turned into sixth-row orchestra for Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show — back on Broadway for the first time in 26 years and worth every one of them. Luke Evans' Frank-N-Furter struts out mustachioed, corseted and in pearls and owns the room from the first note; Amber Gray is an absolutely incredible Riff Raff; Rachel Dratch narrates like she's in on every joke in the building; Stephanie Hsu's Janet — dammit — is perfect. Callbacks flying, popcorn in hand, the whole house on its feet for the Time Warp. It's just a jump to the left, in the room where 1977 never quite ended.
Three weeks in the city — settled in the East Village
Nearly three weeks in New York — the longest stay of the whole trip, longer than the Thailand stretch. Home base: the East Village. Get out and explore the city, and if the right people are around, make some things too.
JAL BKK→JFK, A350 via Tokyo
One last Thai sunset, an easy morning taxi to the airport, then a polar great-circle east — Tokyo, then over the top of the world — and the date line hands the day back: leave Monday morning, land Monday night.
Ferry across the river, a downpour, and a quiet ceremony
Rode the BTS and caught an Orange Flag express ferry across the river. Stepped off the pier into a downpour — even fell in the water, while Thai kids ran and slid through it. Incredible pad thai, then waded over to the temple. Walked most of the grounds alone and quiet, and stumbled onto an actual ceremony. Sat and watched. Incredible.
All-teak hand-carved temple — the story unfolds stage by stage
An enormous temple right on the Gulf, carved entirely from teak — no nails, just wood. Every surface is covered in carving, and the story builds as you move through it: four directions, each drawn from a different tradition — Thai, Khmer, Chinese, and Indian — tracing humanity's place in the cosmos, stage by stage. Walked the whole thing filming with the Insta360.
Working remotely by the sea on Thailand's Gulf coast
About nine days working remotely from Thailand's Gulf coast — laptop open, sea air, palm trees, and warm tropical rain. (An overnight NuCamp teaching workshop on Jun 26.)
Underwater tunnels — sharks swimming overhead
The aquarium at Siam. The best part: walking through the underwater tunnels with sharks gliding right over your head.
Land, recover, taste the city
Touch down in the early afternoon, jet-lagged and grinning. A couple of days to settle in, wander the city, and eat incredible street food.
Qatar SFO→BKK, A380 on the Doha leg
The big leap. A polar great-circle haul over the Arctic to Doha at midnight, then a final double-decker A380 stretch into the heat of Southeast Asia. Two calendar days vanish into the date line.
Night drive south, motel by the airport
Break camp, point the rental south as the light goes gold, and trade a tent for a hot shower and a real bed near the airport before the big flight out.
Ranger Leadership Retreat — camp on a farm
Three days of camp life among the Rangers — bocce, a river to wade in, a fire pit, a potluck, a meal shift. Dust, laughter, and the smell of a Napa evening.
Long hair → the business-card look, next to Six Flags
Woke up in Vallejo, in the shadow of the Six Flags coasters, and walked into a barbershop to trade the long silver hair for the cropped look on the business card. A new chapter deserves a new haircut — then back on the road to the Napa retreat.
Fly out at dawn, land in wine country
A 5:15 AM departure — his grown son riding shotgun in the little blue Prius C for the dark drive down to Wenatchee's airport, then a short hop over the mountains via Seattle and on south to California. The adventure starts before sunrise.
