Burning Man 2009 Part Two

I woke up in semi darkness. Semi darkness because there was a giant truck in the middle of our camp and an rv at the front. The land grab had begun. I beat on the rear window with no effect. Unfortunately you can’t open my tailgate from the inside. I wake Tk, and move a bin and jug of water on top of her legs so I can open the rear passenger door. I get out of the car and talk to the guy driving the truck. The greeters had said B was open, but I explained we were the Sparkle Pony Corral and are registered and placed. He gets it and is cool, just asks if they can stay there for a little while so their friends can find them, which of course is fine. Old guy in the rv had a harder time getting it, but he was a virgin. After a short beer chill out session with the truck driver, he ended up leaving with them. I returned to the back of the car and replaced the bin & water.  I slept a bit more on and off through the night. I had to drive a few more groups off our land, but it wasn’t that bad. Once I realized the sun was rising I got Tk up so we could start setting up camp. At least that way it would be a bit more obvious we were a camp.

First thing is the hexayurt. We unloaded it the same way we loaded it, removing one piece of plywood, then the yurt and last the other piece of plywood.

We prebuilt some of the yurt before hand so that it would be moop free on the playa and so we wouldn’t have too much building to do. On playa we taped the 6 roof panels together. Since the seams are so long for the roof panel I created a device to make this easier, called squeegbroom, which is a broom with a bathroom squeegee taped to the top. This really helped get the tape well stuck to the panels.

Once the roof cone was built we unfolded the walls and
taped the 2 final seams. Then we got 2 guys from the Seed, our neighbors across Biology, to help us put the roof on top the walls. Booster, also from the Seed saw that Tk and I still needed some help – the roof didn’t want to stay in place for taping. He and Tk held it in place while I used small pieces of tape to hold it in place. Much thanks goes to our neighbors the seed for helping us out. All that was left after that was a ring of tape connecting the roof to the walls and another ring of tape connecting the walls to the floor tarp. After that Tk worked on unloading the car while I pounded rebar, then she worked on tying the yurt down while I finished pounding rebar. I think that all took us about 3 hours max. We only needed help for about 10 minutes, and just because lifting the roof was awkward with only 2 people. It wanted to collapse in on itself.

While building the yurt some more people stopped and eyed our land. Tk worked on unloading the car and I worked on laying out the pieces of the carport I brought. I placed it in a central area towards the front of camp. While working on this a nice guy named Trespass came by offered to help me. And it was a good thing too, cause that carport ended up being a bitch to build. Next year the bolts are all being replaced with quick replace pins.