It’s Thursday morning in Black Rock City (and everywhere else really). Last night I rode my bike all around the city for several hours and got my first real feel of what this is all about. The city itself forms a 300 degree semicircle. Where the two arms of the semicircle end, right in the middle is the Man. Straight out into the desert from the Man is The Temple of Joy and straight out from that is nothing but desert. Last night was the first time I saw the laser. There is a very powerful green (argon?) laser that starts somewhere out in the desert from The Temple of Joy, goes through the Temple, through the Man, all the way down the promenade and end at Center Camp. It also splits in two at the Man and goes to each arm of the city. Very impressive to see at night.
Last night there seemed to be a lot of Sherrif’s cars driving around, keeping the peace I guess. I don’t know where they would even start. There are so many illegal things going on they could pretty much just start at the entrance and arrest everyone if they wanted. I guess they are just looking for real trouble. Alex commented that he thought he was offered mushrooms by a narc the other day.
Yesterday the plane arrived for the skydivers we are hanging out with and they all started jumping. These guys have some mad skills. I got to watch them pack their ‘chutes and load up. Jump and then land 50 feet from me. Perfect landings almost every one and they did’t just carefully mark a spot. They were spiralling in, doing massive turns at the last second and generally being total badasses. I was pretty impressed to say the least. Today Alex should be going up in the plane to take some pics and perhaps I will go if I can find the balls to fly with a pilot that is supposedly a total nutjob. Aparently he commonly waits for the jumpers to jump and then puts the plane into a nose dive and races them down during freefall. Ugh.
What else… Yesterday we saw a Shinook (Chinook? Giant 2 rotor heli) do about 3 laps around the city VERY low. We could see the guys hanging out of it looking around. Probally wishing they could be down here. We met a dude on a quad out in the desert who was aparently having the worst luck of his life (truck broke, quad broke, dog dead, woman done left him) and he wanted to tell us all about it. After we helped him bump start his quad he took off into the desert on two wheels. The left ones.
I went and watched the nightly fire dances last night which was very cool. Even took some photos. Some turned out okay and I’ll put them up at some point. Mostly I am shooting film on my new camera and since this is the first time I have really used: film, a SLR, way too much sunlight and lots of knobs who knows how they will turn out. I hope I get at least a few that can be seen.
Did I mention the dust?
Time to find someone willing to make me breakfast. G’bye.