Killer Robot Clan

When Matthew got ready to start middle school I promised that if he stayed on Honor Roll for the entire three years that I would take him to Japan during the summer between eighth and ninth grade. Two years later he is holding steady, and its time to start planning our trip.

Matthew has lost most of his interest in Japan, which had been inspired by a multi-year anime obsession during grade school. So we started looking at other options. We were looking at doing a volunteer vacation, but we hadn’t found anything so far that either Matthew or I had our heart set on.

Last week I stumbled across some random reference to the Burning Man festival and thought it was worth looking into as a possibility for Matthew’s trip. I basically understood that it was a very cool art festival out in the desert, but that was the extent of my understanding. Further investigation made me realize that this is an incredible event.

The festival is one week long, and everybody that comes stays for the whole week. It is held in the middle of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. There is no water, no electricity, no cell phone reception, nada, zip, zilch. The average winds are 20 to 30 miles per hour, and dust storms of up to 100 miles per hour are normal. Sometimes there are thunderstorms that turns everything to mud. The daytime temps average around 100 degrees, the nightime temps between 40 and freezing.

You are responsible for bringing everything you need to survive for the week, and packing it all back out with you when you leave. Every year an entire self-sufficient city is constructed in the middle of the desert for one week, then deconstructed at the end of the festival, leaving no trace that it was ever there. They will turn you away at the gate if they don’t think you are prepared to take care of yourself for the week. Last year 40,000 people came, forming this:

There is no commerce allowed in Black Rock City (the name of the city that is constructed each year). The community has a gift economy based on barter. Everything in Black Rock City is art. People decorate themselves, their camps, thier bicycles (the primary means of transportation), and many make thier own clothes and/or elaborate costumes. There are musicians, acrobats, dancers, you name it, its there.
In the center of the city is the Burning Man, a huge wooden effigy that you can see from anywhere. There is a large ring of land around the Burning Man for set aside for art installations. People erect huge surreal art peices there. On Saturday night they burn the effigy, and many artists also burn thier art installations at the same time.

Words can’t really describe it, so I’ll include a Flickr slideshow here at the end, comprised of pictures tagged “burningman”.

So, anyway, I got to talking to Andrew and he thought it was a cool idea. Last night at the dinner table I proposed the idea to Matthew and Gavyn, and they also want to go. So, it is official, the Killer Robot Clan will go to Burning Man in 2009.

Its going to take a lot of planning, so we’re going to be holding family meetings every Thursday night from now until then. I’m going to start a seperate blog about our experience planning and preparing for the trip. The address is krcburningman09.wordpress.com

Here’s that slideshow I promised you: