She blinded me with Science



The Felice Clan came to visit us in Syracuse for the weekend. My Niece Carolyn was competing in a Central New York Science fair here in town on Sunday. So after she set up Saturday afternoon for the Sunday competition - we headed to dinner. Afterwards, Mr. Eric gave the family a little spin in our basement disco.




Sunday afternoon - the family headed over to the local community college to support our brilliant 7th grader and see her science presentation on plant growth.



Way to go Carolyn!

TalksWithHands



Forget DanceWithWolves. Kevin Costner's got nothin' on me.

Van movie

"The Bus" Trailer from Damon Ristau on Vimeo.

I have not even watched this trailer yet .... but I wanted to post it so I did not lose it.

Escape from SyberiaCuse'
















We headed out for our annual winter escape with our friends Greg and Joe this past week. We decided to try Ft. Lauderdale this year and skip the West coast. So on Thursday, we all trekked down on separate flights to Ft. Lauderdale to stay at The Cabannas Guest house for a long weekend. We had beautiful weather - which was sorely needed. The long cloudy weekends tend to put me personally in a funk by the end of February. Combined with a rather extended nutty streak at work - I was really really ready to get out of dodge ( or the frozen gulag..) Our friends Gerry, Matt and Tom C also joined us for a nice calm weekend with no particular schedule - other than maximize use of the 3 pools at the resort. The weekend went a little too quickly, But Eric and i did manage to catch up with our friends Tom B and Eli as well as poke around some antique stores to look for "things" to use with the house.

Random pic for house ideas

Holidays in Syracuse.

Our first party in the new house this past December. Lots of friends and family helped us celebrate with the famous gift exchange and only one broken glass! My sister Cathy came this year to help me with the hors d'oeuvre production and our friends Allan and Ken arrived early to get caught in the pre-party whirlwind. ( Thank you!) Our friend Gerry was the evening photographer and did a great job capturing the night with both our party veterans and new friends!

( Click on any image to enlarge)









Thanks to everyone for coming out on such a cold night!

All the party photos on Flicker here

Burning Man Trip Reflection.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about the trip since my return. Heck - I was thinking about it the whole way home! I think as a whole - the trip was unsuccessful. And I plan to dissect it fully before I contemplate a return. So the following blah blah is more of a recording for myself to READ CAREFULLY before another trip. It is interesting how the memory fades and all that is left are cool pics..

Good things:

• I met many nice new folks at Buscamp.
• The van ( engine wise ) ran perfectly with the OLD engine.
• The route was staged better because I was on my own schedule.
• Wyoming was actually a nice drive!
• I took some great pics with the new recoh camera. I wish I knew how to use it better.

Bad things.... well .. I think several minor snafus snowballed to put a tarnish on the whole trip.

Blew the [ insert here ] budget

- 2 hours after I left home, Eric called to let me know the basement was flooding from the rain.
From there - I started doing a mental tally of effort, energy, time and $ i spent to make this trip happen and it became clear I really really blew the budget. I had not even crossed into Ohio and was thinking "WOW..what have i done...."

- I started working on the engine replacement in MAY and work went really slowly reflecting my learning curve. So 3 weeks before I left - it became clear that the engine replacement was not going to happen in time for the trip. SO the engine sits in the garage, along with a BOAT LOAD of new parts AND a rebuilt 5 speed transmission. A big investment in Time and $.

When it was clear that the swap was not going to happen - I quickly came up with a triage plan for the old engine and was working on it right until the day before I left ( which did not help the stress level...) So for all the efforts and money on the new engine... i managed to get the old engine running quite happy(!) after 2 years of grumpy grumpy and dicking around with VW garages taking money and not really fixing things..

Since the trip was going to be a long one - I short circuited most 2010 vacation planning with patient Eric for the whole year.

Multitasking failure

Work was quite busy when I left - so I decided to work "on the road" - thinking it would be easy
to drive 7-10 hours and day..and then pop open the lap top and pull another 7-8 hours of work out every day of the drive out and back. That was a cute idea - but it was really tough to concentrate after long drives. I DID manage to get some good sketches finished on the road that I was quite happy with but... very tiring and left little time to poke around.

This was ALL being processed before I even arrived in Nevada.

Hence -

Small snafus snowball...

My NEW Optima gel cell was dead the SECOND DAY of the trip. I think that my leaky subwoofer killed it. So even after a 2 day charge in Salt Lake with a brand new battery charger -
NADA. This snowballed further when arriving at the Playa - my new solar panel and charge control decided not to talk to said battery or anything wired to it. - thereby negating the solar panel investment and leaving me with no running water in the van. grrrrr

I had the propane topped up in Nebraska at a KOA. It was only 1/2 full from my 2007 trip and I wanted to be all set at Burning Man. Seemed OK later in Cheyenne when I cooked Chinese ( Yum!) But then the first night I went to cook at BusCamp - NO gas. Zero. Empty.
I do not know if the guy did not fill it right or whether I left the stove on(?) but there was no cooking half the food I brought..... :O( Nor running the fridge.

Driving alone had some advantages but also tiring draw backs. The cross country trip is something to share as an adventure, otherwise it becomes a fairly quiet transportation process.

Lack of Posse

I had spoken to several friends and Eric ( of course) about attending with me and had been VERY upfront about the harsh environment....and the interest level...always dropped off.
And to be honest ... if I did not have the VW angle to this adventure... it would have much less appeal to me as well.... Yet over the week I kept spotting events and things I knew Eric and friends would love. Especially the Disco roller rink....

But on arriving at Burning Man - I met a lot of nice Bus Camp veterans from the west coast who have all gotten to know each other from previous Burning Mans and other regional events. Very welcoming folks but sometimes it felt I was really on the outside looking in. This was definitely a reflection on me. I think that would be different next time around, but it made an impact. I am never that comfortable inserting myself into groups and had to fight the instinct just to solo the whole week. ( was not really successful with that one...) That also runs cross grain to the Burning Man experience of just plunking down with people you have/have not just met and having a good time. ( Not something I do easily...)

This was all magnified mid week when I managed to get all ready for a BusCamp event and then was literally left off the bus... no one to really blame - but definitely a funk starter.

From there it seemed like the daily event or component that I would be looking forward to always seemed to deflate right in front of me. And while there was amazing things going on right around me I should add...

Playa Factor

All of the above would be entirely manageable except for the Playa Factor. This component seems to fade from memory the fastest unfortunately. Camping on the playa is not easy...
Hot HOT HOT and very dusty. A tough camping environment that no one makes a secret of...
Literally from 12 - 3 everyday I was under my sunshade. The sun was too bright and i was risking sun poisoning. Other hours I was constantly spraying more sunscreen on top of whatever playa dust i was already coated with.. yucky.

The dust part drives me crazy. Which will make any BM veteran laugh. It is a part of BurningMan and it is futile to fight it. But I do. I really never thought of myself as a high maintenance person - but spending a week with a fine coating of dust on you and everything around you drives me NUTS. It is directly hitting an idiosyncrasy button of mine.

Apparently it is noticeable - as my friend Pavel at BusCamp made comment that it was entertaining to watch me in 2007 try to keep ahead of the dust... and all I could remember was wondering how anybody could be happy sleeping and rolling in Playa filth for a week. The daily dust storms happily defeat any efforts to fight the dust. Getting in a 2 hour dust storm after dark.... is a whole 'nother world. Especially when the only goggles you have are the darkest ones you could find for use in the daytime. I nearly walked face first into the Burning Man himself because i could not see 12 inches in front of me.

I kept myself together in 2007 despite the environment. But 2010 - with all the other stuff on my mind - I really let it get to me. Despite an actual shower at BusCamp and 3 boxes of Body wipes - by Saturday I really was mentally done with the whole event. I was not relishing the idea of trying to get out of the event Sunday along with 20,000 other people - so I left early. I knew in hindsight it would seem to have been not a big deal just to stay - but at the time - I told myself I really wanted to leave. So I did.

Rush rush rush

The trips out and back always seem rushed. Driving by so many neat things - always in a rush to get to Nevada and then after BM - just wanting to get HOME. And another memory lapse became apparent on the way home. In 2007 - I had just reluctantly sold my home due to unemployment. NO complaints - as I saw a fairly nice equity gain and the bank account was full for the trip. So I never did an accounting of the costs for the trip. Mistake.

All day driving in the van requires 3-4 tanks of gas. KOA camping comes in at $30 a night
and then there is food. Multiply that by 10 driving days and a couple of hotel stays and
that is a serious chunk of money in a short period of time. Paying for it Solo really can empty out a bank account fast! And normal bills do not cease because you are out of town. So my return to new york had a couple of $$ meters running on empty. Did I mention I maxed out my credit card on Van parts before I left NY......?


Participant vs Observer

I tend to run well in a participant mode at new adventures and settings. And for BurningMan there are LOTs of opportunities to do so. But the Cross country part of the adventure really makes that difficult... No opportunity to "Do" something for BurningMan because I am stressing out to make sure I actually get there... and my daydreams of cool art projects are not compatible with dragging across the country.... ( at least not yet... :O)


Now - after all this crabbing - if you look at my pics - you can see that I was surrounded by Amazing things..... hence the need to fix and analyze, fix and try again! :O)

Pics => Glowstick fun with Joel, Ramona and Matt

Pics => Fire Spinning at BusCamp

Pics = > BurningMan Art and trip


So! I am already trying to figure out a plan for 2013. Some could easily say to drop the whole idea - but that is difficult when it is clear the trek CAN BE an amazing adventure. and I just did not get it right. Further thoughts or directives for 2013

- The van must be squared away and not require the whole summer to prep.
- I need to bring Eric for a part of the trip and friends to share the experience
- I need to be a participant in this creative outlet ( already sketching that one out... :O)
- I need to actually budget for this trip
- I need to slow the trip down to smell the flowers

I am sure I will figure out more as the next 2 years unfold......




All of this recorded to contemplate before a possible return in 2013. I will need to plan around this experience or risk a repeat.

iPad = Blog Killer?

Curious change of habits since September. Mr. Eric bought me an iPad for our anniversary!

I totally scored on THAT one! :O) and I drag it all over the house now.... so a I rarely get down to my office to sit in front of the actual computer to photo edit and blog. So I will try and do some catching up.

Return Home

I made a point to stop back in Cheyenne on the way home from Burning Man. I caught a glimpse of the town on the previous trip and thought it would be nice to poke around on my return. Downtown has a nice Rt 66 feel to it. Lots of retro details and interesting architecture. The development phases of the town are quite evident. The central core on the main street is old Route 30 and you can see how the town developed and the turn of the century architecture gives way to the retro 50's features as you move away from downtown.













And typical of American discard culture - both the turn of the century and the 1950's architecture are in disrepair/ state of abandon and it all gives way on the outskirts of town to generic big box retail. It appears like the downtown is pretty much ignored. Very sad for a cute town.

Hello Mauritius!









The readers map on the blog seemed to indicate i have readers in the middle of the open sea. But thanks to Google maps and a little zooming - tada! Mauritius ! Hope all is well in your neck of the woods! Invite me for dinner!

Life @ VW BusCamp










BusCamp is made up lotsa folk including many veteran Burners who can make the trip every year. I soon met up with Bill and Merileu - a couple from Oregon that I met on my 2007 BurningMan Trip. They went out of their way both this year and 2007 to welcome me and it was very nice to see them again. I also caught up with Gary - who is the Bus Camp commissioner and always leads the yearly organization of the camp. BusCamp was already pretty well laid out by the first day and included a central area with a small bar lounge and a place to host BusZilla - a VW art car that was constructed by Bus Camper Heather and a dedicated crew of folks.









Heather's mechanical automotive knowledge and car hobby scope eclipsed mine... ( she has 7 cars!!!! )

I was impressed and my sexual orientation flickered momentarily.......

Along the beginning of the week - I got to meet more of the Buscamp folk as they arrived as well as more veterans that I managed to miss in 2007. A buscamp couple Paige and Kurt were married on Tuesday evening at BurningMan and the wedding party all rode in Walter - the world's largest VW bus. Walter was HOT !





































It was a beautiful night for a wedding and there was a fantastic sunset i tried to catch.

During the week I brought out the Dutch oven a couple of mornings to share with campmates. It was always interesting to get up in the morning to make cobbler and see BusCamp quietly asleep.












































































Several ( many?) folk at VW BusCamp have involved with "Hooping" - which as it implies - involves Hula Hoops. I really did not know much about Hooping - but I have a new respect for it now and what a great work out and dexterity activity it can be.






































Of course - an evening of watching folks use Hula Hoops that were on fire - certainly added to visual fascination.

















I managed to catch a lot of great pics with the new Ricoh on long exposure.

More Fire Spinning images on Flicker here





Later that week - Joel, Ramona, Matt and I had some more fun with the camera and some glow sticks
































More glowstick images on Flicker here

Other activities at BusCamp during the week included a Tye-Dye workshop hosted by Annie and Silkscreening with Joel and Heather. All fun and really brought out the folks at camp and beyond. Later in the week - the camp hosted a Red party potluck as well.
























A great camp and group of folks to hang with at Burning Man and the constant VW tech talk is all FREE!

More information on Walter the Worlds largest VW bus here

More information on VW Bus Camp here

More information on Buszilla here