As you may recall, we started the day like this:

A large project like this would not be possible without Our intrepid building crew, hard at work!

And here’s another pic of some more of our crew, trimuphant during their second full day of building:

By midday on the second day, we had put up 5 of the 21 segments, 6 of the 23 posts, 6 of the 32 pieces of acrylic. Didn’t feel like an auspicious start, and we were more than a little tense.

Various things contributed to this. We had made the design decision early on that each mirror would be married to two specific posts, and that any wiggle room would be provided by the mirrors’ ability to bend and the hinges. What this meant was that each of the mirrors had to be precisely fit to the posts to be bolted on. This involved a lot of heavy lifting and struggling. (We had only assembled 7 segments for demo day, at the burn was the first time we were going to assemble the whole thing.) This design decision was because we weren’t confident in our ability to precisely fabricate parts such that they would all be interchangeable (attaching hinges to posts is imprecise, drilling is imprecise, and acrylic can really only be drilled once or twice before it starts thinking about shattering.[1])

Another major contributor to this was our decision to avoid guy wires for wind and tipping stabilization of Mirror Blaze. Guy wires are a terrible tripping hazard, and they also look terrible. For many applications (like staking down a tent or yurt) they are basically essential, but we wanted to avoid them if at all possible.

We ended up drilling one foot deep holes in the base of each post, and using 2′ or 3′ rebar to stake them into the ground. As long as the wind didn’t lift the entire structure off the ground by a foot, we would be okay.

The last reason it took a long time to build was a decision I inadvertently made to start at one end of the outer wall. Had we gone both directions from the middle of the outer wall, we could have built two panels at once for much more of the build process.

But let none of this fool you. We were working with amazing people, building something, and enjoying ourselves in a way that’s difficult to describe:

S also took a moment for reflection[2]:

During our break for supper, we got to watch ‘A Unique Experience'[3] meet the guy with a capsaicin molecule tattooed to his arm:

Next up: Dancing with the builders in the pale moonlight!

[1]I learned this the hard way with my first drilling of holes in acrylic, but that was a half-thickness test piece, which I think contributed.

[2]No, I don’t think this will ever get old.

[3]M is known for offering ‘a unique experience’ which is usually tequila flavoured with some type of super-strong peppers that he’s grown. From the reactions of people who have tried it, it lives up to its name.

Yesterday, we had just built our first Mirror Blaze triangle:

You may or may not be aware that this involved precisely hammering 3′ rebar into the playa, then threading the 8′ 4×4 posts one at a time, attaching the mirrors, making sure all the way through that the geometry worked properly.[1]

While we were doing this, many of the other installations were springing up around us, including the scary scaffolding, springing up-per:

And Riskee Ball, after the first day, metal frame assembled!:

So, we had built the first triangle, and put flamey (our flame effect) inside, waiting for propane to be fed to it. This required some planning to properly place the fuel depot, as the fuel depot would need to be away from the perimeter fence, and would also be servicing FaIRE Hockey. Earlier, I had sat down with my book and some friendly triangles, and worked out some geometry:

A new day dawns! We head to the portapotties to take care of essentials, and we notice that someone has kindly updated the signs for road ‘C’:

We started the build day by surveying the scene, starting with our beautiful first triangle:

One of our 4’x8′ ply sheets got a little tired and had to take a breather:

We also surveyed the rest of the Charnival. Riskee Ball was looking nice and safe:

Francis was looking Fantastic:

And Pyrokinesis (foreground) looked like it wanted to burn the scary scaffolding to the ground:

Next: Day 2 of building!

[1]There are a lot of details here. Details of how we built will be a separate post, or several.

Yesterday, we started construction, and then ended up investigating a traveling variable forklift chased by bicycles[1]:

Following the variable forklift, we came upon a large group of people involved in a strange ritual:

For some reason, it seemed to involve firing of an anvil into the air, and multiple cars up on variable forklifts:

Here you can see the aftermath of the ritual, none of which really made any sense:

Bewildered, we continued on our original quest, which was to commune with the Man:

Arriving back at camp, we were reminded of an experience earlier in the day, where we experienced one of those sublime moments, where you see a person totally focused on what they’re doing, and there’s almost a type of music:

The music of focus and solitude.

Arriving back at the Charnival, we saw that construction had progressed on Francis:

We went around the front for a better look:

As night fell on the Charnival, we finally nailed down placement, and started to build:

Pausing only for a moment to see our first art car of the season:

Success! We’ve built the first triangular section!:

With a successful day of acclimation and construction, we retire to our yurt with our number one fan:

Tomorrow: How’s the rest of the Charnival going, and Heavy Construction!

[1]If this seems a little Mad Max-esque, that’s because much of it is.

Having finshed unpacking, we returned to camp to build our yurt!:

Presenting our new home for the duration, complete with smiling occupant. Note that I am trying not to shine a headlamp[1] in her face.:

Investigating the rest of camp, we met this guy, and felt reassured by his knowledge of first aid:

Still having some energy, we decided to go back to the installation to take a look around. I gave M & F a hand building some scaffolding. M convinced S to climb up to take a look. Apparently the view was breathtaking:

I contented myself with enjoying the calm of Early Arrival before the multitudes arrived for the festival proper[2]:

Next up: Building building building!

[1]Protip: Headlamps. Not just for Burning Man.

[2]’Early Arrival’ is half a week (or more!) where those who have large installations to setup arrive early. It’s quite something to be living in a city of ten thousand people, every single one of them there to build something. Even the festival proper can’t compare.

In which our intrepid heroes visit the box office, unpack a fire mirror maze, and set up camp.

After a long journey, we had finally made it! (To the box office…):

Our intrepid heroine ventures forth to stand in the (mercifully short) line:

At the box office, we found that the playa dust had formed itself into a message of some type. While we recognized it as being partially palindromic, we were not able to decode it in its entirety:

Tickets in hand, we continued our (now dusty way):

And we were there! You can see the green glowing man in the dusty[1] distance:

Day turned into night, we unpacked some, and ventured out the Charnival grounds to help unload the truck, bravely driven for days from Toronto by an amazing group of volunteers.

Normally, your first day on playa is for acclimation, but we had a lot of building to do, and the truck needed to be unloaded (including our fragile tube![3]). This would turn out to be fortuitous, as we lost an entire day to high wind and sandstorms (but more on that later).

Here, you can see the lighting of the Charnival grounds in the distance (it looks like I took this picture from my bike). Lighting is incredibly important, especially on open playa, with art cars and bicycles zipping[2] about. The Charnival grounds peeps did an incredible job:

We met up with the S3FA people, and much truck unloading ensued. You can see the result here, with our tacitly triumphant trusty heroine:

To give you an idea of why we needed a truck, here are the not yet assembled pieces of Mirror Blaze. Those are 4×4 8′ cedar (half the mass) posts with hinges (for easier[4] assembly), and 4’x8′ acrylic mirrors in a pile. It’s interesting how I automatically orient my view of this picture with respect to the fence and the Man, how I can feel where the rest of the festival is around me:

Some more components for Mirror Blaze, and some of its friends:

Next time, off to finish setting up camp and unpacking!

[1]You may think I’m overemphasizing the presence of the dust, but I’m really not.

[2]Art cars at 5mi/hr, and bicycles only somewhat faster in the (usually) hard-packed dust.

[3]A 7′ long 1′ wide quartz tube, used for keeping the flame effect away from the acrylic mirrors.

[4]Note that I didn’t say easy…