The zombie preying mantis attacks!

Flooding video

Here's a video of Table Mesa Drive, which is the main road connecting us to the rest of Boulder:



http://youtu.be/uvs-3gABHJg

Burning Man 2013

We finally got back to Burning Man after being away for five years. It's a huge deal for us, because it takes so much prep time, so much clean-up time, and is so crazy and uncomfortable. Hot and dusty and living with a camp of 50 some other people and using portapotties that sick, drunk people have just used can make one pretty cranky after a few days. Shooting flamethrowers and falling 15 feet into a pit of foam, or exercise balls, is pretty crazy.

We spend a lot of time making costumes. This is one version of Leo's Lunch Lady of Death:

We got a hand with these giant hands:

The coyote, which was also a steel drum, was great fun. We were lucky to climb it and luckier to not get hurt, as many burners packed onto its head, not knowing that it rotates, and got knocked to the ground when the coyote's ears hit them.

 The Cradle of Mir was a space station made of wood (of course). Leo wrote a postcard to the aliens, asking for a nuclear bomb to destroy his homework.

And then there was the Flamethrower Shooting Gallery. Pressurized gasoline makes 20-25 foot flames that you shoot at a metal man target. Leo won. This was a big highlight for us. I've always wanted to do this, but never wanted to wait in the line. We waited about 45 minutes. Also had to convince the gatefolk to allow us in as they are very selective. Rules are that you need to be sober, smart, and not wearing any flammable clothing. One guy said, "I will take off whatever I need to take off to get in there." Apparently you only need to be as smart as an 8-year-old because they let Leo in (to our surprise). Charcade, who runs this, runs a lot of fun games including some kind of flaming skee ball and Dance Dance Immolation. I still remember in 2006, one of our campmates told me he had put on a flame retardant suit and played the Dance Dance Revolution game. Every time he messed up, they shot flames at him. Apparently this was DDI's last year. They said they were going to drop a couch on this game after this year.

Best art car was Duane's Octopus, El Pulpo Mecanico. Shoots fire very creatively and fiercely. I was bummed we never asked to see the switchboard.

Across the street from our camp was this cute little row of houses with mailboxes and colorful doors. You can get real mail in Burning Man. In fact, one of the CORE project builders told me about the care packages that his mom sent him. I recall going to the Burning Man Post Office a decade ago, trying to mail a postcard, and being offered a stamp which I accepted. It turned out to be a stamp of the word SOUP on my belly.

Paul and Leo and their antics on the baseball bat pyramid. We climbed this in 2008.

Our Zander Lander with colorful umbrellas. Paul keeps changing the colors. He's trying to see if my wardrobe can keep up. Temple is behind us. That was burned last Sunday night.

Everyone loved this sculpture. Artist did a similar installation previously which is now on Treasure Island. We got to peek into their studio a couple years ago. 55' tall.

Our Contraptionist Theme Camp makes snow cones every afternoon. Kids get to cut to the front of the line which can get really long. We didn't get a lot of kids unfortunately. This is Karl, our Ambassador, cutting ice to go into the ice shaver.

Our campmate Marc converted a shaved ice machine into a pedal-powered contraption.

There's a trampoline practically on every corner of the city. Leo loves this.

This is one of Leo's handmade shirts. He has another that says, in a mirror image, "If you can read this, you're too close"

Ah, yes, what you've always wanted, a mobile couch in the sky. This is a perfect vehicle for watching burns.

Paul built this Impossible Cargo Box for the festival. I think most people did not know what it was or what to do with it. I think we need a big sign next to the viewing window that says, "Don't look into this window!"

Zander Lander in white.

Leo was lucky to get to ride this zip line. It starts at some 3 stories high and goes to the ground fast. They only started him partway but it was still pretty thrilling.

There's the man on his flying saucer, and our Zander Lander with the flower umbrellas.

The 2:30 rave camp end of the city with the Duckie art car and a nice desert boat.

They had a roller skating rink, which we skated several times. I'll have to post videos of that. And this bowling alley that Leo enjoyed.

One of my favorite flame contraptions. It's actually being fixed in this picture (there's a guy on that sphere). Lots of independently controlled flame madness.

The Man at night in his eerie green glow.

Everyone was compelled for some odd reason to leave their footprint inside the Man.

Leo talking to one of the robots inside the Man. There was a playa phone booth to talk to God this year but we didn't wait in line. Lots of lines! I do recall calling Root  from a working playa phone booth many years ago.

Why there is a fire extinguisher inside the Man is beyond me? I thought this was all about burning him?

Zander Lander rainbow umbrella. Cute little spaceship behind us that we tried to climb into.

Leo in full Lunch Lady of Death regalia.

Another crazy contraption that involved spinning and trying not to puke.

I really liked their sign. Plus they were on the Black Rock Subway! I got a token for the subway but never got to ride it. Our camp was also a subway stop. Somehow, we never got a sign.

Camp next to us was Chainsaw Margarita Guys. They converted a chainsaw into a blender. Here's Leo making a non-alcoholic margarita. There's a lot of rules now at Burning Man, including alcohol rules. They were careful not to let Leo touch any alcohol. In fact, I got carded on the playa.

I love this art car. What a weird sight out in the dust.

Leo and I were on this giant cat-scratching-post structure when a color-coded theme camp descended on us for a camp photo. So we took a picture of them.

This is one of the best flame art projects ever. I need to post a video of this. It looks like a guy on fire riding a bicycle across the playa.

The Cradle of Mir going up in flames. Beautifully choreographed burn. Each pyramid side fell gracefully, in order.

Our campmate Boris made this simple propane puffer. It's the basic building block of most of the flame art on the playa. It had a pilot flame and then a pressure tank that could be released by pressing a button, thus making a big flame poof. Leo had a great time playing with this.

Fireworks before the Man burns. This all is preceded by fire spinning. The whole city (68,000) turns out for this event. I was bummed because so many of the people seemed more interested in a rave club scene than in the eclectic artsy craziness that Burning Man used to be. Lots of folks wearing street clothes and a glow stick for their nighttime costume.

First day of school!

Leo and his best friend Oliver on their first day of school

We just completed the Brain Machine kit (from Adafruit Industries). Here is Debbie getting her brain waves rearranged though intense visual and auditory stimuli. This should be a great way to reboot after a day on the Playa!!

The Impossible Box. Starring Leo.

Paul just completed this Impossible Box sculpture. We plan to have a picture frame set up so people can take pictures of their friends in this box at Burning Man.

Leo on the rock

Finally got Leo out on the rock! We bought him this harness when he was like a toddler, and it's a full-body harness for tiny kids. It's probably now too small, but we used it Friday to get Leo climbing for the first time in Boulder. He loved it and he did great, making it up a 5.6 (?) in Eldorado Canyon relatively easily. Maybe 5.7 for one difficult spot. Plentiful handholds and lots of pockets to stick your feet in and then up a crack that empties out into a bigger crack. The guy who had climbed this route just before us had gotten scared partway through and left his gear and pulled his rope and told us we could keep the gear. Ross climbed up alongside Leo to give him pointers, but I'm hoping Leo can just go up next time on his own. It ended up taking all morning for Ross to set it up, the kids and me to climb once, and Ross to clean it. I am hoping next time we can just set up two top ropes and belay two kids at once.

Backpacking in Wild Basin in Rocky Mountain National Park

Despite the rain, Leo loved last year's backpacking trip so much, this year Paul set up a 5 night backpacking trip in Wild Basin in Rocky Mountain National Park. It was 4 miles into Finch Lake where we'd stay one night, then another 2 miles into Pear Lake, where we'd stay 3 nights and then we had 1 night at Finch on the way back, but we came all the way down on the 5th day.

It was a slow slog uphill to Finch Lake. A rocky start to the trip but we made it in and set up camp and found lots of cool critters including these caddis fly larvae. The larvae build cocoon-like protection around their bodies. These happened to use flakes of wood but others use sand or rocks. You can see the larvae sticking their heads out of the cocoons. I'm going to make a whole video of all the cool bugs we found.

I'm going to start calling Leo, the "Bug Whisperer". He has a way with bugs.

Finch was nice but we lost our new silicon collapsible dishes to the animals that night. The next day we hiked up to Pear Lake and set up camp.

A marmot greeted us at camp. So did the mosquitoes. In fact, the mosquitoes rivaled Alaska. We promptly ran out of DEET and a bug bite swelled up my left eyelid, making it hard to see.

Paul wanted to go up to some more lakes but Leo wanted to climb the cliffs around Pear Lake so we ended up on some crazy adventure trying to kill ourselves on the cliffs around Pear Lake. Paul and Leo have a great time watching me trying to rock hop across a lake.

The next day we hiked up to the top Hutcheson Lake. It was peak wildflower season.

And we saw more columbine flowers than we'd ever seen in our entire lives. Bouquets in purple, periwinkle and white.

We kept Leo hiking with fun side activities, like sledding on glaciers on your butt. Or bushwhacking through thickets.

Or stream crossing. This was an easy stream to cross. We don't have pictures of the long, difficult one because we were too busy trying not to fall into the icy waters. Mosquitoes love to bite when you've got both hands on boulders trying to steady yourself on a stream crossing.

Our neighbor had loaned us his fishing pole and explained to us how to fly fish. So we tried it.

On the second cast, we caught a brook trout. We pulled out a frying pan and cooked it. It was delicious! We ended up catching 5 fish over the 2 days of fishing in 3 lakes, but had to throw the 2 cutthroat trout back because they are endangered.

Anyway, we hiked a long way up to the top Hutcheson Lake and decided to turn around and go back home because it was raining and the skies were threatening. We'd heard thunder all day long as well.

The next day we went up past the Hutcheson Lakes to Cony Lake which is just below the Continental Divide. The Divide is the ridge in the back of this picture. Cony Lake is just beyond the cliffs directly behind Debbie's head in this picture. We didn't exactly take the most direct route, which is a nice way of saying we walked around and up and down a lot more than we had to. But there's no trail, so it's hard to know until you are there, which thickets are impassable and which rockfalls are so steep that you wouldn't want your child on them. I do think we found the best route back with lots of cool shortcuts and magic passages that hopefully we won't forget next year!

We had to climb a field of giant boulders to get to Cony. This is looking down the field to the Hutcheson Lakes.

Cony is the highest lake, fed directly by the glacial snowmelt. It was a beautiful lake. We saw 2 black weasels on the glaciers on the left. They were playing and actually climbing up the glacier (just like Leo) and sledding down! There were some terrifying looking spiders up here.

Paul was so impressed that Leo made it up to Cony Lake. We calculated that he hiked some 8-10 miles that day.

It was an awesome trip. But we left a day early. Why? Well, this is how we ate when we weren't eating those 3 trout (and they weren't particularly huge)

Five days of freeze-dried backpacking food and you'd run out screaming out, too. In fact, Leo ran out much of the 6 miles today, with 11-12 pounds on his back, talking about the raw beef dish that he was going to eat when he got to the Ethiopian restaurant in Boulder.