"Morgans" wrote in message
...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...-Rock-City.jpg

Is there a version available that is capable of high levels of zoom?

There is, but I don't recall where offhand. I know it was posted because
I'm in one of them. Here's the image gallery from last year:
http://images.burningman.com/index.c...o.x=20&go.y=20


That is really a killer picture. I have always been fascinated by the
whole event, and have vowed that I will make it there some day.

It's unique and wholly unbelievable. Please keep your vow.

It took me a few years to convince my wife that it wasn't about naked
drug-addled freaks and now she gets misty-eyed recounting to friends how
amazing it is. It's not Disneyland, but a bunch of artists and engineers
building extreme things in the desert and then burning it all down at the
end of the week. The youngest person I've seen there is a toddler (bad
idea), but the guys camped across from our root beer saloon in 2005 were all
retirees, professors, lawyers, a few ranchers and an airline pilot.

I don't plan on ever flying there. I'm not a big drinker, but my head
wouldn't be in the game. Plus, it could be difficult when there's somebody
offering mamosas, pancakes and bacon, or somebody hands you an irish coffee
first thing in the morning or pizza and beer in the dead heat of afternoon,
or some half-naked hottie offering a champagne and a back massage...
Literally everything but the toilets are BYO so it would by tricky to fly in
unless you have somebody haul your stuff in exchange for a plane ride, which
is extremely common.

The only thing that costs money beside the ticket is coffee at the Center
Camp, and ice--fundraisers for the local youth groups--but you can't stroll
from one end to the other with an empty cup without somebody offering to
fill it. I spent much of Friday of 2005 in a whiskey saloon operated by
some folks from New Orleans who had dragged a portable stage, army tent,
antique bar and an ancient piano out to the desert and learned it was
basically all they had left in the world.

That year they kicked the media out of the media tent and turned it into a
Red Cross donation center...except nobody brings cash to Burning Man. So a
bunch of them loaded up in trucks, drove down to Gulfport and built a
24-hour free supermarket for the residents, and many of them stayed there
living in their own shelters for months helping out the locals. That's the
kind of mentality that you find there. It's -incredibly- powerful and
contageous to the extent that it can easily be life-changing.

Without the wife, though. I don't think she would "get it." g

Many don't. You have to be able to deal with heat, dust, portable
toilets--cleaned several times daily--and you have to have your mind wide
open 'cause things roll by or happen that you literally can't believe you're
seeing. It's a lot safer now that they banned machine guns and stuff, but
it's still very common to see a fire-breathing viking boat (stripper pole
for a mast), pirate ship or Road Warrior relic roll by with flamethrowers
blazing into the sky. I've asked my wife to stop apologizing for not
wanting to go all the previous years.

Take care.
-c