[MD] Robby Dobb and the Iconoclastic TP

[John Carl]

"They were two perfectly insignificant and incapable individuals, whose
existence is only rendered possible through  the high organization of
civilized crowds.


Society, not from any tenderness, but because of its strange needs, had
taken care of those two men, forbidding them all independent thought, all
initiative, all departure from routine; and forbidding it under pain of
death.  They could only live on condition of being machines.  And now,
released from the fostering care of men with pens behind the ears, or of men
with the gold lace on the sleeves, they were like those life-long prisoners
who, liberated after many years, do not know what use to make of their
freedom."


An Outpost of Progress, Joseph Conrad


------------------------


Once upon a   long, long, long time ago, when I had immense reserves of
credit and cash - the summer of  2007, I decided to attend  the annual
Burning Man event in the Black Rock Desert.  It came about thusly:


In the late summer of 06,  I was working hard and steady installing
manufactured homes, this time near the town of Lincoln, an old railroad
town, a farm town, a small town about 30 miles outside of Sacramento.  Not
quite yet in the foothills, but rolling.  Let's call 'em the toehills.
California's got a lot of them with the way the Sierra Nevadas roll up so
soft and gentle on the Pacific side, cradling the whole state in temperate
weather and raking the atmosphere of moisture and ideas before the rest of
the country can have at 'em.


I was cleaning foundation ditches out, getting ready to set forms and pour,
my workmates,   Noah and Jay, were both at that point in their lives where
they decided they didn't need to work quite so hard anymore. They decided
to ditch the ditches and go play.  I, being  the new guy on the crew, hadn't
been pulling in the $1500 per week so long as they had and so I stayed I
needed to stay behind and finished their jobs as well as my own.


For which I got paid my regular wage as well as the $60 bonus Noah gave me
just to make sure I didn't complain to the boss.  I felt some responsibility
for their departure, my own chance comment, "Burning man is starting
tomorrow..." having initiated a train of thought which ended up derailing
their work ethic.


Now there was no way they were going to the event.  But  putting forth the
concepts involved had them salivating like most construction workers would,
at the idea of drinking beer, smoking pot and leering at topless girls for a
whole week.    Somehow, contemplating just the idea drove them right off the
job, even tho, like I said, there was no way they were gonna take off that
long.


But their instructions to me were to tell Derek, our boss and their friend,
that Burning Man was where they were headed.


Left alone in the hot hot sun I resolved that the following  year - 07, the
year of the Green Man, of whom I'm particularly fond, I would go.   Seven is
my lucky number It was meant to be.   I just knew it.  Besides, it gave me
comfort to tell myself that Burning Man was where I was headed.


You know that Robbie Burns poetical saying about mice and men and their
plans going all agleigh?  Well sometimes they do.  But sometimes they
don't.  Sometimes everything works out exactly as planned and THEN you have
to deal with the consequences of that perfection and you find out how really
screwed you are.


But with a year of forethought, preparation and really good income, I was
able to pull together everything I dreamt of, although not quite as polished
as I would have wanted.


My proposal to the good people in charge of artistic installation at the
burning man event, was the Iconoclastic TP - with "TP" standing for
"TransPersonal" but shaped sorta like the traditional momentary abode of the
plains indian, and thus evoking the teepee shape.  But longer.


It was to stand as a self-reliant statement of mobile living, using SIP
construction and solar panels, a satellite dish.  All materials loaded upon
a flat bed trailer and pulled by my 83 dodge 4x4 across California's
mountains and Nevada's deserts to this godforsaken place in the middle of
nowhere  - a literal blank canvas of some hundreds of  square miles of dried
up lake bed.


As well as my truck and flatbed piled high with the necessary luxuries of
life, I'm hauling some significant baggage named "Chris" -  the vegan  Ph.D.
who used to be one of those guys testing products for  california, but he
really hated that job - it involved killing rodents and then watching one's
research (and countless rodent deaths) go down the drain when business
interest of powerful enough persuasion over-rode the science and got what
they wanted.  He's a nice guy, but more of the extremely passive type.  When
he gets mad he gets quiet and thinks, so you have to be careful, as I found
out near the end of our tightly-quartered odysee in the desert.


My overall plan for this shindig, was to haul and erect the shelter and see
how it weathered the weather.  Its a very simple structure, a SIP A-Frame.
SIPS  -  Structural Insulated Panels  are incredible -  Stressed skin panels
of OSB plywood glued to styrofoam blocks, 5 1/2 inches thick.   The
honeycomb composite core with glued skin on the outside is the same
principle behind the technology they use in jet wings - so I figured the
sandstorms and heat would give them a good test as to their suitability as a
quick and easy (but strong) shelter.  And so it turned out to be.  In fact,
I lucked out in that this year they had some of the strongest winds
experienced at the event and my shelter stood firm while various hippy
dwelling of all kinds blew past.   A satisfying sight from the safety of my
strong and insulated home, gaggles of bikini clad young Irish girls huddled
for safety in MY dwelling.


I originally wrote to the art committee, laying out my grandiose plans, and
through the dialogue it was presented to me that the best solution would be
to do the open camping, lay out what I wanted and see how it went - this
being my first year and all.  The one real strong reaction from the
committee person was shivers over my composting toilet idea.


It turns out that waste disposal is probably the biggest headache for the
event, and a lot of my thinking was centered on this problem, so they were
interested... very interested.    But wary.


It all happened pretty much the way I planned, but my feelings about the
event and my participation ended up being far different than I expected.
 That's where the poet had me pegged.  Who knew that my Burning Man
experience would be so bound up with the Quality of the Porta Potty
interface?


to be continued...