Chef Boyardee straight out of the can is HEAVEN. Having something tasty to mix into your water (kool-aid, gatorade mix, hydration tablets, etc) after drinking plain for two days is yummy and will help you piss clear. A small pad of paper with a pen (fine-tip sharpie works best) is not optional. Have...

I'm playing around with an idea I got from a friend who has been burning for about 10 years now. He took an old pair of jeans and cut them so just the waist and the front pockets remained. So, no matter what you're wearing, you can have pockets. I just had my favorite jeans wear out in the crotch, s...

Picked up a fab pair of fake Uggs for $12 at Wal-Mart just before hitting the Playa. Wore those most of the time. If I was just hanging around camp, I'd wear a pair of socks with my Crocs normal-looking sandals. No Playa foot here. Keep your feet clean and moisturized and you shouldn't have any prob...

One thing that is puzzling to me...at most parts of the playa, day or night, there is a shitton of noise from music, people partying, etc. I can't imagine any generator being louder than that. I mean, there's a reason it's advised everywhere to bring earplugs and to not expect to get much sleep. I m...

Another update. My friend got a reply from CA Corporate. It was, by far, the douchiest email I had ever heard in my life. It was chock-full of marketing speak and just insulting. We were offered a $300 refund - not even the cost of the cleaning fee. My friend is replying, but I don't expect much to ...

I have a cruiser with regular hand brakes and 7 gears that I used on the Playa this year. I didn't care about the gears, I wanted the hand brakes because that's what I'm used to and wasn't sure how I'd handle coaster brakes in whatever condition I'd be in on the Playa. I'm glad I had the gears. Bein...

As a newb, I was shocked by how much trash I found lying around, sometimes in front of camps where people were hanging out and ignoring the mess. I picked up as much as I could, and I know for a fact that my camp left no trace. We took all of our garbage and dropped it off at a garbage collection fa...

Decompression with camp mates involves sushi then a dip in a friend's pool. However, we've all hung out twice at various social gatherings. I took the week after burning man off. Did a lot of laundry, processed photos, had odd sleep. I would wake up still thinking I'm on the Playa. As in, I'd wake u...

I agree with phil. As a newb, I brought some stuff to "gift" but mostly ended up giving drinks, water misting, and helping folks out. Bring extra of the necessities and some fun things and chances are you'll meet someone who could use either some water in their bottle or something to make them smile.

I don't mind some Playa dust lingering, particularly on stuff I'm not going to use unless I'm on the Playa. But dang that stuff is weird when it gets away from the lake bed. It gets kind of...funky. Once it starts getting infused with non-alkali chemicals it all goes wrong. Part of the magic of the ...

Go to a thrift store and buy a few different ways of carrying your stuff around because I think everyone has a different preference. What you think will work while you're home is WAY different than how you'll feel about things on the Playa. I took a Camelbak and a messenger bag. I like the convenien...

Yup, what Pink Daddy said. I washed my husband's and my camelbaks over the weekend. Set the washer to half hour soak, regular cycle, then second rinse, TWICE, both times with about a cup of vinegar thrown in once the water was full (use it like bleach). Hung them both to dry. There still some Playa ...

We camped way out on I and I'm glad we did. We were across the street from the portos (camp leader has a teeny bladder) and it was mostly quiet during the night. Got a lot more great sleep that week than I thought I would!

Thanks for the kind words, we're definitely going to keep fighting CA.

My campmate/friend heard from Cruise America. They're offering us $300 credit towards our next rental. My friend is sending a follow-up email, presumably to offer them various choices on where to shove the credit. It's a really lame offer considering the condition that RV was in, and how much we pai...

I'll keep that in mind about the refrigerator. We definitely weren't trying to charge anything without the gennie running, we knew that much! We didn't try to wash dishes either, we had paper plates and plasticware. We took one shower each during the week, used bottled water for brushing our teeth, ...

The solar panel is meant to make it so little things like internal lights and the water pump can run. It didn't work at all, so we had to run the genny. We didn't find this out until the second night and the CO2 detector kept beeping and waking us up. I found out from reading the manual that it was ...

I'll miss having an RV when the line starts in Gerlach again and there's nary a bathroom in sight.

We rented an RV for our first time out, and we really didn't know what we needed to check on the vehicle before taking it. We also figured since Cruise America was listed on the page of burner-friendly businesses, we could trust them. Big mistake. I could understand if the company has a bunch of veh...

We had rebar that was bent at 90 degrees, and they weren't driven all the way in, but we used stuffed animals zip tied to what was showing, and that seemed to do the trick. No rebar incidents.

Hi, Kyle! I was a newbie for 2010, so here's what I learned. You will bring WAY more than you need, and that's ok. I think everyone is different in how they react to the conditions, environmentally and socially, and preparing for any and all situations out there is not a bad idea for your first year...

Ballpoint pens work for about 2 minutes out on the playa. My husband found that out the hard way, and thankfully I had brought a handful of fine-point sharpies. Those things work much better! We camped way out on the fringes, and I'm really glad. It was much quieter, much more chill, than towards th...

If I'm going to ride a bike in a skirt at all, it has to have a chain guard and fenders, at the very least. The string trick looks really dandy too!

My cruiser had both chain guard and fenders and I had no issues riding in flowy skirts, or anything else.

The first day in, when we were prepping camp, a hummingbird flew into our RV and then back out again.

While it was a known object, what the fuck was a hummingbird doing out there?

I didn't take nearly enough pictures, but I think the reason I took more than I would have been inclined to take was due to the WDYDWYD project. It's where people answer why they do what they do in their portrait. I participated as a photographer this year, and I'd like to share the results with all...

I bought a pair of big stompy boots that I thought would look cool, but I was stupid and went for a pair that was two sizes too big. They were ok when I was riding my cruiser, but they sucked one night when I was on foot. I ended up tossing them out. $70 goes bye bye. I bought a pair of fake leopard...

Hey, let's not paint all n00bs with the same brush. This was my first year, and I didn't use 50% of what I brought. I came overprepared, and in fact was able to help out a few people who had forgotten a thing or two. However, I was camping with a few experienced burners and I didn't want to freeload...

Argh! I heard many great things about Duck Pond but never made it there. D'ya think they'll be back next year?

Oh I just remembered.

My cruiser bike had a basket on the front. I came out from getting a sno-cone (and they ran out just as we got to the table, ah well) to find someone had deposited an empty beer bottle in my basket. Thanks for mooping up my bike, dick!

Our portos were in pretty decent condition too. I think only one toilet seat got ripped off, and I was surprised on Saturday that someone left a huge package of regular old Charmin in one of the units. I can't believe someone was using that shit all week. ETA: Did anyone else get a singing birthday ...

As a newb, I was really surprised by the darkwads I saw all throughout the week. I was fully de-darkwadded out, particularly my bike, and I wore my headlamp anytime I was away from camp (and sometimes while in camp). I'd be scared as shit to be walking or biking around without being lit up. As it is...