I've set my email account to alert me via text, telephone, and everything short of relentlessly blinking all of the lights in my house if I receive an email from Burning Man (which has been set off every time I get a Jack Rabbit speaks - but that's another story...).
My husband and I have started a couple of small projects for our camp. It's his first burn so we're going to be a little chill.
We have started our packing (At least the list of what we are bringing and what we need).But, we still don't have tickets. Only the hope of STEP and the potential that sometime in the next 60 or so days someone will add enough tickets to STEP that we will be able to get tickets.
The last time *I* went to BM was a long long long time ago. None of our friends are burners. I'm looking forward to making a lot of new friendships on the Playa.
We're flying blind and it's scary. We want tickets and have enough money to go to eBay and buy tickets, but we don't want to compromise the spirit of the burn. I *know* that the vast majority of people in the world are greedy and as soon as they have their physical tickets, they will sell them online if they cannot go or were never planning on going in the first place. Only a very small amount of people will send their tickets back through STEP. I know this. We don't know where we are in the STEP line, and we don't even know if some clerical error will cause us to never be able to even register as a STEP participant (Why three emails? If we signed up three times to STEP, maybe they just deleted us all together because we had duplicates - who knows?).
We are faced with a moral decision: we have to draw a line. As the time for the burn nears and no information about STEP is forthcoming, the line moves ever closer. At some point, we will break down, and buy tickets from a scalper. At some point, we will compromise our ideals and pay up to 10 times the proper amount for a ticket - perhaps getting scammed in the process.
Immediately afterwards, no matter when we cross the line - my phone will ring and somewhere on a lonely Google server in the middle of Oregon, a robotic email rule will set the speakers in the house adrift with lovely music indicating that Burning Man just emailed me with a lucky STEP email.
If BMORG would just TELL us if we're still in the program, where we are in line, and what the current STEP rate is - we could better determine where we should draw that line. Without data, it's purely a test of our willingness to compromise the ideals of the burn. With data, it's still a test - but at least it's a little more practical.
When will you cross the line?
