Archive for September, 2011

Jim on the Golden Gate

Aaron and Mike

A few pictures taken last weekend on West Cliff, Santa Cruz, California.

Jim’s Feet

In this year’s garden I planted a bunch of stuff. It was going great this year, since I installed a drip system. Unfortunately while I was at burning man, the deer discovered how to hop into the garden and eventually (mainly the week I was here) managed to mow down anything that was left of it. Oh well..it was at the end of the ropes for the garden, but I was a little sad that they destroyed my luscious tomatoes before I got any.

Carrots were a major success this year, and I still have a lot of them hiding in the ground out of deers reach:

They also aren’t interested in corn..which is just starting to become ready to pick!

Potatoes..another underground venture that survived the garden massacre.

On the Unicycle Tour of San Francisco. More pictures and details about the ride later.

Freddy’s Deli

A few weeks before Burning Man, I made another Aerial Cube. This time I used 1.5″ tubing, and it turned out better than the first one.

The previous cube was 1″ tubing, which was a little to harsh on the body when you leaned on it. This cube feels much “softer” and people are less prone to getting bruised on it.

Literally minutes after I was done with it, Taylor and Kat hopped on it and started playing around.

I brought it to Burning Man for Circus Boot Camp, and it was also a big hit — people loved playing on it.

Here’s a quick synopsis of how I made it:

* Cut off a 45′s with the metal horizontal bandsaw on one end:

* Rotate the tube 180 to cut the other 45 and use a stop on the other side to cut the pieces all to the same length. I think I roughly used 28″ (but I have to double check).

8 pieces were cut to this length. I ground the corners so I could get some good welds, and set them up with some 90 degree rulers to get it all straight:

I mig welded the square, and made another square. It was then a matter of connecting the two squares. I calculated the length for the tubing, and went about 1/4″ longer:

I then hand ground off a shape to make a slight fish mouth for it to fit better and then welded it all together (well, first it was tacked, and then welded for reals):

After one square was on, I then fish mouthed the other side and welded on the second half on top (second half not shown, but you should get the idea):

Cost for the cube: about $80 in mild steel.

Some more stuff! I forgot I had a few pictures on my iPhone.

The temple burn:

This was really cool. The temple was this massive fire, and the updraft would carry about 2′x2′ pieces of burning plywood up into the air and drop it down on the ground right beside me. Looking backwards from the burn at the night sky you could see all the embers floating down to earth like little slow moving falling stars. It was totally amazing.

Here’s a close up (at home) of my top hat and glasses before I left.

I hadn’t been to Burning Man in 5 years or so and really wanted to go back. Previously, I would camp with Pancake Playhouse (which was a total blast), but this year I thought I would start a “unicycle camp”. It turns out there wasn’t enough interest in it, and a bunch of my friends had a “Circus Boot Camp” they were thinking of doing again. So, I joined forces with them and we had an awesome time teaching people various circus skills on the playa.

I initially thought I would take a ton of pictures, but in the end I didn’t feel like dragging my DSLR around (and potentially getting my lenses really dirty). I don’t mind killing my camera (it is old), but some of my lenses are a little too important to me. In hindsight, I should have brought my crappy lens and just used it. Next year that will be my plan.

A few of my friends took some pictures…so I’ll go ahead and “borrow” them for my website here. Here’s a few from Kim, a unicyclist/yoga/teacher girl from Idaho.

Here I am teaching the basic foot lock on the silk (since that is one of the few things I can do):

Riding around on my KH 36 unicycle towards a cool steel artwork statue. It was made of a lot of small hexagon 1/4″ pieces of steel welded to large ball bearings. It’s hard to tell, but it is a naked woman arching up out of the playa (no arms or head). My typical outfit consisted of biker shorts, cool socks, and some accessory. In the picture below it was a bicycle gear attached with old inner tubes (originally from Ashley from years ago).

Hopping over Justin at the unicycle course. It had three little teeter totters and was a blast to ride on the 36. I gave it a go on the 20, but it was too slow:

Teaching people to unicycle. In the left side of the picture is the eccentric wheel that Ken built. For some reason, people loved grabbing that unicycle and trying to learn to ride on it. I kept having to go over and take it away from them and telling them it wasn’t easy to ride.

Me and Kevin on the cyr:

Here’s a picture Kevin took of me with my cool top hat outfit:

There were so many fun things at burning man this year. I learned some new aerial skills, tried out acro yoga for the first time, met a lot of cool people, saw a ton of cool artwork, lots of awesome art cars, and just had a grand old time. I’m already hoping to go again next year.

Thanks for the pictures everyone!

Update: I did take one or two pictures. My truck was loaded to the gills exploded. And they did; I had a blowout of the right rear tire about 15 miles from Gerlach. I changed the tire to the spare and hoped it wouldn’t happen again (luckily, Joe and I made it home with no problems)

Josh building the dome:

Ray smiling: