L-R: Alegra, Sean, Scottie, Dan, Katie, Rose, Brandon & Neil

It’s been a few weeks since we left Black Rock City, NV and I’ve been holding off on writing about my experience until I’ve had enough time to reflect and digest all that transpired. I think I have just about reached a point of understanding, however it’s probably not what you’re going to want to hear. I’ve realized that there I an unable to put my experience into words. Everyone I had talked to prior to the event said that each person has their own “experience” — and I never quite understood what that meant until now. But the most important thing I learned out on the playa is is how great our group was.. Camp Emosewa¹, the best Playa family I could ask for.

Going into Black Rock City, I knew a lot about the event and what to expect. And now, after I’ve had a chance to think about my week, I can say that it was exactly as I had expected and nothing like I had expected. I knew that thousands of people come to the desert to build a city, a self-sufficient community of art and expression, in a place in a beautifully desolate environment.

Prior to heading to The Playa, we spent two days in Reno, NV staying at the Peppermill — the most amazing hotel & casino I have ever seen. We spent much of our time with my friend Carrie, who lives in Reno, and gave us the insider’s guide to the city. After much anticipation, we finally departed Reno around 8pm on Sunday with a goal to arrive at Black Rock City around 12am — exactly when the gates open — so that we can set up and get a good night’s rest. While it’s true that we got in line around Midnight, however we did not actually find an open area to set up camp until around 3am. After spending two hours in the dark setting up a very complex shade structure and car port, we were informed by our neighbors that we could not set up camp there because they had claimed it. About 15 minutes of drama ended with them telling us “you’ll need to talk to our camp leader in the morning.” It all ended up working out, and they were extraordinarily nice neighbors, but this highlights one important point about Black Rock City: The only resource that anyone is defensive about is land. Once your camp is set up, everyone is a loving, sharing resident of Black Rock City.

Once the drama subsided, I suddenly realized that the sun had started to peer over the mountains, lighting up the sky to showcase the wonderfully beautiful landscape which we now called our home. Just before going to bed, Scottie, Katie and I headed down to the Esplanade (the main street that runs along the very inner ring of the city) to get an idea of what to expect. You could see that things were starting to get set up, but it was far from complete. I immediately knew that this was going to be something unbelievable.

The next day, we had finished setting up our camp by mid day, and it was just in time. The weather was fairly poor all afternoon, with high gusts of wind, a lot of blowing dust and even a rain shower around 6pm that evening. As much everyone in the desert was disgusted by the 20 minute rain shower, the brilliant Double-Rainbow that extended over the city afterward was worth every drop.

Exploring The Playa by day is fun and exciting. A large number of camps have a theme or something fun that they contribute to the community. Yoga & meditation classes, workshops, speakers, bars, snow cones & ice cream, games, dancing, performances.. you get the idea.  By night, the city is a completely different place. A glowing, thumping metropolos with a strange loving/carnival-like attitude. Sean had told me on Monday afternoon, that I “had not seen anything yet, the night is the most amazing part.” And I would completely agree. The art installations, mutant vehicles, consistent techno music, decorated bicycles, incredible costumes all glowing with el wire or some other light-up toy. It’s something you have to do for yourself — it’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.

There are so many things to see and do, however, it is impossible to do it all. My A.D.H.D. got the best of me all week — and it wasn’t until Friday afternoon that I had finally realized this fact. At this point I finally had come to live more in the moment in my desert home.

By day, Burning Man is chock full of events including music, workshops, art, yoga.. you name it, you can find it there. By night, it’s a different story. In the pitch blackness of the desert, everything is illuminated in a day-glo El Wire and glow sticks: people, bikes, buildings, art, and the art cars which act like mini taxi dance parties around the area.

All Tomfoolery aside, the universe was smiling on everyone that was out on the Playa. I keep running into people who tell me these crazy stories of how they ran into people they weren’t expecting, or ended up finding things that they sought out within minutes. It was truly amazing. I, myself, even managed to get a taste of the universe.

Back in April, when I was in New Orleans for Jazz Fest I met a girl who was telling me she was going to Burning Man. Leslie and I had kept in touch periodically after the fest and talked about how excited we were for the burn. A few days prior to our departure, I got an email from her basically saying “Headed to Nevada, no idea where I’m camping, hope to see you on The Playa.” I figured there was no way I was going to run into her.

Fast Forward to Tuesday night in Black Rock City. I’d been standing outside my camp for 10 or 15 minutes just as the sun had set and though it was still light enough to see people’s silhouettes, but too dark to see much more. I’m handing out buttons that I had made to random passersby just for fun. I call a girl girl over and we talk for a few minutes and I pick out a button for her. Just as she’s about to leave, I shine the light on her face and was shocked to see Leslie! Talk about coincidence. Things like this are a commonplace on the Playa.

It’s truly a remarkable experience. I could probably go on for hours writing about my experience, stories, and thoughts about Burningman, though I know I’ll never finish the post if I do. That said, I leave you with my photo gallery that I’ve posted to Picasa and this great video created by KJ and Stefan, who apparently was one of the judges that voted for Katie as Miss Black Rock City.

¹Our camp had no particular theme except for being “Awesome,” spelled backwards.

For the past several years, I have been reading Jorge Garcia’s Blog (Hurley from Lost) and many of the posts were about his Chihuaha, Nunu. He posted today that Nunu was struck by a car yesterday and died in his arms.

My heart goes out to you, Jorge.

Some years I’m excited about birthdays. Some years, not so much. Unfortunately this year falls into the latter category. There is no particular reason for my lack of excitement. I’m generally content with where I am at this point in my life. Considering that birthdays are generally the time when you reflect the most about your current situation, I would say that my situation has passed the Birthday Test.

For whatever reason, though, I have made every attempt to hide the fact that it is my birthday this year. I have hidden this information from my Facebook page, I’ve intentionally avoided any birthday-related activities, and, quite frankly, would love for this week to be over as quickly as possible.

There’s nothing wrong with getting older — it’s all clearly laid out in life’s rule book. For what its worth, we get older every day, it’s just that we just use one calendar day of the year to represent the point at which your age becomes age+1. But, again, I hide.

Being 31 wasn’t that exciting, but only the Great Sea of Life (N.S.) knows what I have in store during my thirty-third year of life which officially begins today. Perhaps this is the direction that I need to take.

Perhaps that’s the purpose of this writing… An opportunity for me to re-evaluate the perspective that I bring to birthdays. Rather than focusing on being another year older, I should instead celebrate the clean slate which I am now given to work with. Similar to the Jewish Holiday of Rosh Hashanah , this is my opportunity to start anew.. a fresh start. Celebrate endings and new beginnings.

Regardless, I don’t have the luxury to go into complete hiding this week — and chances are by the time next weekend rolls around, I’ll want to go out and party once again. So I’ll stop my complaining and just suck it up like I do any other week — this one just happens to have an annoying milestone in the middle of it.

I learned tonight that people do actually read my blog. Hmmm.. now if only I could get those people to click on my ads, I might be able to retire.

After my discharge from Beth Israel hospital in New York City this past Monday, I quickly flew back to California to rest and recover. The parting words from the doctor went something like:

You will probably have some pain for the next few days, but as long as it progressively gets better you will be alright. Within a week, you should probably be feeling back to normal.

With that advice, I resumed a semi-normal life back in San Francisco. For some reason, though, yesterday I started to feel almost worse than I had in several days. Throughout most of the day while I was working from the confines of my comfy bed, I noticed that my pain level was increasing. Additionally, I was pretty much in constant pain all day long — no matter what I did.

Fearing the worst, around 5pm I realized that it was best to go back to the hopsital to ensure that I hadn’t had another flare-up. Considering that the flare-up last Friday came out of the blue, I’ve been concerned that it could suddenly get worse without much warning. My thought process was to go to the hospital, get my lipase levels checked, and make sure that I am not having a relapse. If I was, I’d have plenty of time to recover in the hospital prior to my trip next weekend.

The hospital was insane. I spent approximately 2 hours in the waiting room, but fortunately my Kindle helped me pass the time. In all honesty, I thought I was going to be admitted — so much in fact that I had packed an “overnight bag” with all my essentials and called a cab.

In the past 5 months, I’ve now been to four different hospitals in three cities. That said, I feel as though I have become somewhat of a connoisseur. After my visit to UCSF last night, I was thoroughly impressed not only with the staff but also the facilities. While they didn’t have the futuristic “swipe your forehead and behind the ear” thermometers that Beth Israel has, but it was pretty nice. Very private ER rooms with high tech equipment.

With the exception of my surprisingly low heart rate that I’ve had for the past week, there was nothing found to be wrong with me. The doctor explained that it was natural to feel concerned and explained to me the signs that I should look for as indications that my symptoms are getting worse. Those are primarily: Fever, Vomiting, Nausea, and significantly increased abdominal pain.

What slightly concerned me, I suppose, was that I had none of these symptoms last Friday when I was admitted to Beth Israel. The pain I was having was similar to what I was experiencing yesterday, though it came out of the blue. By 2:00 AM, I was discharged from my second hospital in three days.

Surprisingly, today, I feel fantastic. Maybe it’s that I’m mentally aware that my body is healing or maybe yesterday was the “farewell” pancreatitis pain that my body was coping with. I’ve had some mild pain here and there, but for the most part this is the best I’ve felt since last Thursday.

My plan is to take it easy for the next few days in hopes of maybe going back to the gym on Saturday. I am missing out on the Latke Ball tonight in San Francisco (the largest young Jewish party of the year) — but so it goes. If missing tonight prevents me from missing the largest music festival on the high seas —  well, I’ll make that sacrifice.

I just found out, by googling myself, that I am quoted in an eHow article.

I know that my “How to become a runner” article has gotten a lot of attention on the web, but that’s pretty cool. I wish I could go running.

We’ve been taking a couple of weekend trips lately, and I thought I’d take a moment to post the pictures from the various weekends. The first was a trip out to Arnold, CA — which is about an hour south of Lake Tahoe, for a weekend with some friends. The second was an exciting weekend a few weeks back when we headed down to Monterey, CA for a day of Whale Watching and the Monterey Aquarium. Check out the photos.

Like I said in an earlier post, I apologize for my absense, however it’s hard to think of witty and interesting things to go on about — when I’m using up all my creativity from posting on twitter. Regardless, though, I grabbed the latest version of Safari today from Apple — and it’s a pretty sweet web browser.

For those that have been around these parts for a while, you have probably seen my various advertisements for Firefox. Even on my mac, I’ve been a huge supporter of the ‘Fox.. but I think the latest enhancements to Safari are enough to warrant my conversion. The fact that it’s blazing fast and has some great new UI features. As a mac user, Google has yet to release a version of Chrome that I can use — though that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t. Using a browser based on Webkit (Chrome or Safari) is the fastest experience you’ll have on the web.

On a related note, I logged into The Diatribe admin interface today for the first time in a month or so — and I was pleasantly surprised. At some point, I upgraded to WordPress 2.7 — which has an entire new Admin UI. It’s much more user friendly and easier to navigate. Serves me right for not posting sooner.

I can’t make any promises for more frequent posting — though I’ll do my best

Here is the first part of our vacation photos in Orlando florida. This includes our stay at Miss Possible’s parents house as well as our adventures throughout Universal Studios and New Years Eve at the City Walk. And less not forget, our hotel in Celebration!

http://picasaweb.google.com/bseils/ChristmasNewYearsInFlorida

Barack Obama is now set to become the forty-fourth President of the United States of America. I can finally breath easy, now that the political race is over.

Once again, I am proud to be an American and I know that President Obama will lead this country in the direction that it needs to go — after 8 years of lies, corruption, deceit and failed policy (not to mention the lack of respect from our allies).