Imagine having an electric vehicle in the middle of that pack.

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Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
Imagine having an electric vehicle in the middle of that pack.

I’d like to think no one is dumb enough to do that but…..

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Originally posted by darthfuster:

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Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
Imagine having an electric vehicle in the middle of that pack.

I’d like to think no one is dumb enough to do that but…..

I'd be willing to bet, A LOT, that there are several.
Because, people.

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Burning Man quickly turning into a humanitarian disaster.

Before this thread I didn't even know what Burning Man was...

So, a bunch of lefties congregate in the desert and can't get out?
I don't see the problem...

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Originally posted by stoic-one:

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Originally posted by darthfuster:

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
Imagine having an electric vehicle in the middle of that pack.

I’d like to think no one is dumb enough to do that but…..

I'd be will to bet, A LOT, that there are several.
Because, people.

Phbbttt... You don't know what you're talking about, man. Like, all I gotta do is like, plug my car into the sun, man, and it's working! I'm saving the world, man! We're in the desert, man, like all we have is like, the sun!

^^^^^^^ don’t forget wind power. How big would the sail need to be to roll a 3500 pound Tesla

I just can't imagine what it'd take to get me to take part in such a monstrous crowd in the middle of the desert. Just hell no. I saw Metallica last week in a packed stadium of 65,000. But I got free tix and parking and was in my bed about an hour after the last song. Burning Man? Hell to the no.

I once went to the Blue Beacon (a big truck wash) in Fernley the day after BM. It was trashed, nearly filled up with mud. Business was brisk. I can’t imagine the amount of hot water and chemicals the wash was going through to clean all those RVs. Everyone of those hippies probably believes their environmental virtue is superior.

This year will be epic at the Blue Beacon.

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Originally posted by darthfuster:

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
Imagine having an electric vehicle in the middle of that pack.

I’d like to think no one is dumb enough to do that but…..

I looked at one video that had a few Teslas in line.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:

quote:

Burning Man quickly turning into a humanitarian disaster.

Before this thread I didn't even know what Burning Man was...

So, a bunch of lefties congregate in the desert and can't get out?
I don't see the problem...

My sentiment exactly. What used to be a counterculture, anarchist-rooted event decades ago (remember, I live in the middle of Anarchy Central) has mostly turned into a "happening" for the affluent and fashionably coutured crowd these days, kinda like a week-long Coachella except less about music and otherwise turned up to 11 for the leftist elite, a place to 'let their hair down', so to speak. One of the principals of a firm I once worked for went to one roughly a decade ago; he described his experience as 'life-changing' and shortly "retired" after that. I however long thought it was probably due to the high quality of the drugs and the purported days-long sex orgies that take place there (yes, I've known others who've partook in the event as well, and not all of them I'd stereotype as left-leaning). Not that he was that kind of guy...no, he couldn't be...

Funniest and most warped image I saw from this year's debacle was from a fly-by from a helicopter that happened to show a RV that was parked and evidently hauled in on the flatbed of a semi. Heaven forbid that they get any dirt and sand on the underside of that new six-figure camper they probably bought just for this year's event...

That about sums up the WHO of this annual hedonistic party in the Nevada desert. [EDIT] At least some of the locals are getting a kick out of the trials and ordeals these poor participants are having, based on a couple of YT vids I came across. Their smirks were priceless.

More on the TRX making the escape with trailer in tow. Check out the link to the article, couple of videos in it including scraping the mud off the trailer afterwards.

https://www.caranddriver.com/n...pe-from-burning-man/

The Story behind the Ram TRX's Escape from Burning Man
When Burning Man turned into a muddy morass, Nave Black hatched a full-throttle escape plan with his Ram TRX. Afterward, he told us the whole story.

Headshot of Ezra DyerBY EZRA DYERPUBLISHED: SEP 6, 2023
ram trx at burning man 2023pinterest icon
BRENDAN COGBILL
We've all been in this situation: You want to leave a party, but you keep getting sidelined on your way out the door. This year's Burning Man festival abruptly dumped 70,000 people into that scenario when torrential rains turned the hardpan of the Black Rock desert into a soupy, muddy mess and organizers told attendees to shelter in place and conserve food and water.


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COURTESY OF NAVE BLACK
If that sounds like a major harsh on 70,000 mellows, it was, particularly for those Burners who had somewhere else to be. Among that crowd was Nave Black, who'd been camping in a rented 30-foot RV trailer. Conventional wisdom says you can't tow a 30-foot trailer through deep mud, but it turns out conventional wisdom doesn't apply when there's a guy who really wants to leave Burning Man and has the keys to a 2023 Ram TRX.

"Nobody was even trying to get out, and definitely not with a trailer," says Black. "But my wife is at home with our baby, and I said, 'Either I have to try to get home or she's going to shoot me.' And I decided to take off."

The Venn diagrams of RV towing and mud running don't typically overlap, but Black may have invented a new sport in his haste to peace out.
This was on Saturday, when organizers were forecasting that roads wouldn't be passable until Wednesday.

The Venn diagrams of RV towing and mud running don't typically overlap, but Black may have invented a new sport in his haste to peace out. A video shot by fellow attendee Brendan Cogbill shows the supercharged, 702-hp Ram charging through the muck and rounding a corner, spraying mud and issuing determined high-rpm crackles from the exhaust as the trailer seemingly hydroplanes across the soup—a tandem-axle toboggan meets freestyle tow-boggin'.

ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW


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COURTESY OF BRENDAN COGBILL
As many viewers of the video have noted, the RV's stairs are still down. That, says Black, isn't because he forgot to stow them, but because his escape from Black Rock really was a spur-of-the-moment decision. "I had the stairs down because I initially only planned to move the trailer a little bit. But once it got moving, I said, 'Fuck it, I'm getting out of here!'"

burning man 2023
THE SCENE AT BURNING MAN THIS YEAR.
PICTURE ALLIANCE|GETTY IMAGES
As Cogbill's video and another one show, Black is a successful adherent to the "when in doubt, add throttle" school of off-roading, which is particularly relevant when dragging thousands of pounds of RV through a rich silt mousse. "It was two or three miles in the mud, and if I didn't keep moving, I would have been stuck," he says. While this was his first time driving his TRX in the mud, Black does have some prior off-roading experience by way of the Israeli military. (When it comes to Burning Man, you never know what kind of training will turn out to be useful.) In one video, Black is going fast enough that he appears to be drifting the trailer, which is the kind of thing you might expect to earn skill points in some demented offshoot of Forza Horizon but never see in real life.


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COURTESY OF NAVE BLACK
As for the rented trailer, well, it got muddy. "I called the owner and said, 'Look, this thing is so muddy that I might have to actually buy it from you,' " Black says. But on the way out, he discovered a carwash set up by local Native Americans. "They worked on it for two hours, and after that I called the owner and said, 'Forget what I told you. It's cleaner now than it was when I picked it up.' "

Given all that transpired, will Black ever return to Burning Man? "Sure, no question," he says. "It was a good experience. But you're hearing that from someone who got out. I think a Ram TRX is the minimum truck you need there."

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As Cogbill's video and another one show, Black is a successful adherent to the "when in doubt, add throttle"

The Jeremy Clarkson rule.

Pretty comical. Heard from a friend who’s been going for almost 3 decades. His comment was it wasn’t as bad as the media made it out to be. Only the total shit show aspects really shown “I made an earlier flight to Playa from LAX today”

This was one of the few years my friend “Crash” didn’t make a large performance art piece. These a few of his

https://www.project-ions.com/blank-c12om

https://www.nickyalice.com/the...tal-art-installation

Crash is a custom cabinet maker and finish carpenter by trade. Mr Hefner was a client for a number of projects at the Mansion and other properties. Also did a bunch of restoration on the Vanderbilts place outside Ashville

I will just reiterate, fucking hippies.

Heard from long time burners that the situation was way overblown. Experienced folks were still having regular amounts of fun. The influencers were predictably unprepared and freaking out once their curated party experience went a little bit sideways.

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Originally posted by berto:
Heard from long time burners that the situation was way overblown. Experienced folks were still having regular amounts of fun. The influencers were predictably unprepared and freaking out once their curated party experience went a little bit sideways.

Most of the articles I've read seem to have been written by authors who know nothing about burning man and have never been near the playa. There was no running short of food and water. Anyone who didn't have enough of anything didn't bring enough, and that has nothing to do with the rain. The greatest consequence was that some people who planned to leave early had to delay their departure, and some Portos were extra messy.

As for who attends, there were almost 80,000 people there. Trying to stereotype them would be foolhardy. As would bringing an electric vehicle. It wouldn't be difficult to charge it in BRC, but the nine-lane main gate road is normal, and 8-10 hour delays are not unusual any year.

So Iowa was ten times dryer than the desert this year

So Mr. Black rents a 30-foot RV trailer all for himself. Okay. Does one of these really weigh "thousands of pounds"? I always thought they were designed to be relatively light in order to help gas mileage.

My sister, who lives in Reno tracking all of this, also said the media has way over-hyped this. Sensationalism sells.

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Experienced folks were still having regular amounts of fun. The influencers were predictably unprepared and freaking out once their curated party experience went a little bit sideways.

Nailed it.

Too bad for the influencers. Maybe they learned something for a change.

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So Mr. Black rents a 30-foot RV trailer all for himself. Okay. Does one of these really weigh "thousands of pounds"? I always thought they were designed to be relatively light in order to help gas mileage.

5,000 pounds +/-

Health and safety was never an issue, but the inconvenience and overall buzzkill was a dire catastrophe.