Madonna - Sept 30 in Vancouver BC, from the third row.

54 years old, huh?

My favorite photo.

 Madonna is behind the tall block in the middle. Her 12 year old Son, Rocco is standing and dancing in front of her. She was a very proud momma...I would tear up every time she would look down at him and smile.

Happy fans after the show. She does it every time. I will continue to see her as long as she tours.

The Burning Man

 We sat a ways back from all the hoopla and had a great perspective. 

Here we are at the end of the night...enjoying a great french/creole band at Center Camp. We were not quite ready to turn in our first Burning Man experience...but it was a good one and one that made us crave more. We will return. 

Vag-animals...the mating of gynecology and temporary body art.

This is Center Camp. The place where may unique crossroads occur. This is where we introduced the concept of Vaganimals. One takes an everyday office stamp, such as one that is the schematic of a female external genitalia and creates animal art from it. 

This is a small selection of the art that we created upon request.

The afternoon ran into the evening...and it was the night of the burn...The Burning Man. 

After the dust storm...there was the Thunderdome.

This is our living room covered with a layer of dust, but home nonetheless.

 Ian also put together this evaporation system for the water from our showers/dishes, "Grey water."

 Our dusty, happy selves.

And then there is the Thunderdome. It is a triangular based dome structure with bungeed harnesses. Darkly dressed guys ratchet two friends back and let them fly towards one another while beating their friend with a foam covered bat. People climb up to watch and cheer.

Ian and his friend, Angel, had a great time pummeling each other in the Thunderdome.

Burning Man Part III

Stegasaurus Art Car. Pretty amazing.

Pulpo Mechanico - electronic Octopus that shot flames in the air. This video did not capture a high flaming moment, but it is awesome nonetheless. 

Again...the reason that we all made this wacky trip.

Happy on my fancy ride to be buzzing over the hive inside the base of the Man. There was an interlocking interactive hive to climb into within the base of the Man. We made our bee-suits for this trek.

Happy bee-ing together.

The goggles are on because this was one of the many days of dust storms on the Playa. There were moments when we could not see 10 feet in front of us.

We headed out to the Temple...where our friends had gotten married two days before. Ian had not been out this far yet, so we went out there to experience it together.

It was an amazing structure and atmosphere.

And someone had this cool bike that they let me borrow for a ride.

We also caught this beam of light shining down in a very Godly way...but it missed the Church Art Car.

Contemplative and moved in the presence of all the love and struggle posted around us. People put up posters and phrases devoted to lost love ones, pets, soldiers, homes from natural disasters, and many internal struggles. It was hard to read some. We shed some tears, posted our devotions, and soaked in some of the spirit around us. It was powerful. 

And so was the wind and dust storm. 

This structure was at the center of the Temple pictured above - suspended by a cable above an alter.

Thankful for all that we have.

Then, we headed out to look for a VERY LARGE structure called "Wall Street" in the dust storm. It was four buildings that were 4-6 stories tall. However, we could not see them through the storm. We happened to find two of our campmates in the crazy dust storm. Here they are...and they were looking for the same  thing! We headed in the direction we thought would bring us to Wall Street.

We saw two guys with a kite using it to move them around on a cart with big wheels. We also found the Cosmic Carousel.

Once on top of this space ship thingy...it was a giant sit-and-spin.

We sat and enjoyed the surroundings. We chatted with people around us. There was a bunch of people around at first, then people filtered away and Ian and I were left with this guy.

He was the artist that designed the structure.

They build it in 60 days. They used aerospace grade aluminum. It was his first kinetic piece of art and he loved it so much he spent part of each day hanging out around and on it to watch people interact with it.
We were spinning around in the dust storm on the Cosmic Carousel. It was disorienting, real, spinning art. This was one of my favorite moments of the whole trip.

Then we found Wall Street.

And the dust storm started to clear. Here is an etherial picture of our fearless steads - our fuzzy bicycles.