Burning Man 1998: Tales of Abrupt's Blinking Cards

Date: Sun, 18 Oct 1998 22:45:57 -0400
From: "Terrence Schoop" (dr_c_forester@hotmail.com)
Subject: Another happy flashing badge recipient

Hey, thanks for the badge-

I was hanging out at the central cafe on Monday waiting for the traffic to die down when somebody handed it to me. My roomate and I had our cars in the line to leave Monday morning for about an hour without much movement. (Although she was fortunate enough to have a guy with a puppet perform some opera for her, kinda interesting to watch that happening in my rear view mirror).

Anyway we broke rank and headed for the cafe. Pretty soon the cafe ran out of coffee so I tore into my carefully packed car and we set up "Cafe Gridlock" with the Peets coffee I had left over. Needless to say we became instant heros! Typically people would approach us asking sadly "is it true they're out of coffee?" We turned a lot of frowns into smiles that day, which was cool 'cause we were both first-timers. It was nice to get the badge. As the sun retired on my trip back to Alameda, the intensity of the flashing started to distract me (and certainly the other drivers checking out the red electrical storm inside my car. Add to this the natural buzz you can get from driving long distances and, well stopping to grab a bite at Jack in the Box in Sacramento was a very unearthly experience. We must of looked pretty strange to the civilian population.

I wanted to save the battery in the badge to wear it to Decompression '98 so I popped it out and couldn't remember which way to reinstall it. About a week ago I bought a home computer and today I remembered to check out the web address on the badge. Now I know how to turn the light on and off and will probably be sporting my badge at the Cyberfest Halloween party at the Oakland Coluseum on the 31st. Thanks again,

-Terry Schoop (aka "Dr. Clayton Forester")

Back to the blinkies