Dave Raphael

Ive written and rewritten this over and over again this entire weekend, not sleeping much, really confused, trying to find my way through the hollowed out part of my heart.  The only conclusion I can reach is that there is really no good way to say goodbye.

This is the last portrait I shot of John, never in a million years would I have thought that this is the narrative that would go with it.

I first met John a million years ago when I was a kid in college.  One of my buddies from school had gotten a summer job at Concord New Horizons, affectionately termed “the venice film school”, the old lot was off Abbott Kinney where those silvery faux industrial looking condos are today, right by those train tracks that go nowhere.  Gio pulled me onto the crew, it was my very first paid day in movie land as a set lighting guy, early in the morning after exchanging hello’s he gave me a walkie and said “come to the lighting shed, I want you to meet the Best Boy” and standing there in the morning fog, hours before that marine layer would burn off, was John Pedone.

He was leaning up against the shed that he and Gio had painted a big yellow Omega on.  Through his defining chuckle I get “so you’re the new guy, heh heyh heh” the way that only John could say.  They took mercy on me and I didn’t have to wrap any banded cable and allowed me to work on set with them.  That was the beginning.  I cant remember if I was 19 or 20.

It didn’t occur to me at the time that John would become such a great and unique friend, although it should have because he welcomed me with an open hearted warmth that I only extend to my closest and most respected friends.  Anyone that has ever worked in production knows that indescribable fleeting type of friendship that you make with your coworkers, that friendly but standoffish Im a freelancer and so are you and we might not ever see each other again but are in this totally intense thing so lets have fun kind of vibe.  Its the same for film production, rock and roll tours and I bet the circus too.  I never had that with John, right off the bat it was like hanging with someone I had grown up with.

I lived in LA for a bit not long after that and thanks to one of the greatest friends I’ll ever know, have returned ever since to wallow in this quasi vicarious beach life that I could just never seem to commit to full time.  Out of all the cross country drives, extended stays and cheater continental flights, I cant recall very many trips where I didn’t see John for a night of drinking or a weekend camping.

As time progressed, so did our careers, one of my fondest memories was mixing a movie that John was shooting, and having those commiserating moments that only two frustrated department heads could have, except our bitch fests would always end with a smile, no matter how fucked the situation, we were having fun together and we were, as they say, living the dream.  Sometimes you suffer a nightmare but its never scary when you have the right company.

For years it was always Gio, John and I, I wouldn’t go so far to suggest that we were a team, but we certainly comprised some kind of unit, wether it was hanging out around Gio’s kitchen table, or sitting around the dimmer board on Studio 60 where the two of them always made me a welcomed guest when I was in town.

Around my 30th birthday, I had one of those amazing eight month long lost weekends that Brian Wilson would be jealous of.  At some point during that blur the three of us rolled out to the high desert and on the way out, while Gio slept with his face pressed against the back window, John told me all about Burning Man.  At that point he had been a few times and had invited me before, but I didn’t really understand what it was all about, as it is unquestionably the most misunderstood event in the world still today, let alone back then.

By the end of that weekend I was sold and two weeks later I was in the middle of nowhere, cranky from the altitude and the lack of humidity standing in a will call line casually chatting up the guy in front of me while silently trying to make sense of the dust I had heard so much about, I wasn’t quite sure how to clean it off and I was already pretty dirty having been outside for twenty seven seconds…  “This is your first time, shit, Im missing my son’s first birthday to be here, fuck, he wont remember it”.  Those were the first words ever spoken to me at Black Rock City.

What had John gotten me into?

Saving an endlessly long pontificating discussion, there is a certain bond that you make on the playa that is wholly unique.  Making friends out there I began to slowly understand the bond that combat photographers and journalists would always reference.  The friends Ive made out there have in every way impacted my life but John was the first guy I knew back from the world who I hung out with at the trash fence at 2 AM.

We were already great friends, we had known each other for years, but something changed out there, suffering the dust together redefined our friendship in a way I wasn’t expecting or can effectively communicate.  It’s like John, who was already the most full of life guy, was *truly* alive out there, and he was proud for me to see it.  And then he invited me in to the core of his world, the shit that he lived for, the circumstance that made him the happiest.  It was and epic thing to step up to and be a part of.

Once I thought we had reached the apex of awesome years later, John, an avid skydiver, invited me up for a ride in the skydiving plane, with that same quirky smile, “c’mon, it’ll be fun, heh heyh heh”.  I have had few, if any, life defining moments like that one, and there is no gift that anyone will ever give me that will compare to what John did for me that afternoon.  I cant even sit here thinking about it without a huge smile on my face.

I flew with John two years in a row, both of us sharing the fear together, sitting in that plane together, getting beaten around in the wind, making eye contact and locking in there, with a smile to mask the anxiety, those moments are absolutely burned into my soul.

You never know how alive you are until you think, in that moment, that you might die.  John Pedone took me right to that edge for the first time and we both looked over it together.  There will never be a greater gift and never from a more incredibly unique person.

 

My gratitude is endless.

Endless.

The thing that made John so special is that he had hundreds of friends, and all of us are telling our own version of this story today.  Different details, different characters, same story.

The impact he had on all of us on a personal one on one basis is staggering to think about.  Add that to the contribution he made to the arts, the talent he brought to the motion picture industry as a light operator, a camera operator, a director of photography, a still photographer, picture editor, lighting designer, stage designer, costumer, puppeteer, stilt walker, clown, huggie bear, and then putting together the monument of Mystical Misfits, it’s a staggering legacy.

The last time I saw John, we talked about motorcycles.  I was out at Pro Italia looking at a Moto Guzzi they had in the show room which had just sold like an hour before I got there and I was all frustrated.  John had just moved into a new house in the valley, he had invited me by a few times and figured Id try to stop in on the way back to town.

“No Im off today, come on over”.

Burning Man last year was pretty intense for both of us, for entirely different reasons.  We both drove off the playa about two weeks prior, so we sat around and had that traditional first talk back in the real world.  Did you see this, did you see that, did you ever bump into so and so, how many times did you jump out of the plane, what did you think of the pilot, how was it landing in the plane, how was it jumping out of the plane, was there any resolution to x y and z drama, how did it go with the equipment rental returns, etc, etc.

He was super excited about the big garage at his new place, paced around the freshly packed place with that playa dust smell still in the air.

Yeah, Im pissed that we didnt get the street sign this year, someone grabbed it on thursday, but check these out from a few years ago.

We gossiped and gossiped and gossiped like we were in high school, exchanged all the playa tales that we could until the conversation naturally ran out of steam.

 

Yeah, that was my last burn.

 

You always say that.

 

No, that was my last burn, Im not going again.

 

At the time, that seemed like Santa not coming to Christmas, plus I had heard it before, pretty much every year for the last few years.

 

 

There was one afternoon in late August, hanging around his camp at a scheduled happy hour where we both kinda sat around and talked about the amount of people that were drinking at the Misfits Bar in comparison to the year prior.  The previous year, he hosted the Waldorf Mystoria and it was the greatest thing at Burning Man and I don’t say that casually.  He designed a 3 story steel tower with a fucking functioning chain elevator.  The happy hour parties at Misfits 2010 were impossibly insane, the addition of a drum kit was extra special fun for me.  Last year, the camp had a different layout and the ground floor was kinda blocked off from the street and as a result, there were significantly fewer people hanging out at the bar.

“I kinda like it” he said surveying the crowd, “its way less crazy than it was last year”.

I was expecting the madness to repeat at misfits and I had to let that soak in.  Then it hit me, I suggested “We should build a castle next year”.

“Mystical Misfits Castle?”

“Yeah man, fucking C A S T L E, it’ll be insane.  We can make a slip and slide moat around the front and put two chain motors up for the drawbridge, when the party gets too insane, raise the drawbridge and we’re good

“?We talked about this for a long time that afternoon.  “Yeah well, this is my last burn, so Im passing the torch to you, build the castle”.

I was never officially part of his camp and this seemed like an unlikely scenario.

We briefly revisited the Castle theme for Misfits 2012 in the garage that afternoon, interjecting the fun class structure that could be instituted among the camp members.  While it was all just fun talk, it was turning into a better and better plan by the minute.

We were also starving as a Castle Serf and jumped in my car and cruised Ventura looking for a spot to eat.  We wound up in one of those horrid “classy” dives that I dont even know how to explain right now to anyone who doesnt know LA.  That shitty bar by the Universal Lot, I think its called the Casting Office or some shit like that, in a strip mall with a horrid yellow sign, worn patent leather booths whose shine was lost decades ago with carved wood railing all over the place, edges smoothed from years of drunk handling.  Nicotine stained glass chandeliers hanging on a chain with the wire not woven in between the chain links, just hanging down to the lamp, nicotine stains still on there from like 12 years ago when they outlawed smoking.  We didnt go to that place but one of the other 200 places just like it.  This is the restaurant that everyone in Boogie Nights hung out at.  This is the bar that Vic Vega goes to to have a confrontation with Butch that only Jules can break up.  It’s THAT place that no amount of daylight through the front window can properly illuminate, just perma dark, perma shitty, the core of pulp, the heart of Los Angeles style.  We had a drink at the bar, which obviously was red, and then grabbed a table for soup, salad and exhaust on the sidewalk on Ventura at 5pm, just to catch some sunlight.  Castle talk continued.

 

When we got back to the house, we lounged in the back yard for a long time, I told him about the bike I didnt buy that afternoon and we devised cool things to do with ten grand that neither of us would ever do.

I can’t believe you are into cafe racers.

He needled me with this all afternoon.  And then got into a long story in typical Pedone style about the last bike accident he had, an incredible story of evading law enforcement and crawling out of an ambulance with a torn open leg to sneak his bike out of the ditch and walk, limp, it away from the scene of the accident, turning over the engine which luckily started right up just far enough from the scene to make a clean getaway.  “Yeah, that was the last time I had a fast bike, Im getting a harley next”.

In the middle of the story Bachman came bounding out, named after a character on a pilot that he was working on when he got the kitten.  He was so entirely proud of the fact that a) Bachman would come when called, like a dog and b) Bachman had figured out how to walk so the bell around his neck wouldnt jingle.  Little guy was a true predator at heart and a truly awesome cat.

John absolutely loved this cat.

I was pretty burnt and having taken a million pictures of John over the years and just didnt shoot a bunch of pictures that afternoon.  The thought that I wouldnt have another chance never crossed my mind.  We talked about more BRC stuff, he had a date that night, I had a date that night, we went back in the house, he handed me a bumper sticker that says “Im kinda famous at Burning Man” and as I started to walk to the door he commented that he was going to check out the new Harley the next week.  I sat on my dumb phone in the car and watched his red truck pull a u turn in front of me.  The last thing I noticed as he pulled forward was that “Im kinda famous” sticker on his tail gate and after he made the U turn, he smiled and waved as he drove by.  It was close to 7, the orange socal sun was low, right on the tree line and his eyes were as bright as I had ever seen them in the sunset.  That was the last time I would ever see my good friend John Pedone.

A few weeks later he sent me some pictures of the new bike and I was cautiously happy for him.  We didnt talk for a while after that, conversations were still in the “No Im not going” direction, and then there was the big ticket fiasco.

The big ticket fiasco.  Fuck.

I was absolutely resigned to not go after that shit.  I was so done and was deep into figuring out a trip to Mongolia with my usual campmates which was going all fine and dandy until someone (ahem) didnt want to take a train from russia, as if that wouldnt be the craziest shit ever, but that is a whole different story.

Smack in the middle of fuck bmorg, the phone rang.  It was John.

“Hey, we got some tickets allocated for us.  I want to build the Castle, will you do it with me?”

“Ha, I knew you’d go”

“Will you come?  Here’s the code for the private sale, you gotta buy the ticket before this weekend, it expires Sunday”.

For the last three years John had invited me to go up a week early to help him build the steel, two flatbeds worth of pipe, which he would drive up from LA.  This is the kind of dedication this guy had to an event that most people go to without even filling a car with fun stuff for other people to play with.  He brought two flatbed trucks and a show power generator for the sake of everyone’s entertainment.

Immeasurable dedication.

The first year he asked I couldn’t conceive of it.  The second year I totally wanted to do it, but had a scheduling conflict and absolutely couldnt.  The third year I had my own camp and obligations to my camp mates and didnt want to complicate things.  I’ll come up 2012.  I was sooooo looking forward to being out there with him and 400 other people building the most beautiful thing ever.  I was really bitter on going this year but there was no way I was going to say no, the circumstances were perfect AND it was really looking like he wanted to go forward with the theme we joked about, and then talked about more seriously.  Ironically, I was going to send out invitations to my birthday party tomorrow morning and was totally looking forward more than anything else in LA to the next conversation about the plan for the camp and all the associated logistics.  I celebrated my birthday last year in LA with John and three other people and it was the first time I had fun on my birthday since I was 9 years old.

I called Gio just this afternoon and told him to keep the night open and we spent ten minutes just randomly talking about John and all the fun we had last year.

I remember a night last summer hanging upstairs at Misfits with Paige and Braydon, John walked up the stairs,  “Come on, we are all going to do Greeters, hop in the stake bed with us” John kinda turned his chin up and gave me that half a grin as he tilted his head beckoning towards the door.

“Fuccccck Im exhausted, there’s no way I can pull a greeters shift at 3 am, get me next time”

next time.

fuck me.

After spending the day in a daze today thinking about Adam Yauch, walking around the city, going to all the places that I had some connection to the Beastie Boys, when I saw the phone ring, the last thing I wanted to do was answer it.  It was Gio, we had just spoken a few hours ago so I figured he had forgotten something important to tell me so I reluctantantly answered the phone.?Ive known Gio since my first semester in college, I had never quite heard his voice like that.  His lead, “I have horrible news, I didn’t want you to find out from someone else”

No.

You can say a word a thousand times until it loses all meaning and just becomes a sound coming out of your mouth, a series of notes, a beat, not communicating anything.  But not this one, not in that moment or the many that followed.

No.

On 4 May 2012, heading North on Coldwater Canyon with the sunset over his left shoulder, John Pedone was killed when a woman made a U Turn in the middle of the fucking street and turned into his motorcycle.

This is the last picture I took of my great friend, confidant, endless source of joy, laughs and inspiration, John Pedone:

You changed the world for so many of us, you effected my life like no one else, I’ll miss you forever JP.

 

 

FLYING IN A SKYDIVING PLANE FUCKING RULES ! !! ! !! ! (but Im getting ahead of myself)

A brisk walk, (or as brisk as the noonward sun over the playa allows for race), brought us to Burning Sky where as luck would have it, a pull up tool was located

and before long, John was cinched, we made the roster

and climbed into the art car for the anxiety building 5 mile per hour scream to the black rock city spaceport.  The sound of the polymer wheels attached to the rear plywood door/loading ramp (which is always down) bumping all along the way particularly marks these rides in my memory.

Rigged up, safety briefed, the terrifying possibility of last year became this year’s trebuchet of excitement.  Standing still became less and less possible with the heart beating faster and faster and that slow numbing of the face that the anxiety tends to bring.  But then there is that moment of truth, the assembly of the flight group and that last look out onto the dusty runway, the last chance to chicken out, the guarantee of a big pussy tattoo across your shoulder blades.

pssh.  we’re in.  and there’s no turning back now.

It was a delight to mount the creaky ladder and see George in the cockpit of the plane.  Immediately I greeted him with, “George!  You are the person who scared the most shit out of me in 2009!!!”.

Hindsight being 20/20, this was a mistake to share in a plane full of sky divers…

The ignition of the turbo prop brought that oscillating vibration through the plane which has defined flying over BRC for me.  Its about this point where the total fear, panic and excitement just makes everything go numb.  Adrenaline is without question, the ultimate drug.  Why would you ever doubt Raoul Duke?

Few hundred meters down the playa, George pulls down and latches the canopy, gives as much throttle as the engine will allow and seconds later we are up with a cheer.

Knowing what to expect makes all the difference in the world.  There’s things, like, kissing a girl, not kissing the girl you should have kissed, firing a gun, driving 140mph on a California freeway, playing the first guitar chord out of the tube amp you just built, having your passport stamped, breaking a bone, you can only do these things for the first time once.  With experience, perspective changes and you can become slightly expert, if only in your own world.

With so much of the high speed panic out of the way, some little steps towards expert allowed for a breathe to enjoy the beauty up there, in slow motion.  And just about when Im realizing this, John jabs me on not freaking out and the jumper in front of me on the left there turns and ponders “What did George do that freaked you out so badly last year?”

Fuck me.  “The banking turn on the final, thats the most G’s Ive ever felt”

“You hear that George?  You gotta do a wingstand for this guy, he’s worried he wasnt going to get completely freaked out this year”.

Fuck me.

Now, by this point, the jump door is open, its fucking LOUD in that plane, all engine, all velocity, all the time with the ringing undercurrent of fear and survival.  Yet, over the din, there were two words critically communicated: Wing Stand.

Somewhere, ducky Josh, the other Misfit in the plane, has some video of what would come next, I sure dont have any pictures, sorry, too busy freaking the fuck out.  Because thats what happens when your pitch changes 90 degrees in one second and your face gets smooshed against the side window of the plane under the weight of your parachute and yer looking directly at the ground.  Yes, wingstand.  Thank you George.

There’s nothing that will quite compare to bumping along the air 12,000 feet above Black Rock City.  There isnt *anything* about this experience that isnt *entirely* unique.  It also only lasts for just a few moments.  The 18 minute steep climb, straight up is only met with a moments pause of level flight so the lucky can jump.  And then, as a passenger (who knows whats coming next) there’s that real moment of truth.  A moment to toy with extending on a time line where split seconds feel like minutes.

“Are all the jumpers out?”, the moment where I thought I knew what was coming next, but really had not half a fucking clue…

And there you go folks, the best photo I took of the flight.  Wingstand.  Full Freak out.  Tim Paige, Henri Huet, Larry Burrows and Eddie Adams all going up a notch ’cause I clearly can’t shoot shit under duress…

Around 3,000 feet I half got my shit together.  Eighteen minutes to jump altitude, two and a half minutes to wheels back on the playa.  George provided, once again, the ride of a lifetime.  Challenge now is topping it again…

Man’s gonna burn in (!!!) thirty days.

 

How many times can you watch someone pack a parachute before it gets old?  I dont really know, I’ll let you know when this shit gets old.  There’s just that thing about being around people overdosing on adrenaline that I dont think EVER gets old.

Be it bands coming off a stage, athletes leaving a field or near misses with real danger, manufactured or otherwsie, when you’ve got enough speed beaming out of you, if someone stands close enough, a spectator can catch some of that infectious goodness.

Its these times in life when it pays to be a scavenger, I’ll gladly scoop up them scraps, thank you.  We can’t all be raptors, all the time.

I had sprinted over to the Waldorf Mystoria looking for John in hopes of scoring a poker chip to fly only to find him walking down three o’clock trailing a parachute, fighting the occasional gust inflating the rig hanging off of both his shoulders.

Both hands flew off the handlebars into the air and my heart sank down to the pant cuff bunched up behind my knees.  Fuck.

You just jumped?

His eyes were crazed with that look you can only have after getting into a skydiving plane twenty five minutes ago.

Yeah, but Im going right back up again, here’s your chip.

Yes!!!  Some of my friends are impossibly righteous.  John is one of them.  It’s a short list but damn, is it a good one.

The morning was calm and balmy in the high eighties, we both knew there was a short window before the playa heated up bringing the venting wind and white that can make flying there terrifying/impossible.  No time was wasted getting a parachute flattened, rolled, cinched and stowed so we could both run back to burning sky and get our names on the next flight roster.

The layout of this year’s Mystical Mysfits camp was particularly amazing, but more on that later.  It did lend itself especially well for packing a parachute.  I suppose there is not a lot of irony to be discovered in the fact that the guy packing a parachute in there also designed the camp.  hmm.

The one interesting thing about someone packing a parachute, its not the most common thing for the average person to see.  Sometimes it can draw a small crowd but perhaps with the seasoned galactic freaks at burning man, it takes a little bit more to phase people…

So there’s that thing about burning man: radical self reliance.  Before the first time you go, someone tells you about radical self reliance and you wind up packing at least twice as much shit mostly filled with items not you nor anyone else will ever need.  By the third time you go, you usually get it down to packing twice as much stuff as you actually do need.  The fourth time you go you take exactly what you need and only go home with half a box of power bars, four gallons of water, a handful of batteries and the spare bicycle tube you didnt use or gift.

By the fifth time you go, you start getting creative with the radical part and develop that skill to truly impress some people with having some esoteric tool that someone desperately needs.  None of this explains why my neighbor this year had all his tig welding gear but it does lead to the fact that after you pack and unpack for ten years, there are still some things that you’d never ever think to bring in duplicate.

Often, with adrenaline overdose hands and the recent memory of free fall to the earth combined with the anticipation of doing it all over again in the immediate future you can go ahead and just rip the pull up cord in half trying to get your rig secured.  Or at least John can, at least once.  Well, good thing ten years of radical self reliance taught you to bring an extra pull up tool for all your rigging needs…

 

Which brings us to law number one of skydiving: its harder to keep your rig closed than it is to get it to open.

 

FUCK!

Ok, someone at burning sky is gonna have an extra, lets go.

So half packed, we walked to burning sky where in fact someone did have a pull up tool, John did get his chute packed, we did get on the roster, the plane did take off, there are the best pictures ever and you gotta wait for the second half of this story to see them.  psssh.

 

There is a man.  He burns in one hundred and sixty two days.

 

A continuation of the best reason to subject a Leica to playa dust:

The Black Rock City Intergalactic Spaceport is located on the edge of town, and from the ground, makes for a staggering look back on the Thursday madness (yes, there’s a mountain range behind that wall of white, yes, we were about to get in a plane and fly through it):

Quickly meandering through the Black Rock Travel Agency,

we eventually found George, our pilot, right outside the coyote cafe.

Under normal circumstances, one might think twice about a shirtless pilot baking under the high desert, high noon purgatory, but out here there is an alternate translation which seems to filter just about everything.

Before walking out to the runway, we all rigged up, the FAA requires all passengers in a plane with an open door to wear a parachute.

All the observers were given a safety briefing by that guy in the mirrored glasses, thong and assless chaps.  Best safety briefing ever.  Awesome.

Walking up on this view, after lagging behind the group, the first wave of anxiety really managed to dig itself in deep.  That 175 yards is among the longest distances I can remember walking in a very very, very very long time.

Enter the Pac 750XL.  Designed for carrying really heavy cargo into runways on the side of mountains that have really high pitch approaches.  Its a supercharged turbo prop engine built for maximum torque, maximum payload and maximum terror.

Lets get down to the fear.  I hate flying.  Actually, I passionately hate flying.  When I climbed up the mediocre aluminum home depot ladder into this plane, it took just about all the strength I had to lift my leg up each step.  Neil Armstrong has nothing on me…  I was bonkers excited to challenge myself but nearly paralyzed with anxiety trying to get it in my head that I was actually doing this shit.

George would eventually strap me into that copilot’s seat which became the scene of the wildest emotional rollercoaster I have ever been on.  Eternally grateful that John had offered me the ticket, providing me with the experience of a lifetime.  Looking out the window at the talc fine playa dust coating intake valves and aerlons, eternally fearful that this would be the last thing I would ever do.  Somehow I got to the point where I figure that would be ok.  And it was in that moment that the engine turned over.

Now that was certainly a new sound.  A familiar sound for sure, but one that had never had any personal meaning to me at all.  Taking off in a tiny plane, for my first time: a vibrating, jarring, leap of faith.  Then the throttle leaned forward and I flashed: flight canceled yesterday.  Flight held a few times this morning.  All from white out wind.  Fuck, what am I doing.  Taxiing down the bouncy runway, more throttle, more anxiety.  That was a brand new sound.  That was a brand new vibration.  This sure as shit is a new level of anxiety.  A Pac750xl at full throttle with the side door open was terror redefined for me.  Maybe I could pull this lever, put my arm through that loop, jump on the shoulders of that guy, climb over the head of the next and use both feet to push into the abdomen of the jumper sitting in the door to propel myself out of the plane before we get to the end of the runway.

And then we were in the air.  Air so windy and turbulent, so pissed off man had devised a way to use it for lift that all it could do in return was push the plane up, down, left and right, all at the same time.  Mostly, I was horrified, but this instantly became the new standard for Awesome in my life.  A standard that already had the bar raised to a ridiculously high point.

As the horizon broadened, the dust got smaller and smaller and the pounding of my heart found a rhythm beating against the whine of an engine screaming RPM’s, there was something new, rather, something I had forgotten about years ago: freedom.

The flight plan we had that afternoon was pretty interesting, we did a steep cork screw climb to a few thousand feet and then a leveled out to 11,000 feet over the city, around 15,000 above sea level.  This is the first time I had ever been in a turbo prop, but Im under the distinct impression that not every plane could do the climb that we did, certainly not as fast at that pitch- that engine has brutish torque to climb.

I’ll never forget the moment I took this photo.  The localized turbulence up to this point was brutal but things calmed down enough for my shaking, sweaty, cold hands to hold my M calmly enough to my face to snap this picture, lower it and pause for what felt like a lifetime looking at the road we’ve all sat on for hours waiting to get in, the city we had built at the end of it, and really, truly appreciate how lucky I was to be up here, above it all checking out some shit that only a small handful of people get to see each year from this perspective.

After a forceful, full throttle climb to jump altitude, the engine pulled back, the plane leveled out and the jumpers began to stir inside the cabin.

It was an interesting feeling, watching my buddy get up to jump out of the plane that we were both in.  In many ways, he was the tiny piece of security I had in there and in a few seconds, Id be all alone to deal with the plane headed to the ground, but hell, how hard could that be?  The worst was behind us for sure…

In the midst of this thought I leaned over to snap this picture, unquestionably the most personally important single frame of film I have exposed in the last five years.  We have had more fun inside that pentagon than should ever be possible and here I was above it, for the express purpose of making this image, with the guy who had originally brought me out to this place years prior.  Critical amount of fun.

The poor guy in the foreground on the left, yeah, he cant hear out of his right ear anymore.  More on this later…

With a wave and a gust of wind, jumpers were out.  I was digging the new found cruising of that last thirty seven leveled out seconds so the sky divers could jump.  And then, over the roar of the propeller, the blast of the wind screaming through the cabin, George leaned over to yell at me:

“Are all the jumpers out?”

Are all the jumpers out.  Reflections from this echo still reappear in a dream every now and again.  Not knowing what the fuck I was about to get into, I foolishly replied, “yes”.

There were critical pieces of information I did not know before I got on that plane, critical pieces of information I thankfully did not know.

That plane has gotta go up and down as many times as possible on the fuel it has available to allow for the maximum amount of jump flights.  This means its flight times have to be as short as possible.  There are some moments in life when “as short as possible” means, well, kinda short, quick even.  Then there are other moments where it just means as short as fucking possible.  This was most certainly of the later variety.  I was scared shitless getting into the plane, terrified getting to altitude but I was just about to be reborn.  And reborn hard.

Yes, all the jumpers are out.

The pilot nodded, leaned forward and cranked the door down with the hand crank attached to the wire which ran along the pulley to the side door.

He had seen me freaking out the whole time, he gave me this look, smiled and then cautioned, “hold on”.  In that moment I remember looking at the blue sky out the side window and then instantly, and I mean *instantly* seeing the ground.  This happened concurrent with what felt like twice the normal gravity pushing me back into my seat.  All bets were off and now Im screaming like a girl and there is NO chance of any more photos ’cause Im just not nearly as hardcore as I would have liked to had thought.

There isnt much room in these planes, everyone has to sit legs spread, the parachute of the guy in front of you is resting on your chest the whole time.  Eighteen seconds into the descent, the guy I mentioned earlier, well, he had the unfortunate pleasure of winning the unlucky lottery and got my freak out conducted, at certain death volume, a packed parachute width from his right ear.  Clearly, something needed to happen:  He turns around as best as he can and relays the following information:

Hey!  Im a pilot!  Everything is cool!  This is totally normal.  We’ll be on the ground in a minute.  Just try to look out the window, focus on the horizon, everything will be fine!

Ok, right.  Totally.  Im being irrational.  Chill your meltdown, listen to this guy.  He’s a pilot.  Everything is normal.  Do as he says, just turn around, look at the horizon and everything is gonna be fine.  Yes, that’s excellent advice.  Turn around, look at the horizon, everything will be cool.

So I fight the gravity, lean forward so I can turn around, look out the front window of the plane and there it is.  Brown.  Earth.  The fantastic detail of the black rock desert screaming up closer and closer through the blur of the propeller out the front windshield.  No blue.  No sky.  It was in that moment that I put together that the pilot had put the plane in a full throttle nose dive to the ground.  The absolute last thing I think anyone wants to see, looking out the window of an airplane is NO SKY.  So there we were, in a nose dive losing 3,600 feet per minute

which ended in a thirty degree, probably-dont-need-to-ever-feel-this-amount-of negative-g-force, banking turn to line the plane up with the runway approaching the city.  The horizon should never cut through your frame at this angle when you are holding a camera parallel to your feet…

It took 18 minutes for us to climb at full throttle eleven thousand feet.  We lost that eleven thousand feet of elevation in THREE minutes.  Three minutes to the ground, we beat every single one of the sky divers back to the ground.  Eighteen minutes up, three minutes down.  Holy hell, best ride ever.  Ever.

Once on the ground safely, the adrenaline high lasted for close to 72 hours.  Ive done some exceptionally cool shit in my life and this experience was the most mind bending thing ever.  I suppose you can get into a skydiving plane just about anywhere and experience something similar, but flying over Burning Man, what a bunch of madness, neatly packaged, cautiously rationed, secretly gifted and rabidly received.  Im a lucky, lucky, lucky motherfucker.

I thought it was odd, on the way out to the plane that George didnt have that shirt on.  Had I seen what he chose to wear to work that day, I might not have made it onto the airstrip.

So that was 2009.  I walked away from that plane with my temporary passport and before I got back through the point of entry, I was plotting how to get back in the air again for 2010.

Little did I know then, walking away from one of the all time best experiences of my entire life, that the best was yet to come.

We thought we might fly on Wednesday.  Wind.  White.  No surprise there…

Thursday morning popped up and I met John over at Burning Sky to check the weather and see about our flight.  This comes after a morning of pacing around my camp, my neighbors camp, the camp across the street and the camp next to them, extolling my calmness while chewing my fingers down to the cuticle…  After they announced the second weather hold, we headed back to Mystical Misfits, I hadnt spent much time over there yet and was clearly missing out on some fun.

Backing up just a bit, John is, I suppose one could finally say, a dear old friend.  I met him on my first job in the movies plugging in lights when I was 20 or 21 and this guy is absolutely the reason I first attended Burning Man in 2006.  As my good fortune would have it, John is a sky diver and jumping at Burning Man is as much of the ritual for him as is going in the first place.  You can scroll back through my blog to find a bit more history on this fine character in my circus.  Last year I shot him packing up his chute after a jump.  This year, there was a different story to tell.

There are a few different ways to jump at Burning Man, I think that if you have a plane or can talk a pilot into getting you in the air, nobody is really going to stop you however most people jump through Burning Sky.  Its a fairly well organized camp and they charter a plane and pilot for a few days for the express purpose of skydiving at Burning Man.  I am not a skydiver, so have never gone through the process, but from what I understand, you buy jump tickets during the winter in packages of five.  I also think you need a significant number of jumps under your belt before they’ll sell you a ticket at all.  John was not planning to use all his tickets jumping and that’s where things would get Juicy Junior, real Juicy (in a black suited kind of way).  Burning Sky might not let you jump with no experience, but if you get a ticket from a jumper they will let you fly in an observer seat providing you land with the plane.  And thats where I was this morning, holding a poker chip that would finally get me on a plane to see this madness in the center of the ghost of Lake Lahontan from about 11,000 feet.

Back at Mystical Misfits, I got a good look of what the camp has grown into.  Now two flatbeds worth of scaffolding large, slowly hauled up from the bowels of LA County, they were a sight to see in 2009 and easily the biggest camp on the block.

The big addition to the camp this year was a swing.  Safest swing in Black Rock City.

There was much discussion that morning about truss welds, the joys of rigging, trust and ultimately, hope.

We killed about an hour enjoying the view, trying to find more coffee and eating some bar-b-que sausage creation before heading back to check on the weather.

The scene back at burning sky was exactly as we left it, a bunch of bored skydivers and two anxious people, rocking on their heels, looking at the sky, hoping to trade white for blue.  We had made the decision to get on the plane if there was a plane to get on, and twenty mintues after checking in, a walkie squawked and we lucked out with word that there was a clear enough opening to fly.  With that announcement, there was madness in the camp as everyone scrambled to get their rigs together and hop the ride that would drop us at the airport.

Next thing I know Ive been handed a parachute, walked the plank into the back of the burning sky art car and am trying to balance the adrenaline surge and quell the freak out of the summer.  After months of waiting, this was actually happening…

increased heart rate.  check.  sweaty palms.  check.  tunnelvision.  check.  and this was just the van…

The best part of the mad dash into this van so we could make it into the air before the weather changed was the breakneck five miles per hour speed which hurled us towards the airport.  There are few things that I know of that can stretch time quite like driving in a car really, really, really, really slow.  Just what the doctor ordered…

End of the road and a long walk back.  Welcome to Nevada’s own wretched hive of scum and villany.

John is a fairly seminal character in my life.  I worked on my first paid job in the motion picture industry with him in 1993 or ’94.  Three summers ago, during one of those breakup inspired lost weekends that lasted eight months, I caught up with him in LA and we wound up camping in Joshua Tree for the weekend.  It was early August.  By the time we got back to LA I was sold on Burning Man, it was time.  I had heard about the festival for years but I had other things going on in the desert and it just didnt have the appeal until then.  Two weeks later I was headed up to black rock with a car full of excitement and the first sign of being alive that I had been trying to discover for months and months and months and months.  Hope and Fear provided no sign of John.  Keep in mind I knew exactly where his camp was and went there every day for a week, but thats the way it goes at Black Rock City.  Went back the next year with fully organized plans to meet up.  Again, a week went by and The Green Man didnt not produce the meeting we were hoping for.  So it goes.  Last year I was sitting in the camp across the street from me and noticed some sky divers.  What the fuck, I’ll roll over to Mystical Misfits and see if he turns up.  Sho’ nuff, as I got off my bike there’s John packing up his parachute.  I suppose this is what you look like right after you jump out of a plane…

Over his shoulder while he packed his ‘chute, one of the dancers from the camp next door climbed up on the three stories of scaffold to twirl through the air.  John had the good fortune to build his township of a camp right next door to a commune of dancers mostly from the North West.

Ive photographed a few sky divers right after they’ve landed but this was the first time I ever watched, with full attention, someone pack a parachute.  I’m still really amazed at how simple the mechanics of the pack are.  As John put it that afternoon, “you dont worry about the chute not opening, you worry about it staying closed”.  Good times were had that afternoon which was three years in the making.  This roll of film got blasted off in the first five or six minutes of that communion and while it must seem somewhat pedestrian overall, it was a bit of a milestone moment for me that might make a burner or two crack a smile.