COYOTE NOSE VOLUME #3; ISSUE #01
Coyote Nose V3:#01:08.02.05
A cocktail party question - What were you doing at age twenty?
I was driving grand dreams on the back of my motorcycle, traversing the country to Califor-ni-yae from
frumpy ol' Michigan with the intent to be a flashy playboy bartender and playing sax in a jazz band.
Sorta worked out that way if you can call a dumpy bar in the Tenderloin "flashy", and a road house blues
band, "jazzy". Sure had a hill of fun though!
Got knocked around a bit too. (But I found that chicks dig scars.)
Point is that I had finally come of age, and was desperate to prove it to the world.
Funny that, the Man turns twenty this year, and he also has big dreams that he is bent on spreading to
the world. "Should I go to college or Copenhagen?"
I hear the Man has to shave regular now, and no longer cares to camp in the back yard with his best buddy.
Camping in the Himalayas sounds way more exciting.
The Man too has been having a hill of fun while getting knocked around. He had to grow a protective
scar-fence, and has had a few run-ins with the law. Had to pay some hefty fines and learn to survive
- and learn how to still blaze through life anyways.
A quote from the Dali Lama -
"Learn the rules so you can break them properly."
God Damn-it!
It's enough of a mile stone for me to be in my tenth year with the Man that I had to get dished a nasty
one this morning. Initial survey of Black Rock City '05 begins tomorrow, and I'll be at my usual post
manning the Man site survey station. The primary tool for the measurement of the roads and
intersections is a transit with very small measure markings on it. Well the uber-critical nature
of getting the streets in the proper place has just sadly overcome some serious denial. When a Reno
runner asked me if I needed anything from Reno, I drooped my head while kicking at a stump and said,
"Yea, can you pick me up some god damn reading glasses.............!!!?"
Alas.
We're setting the golden Man spike for BRC '05 tomorrow, and here comes another brazen city of brimstone.
Though I have been surveying the city since '98, this will be the tenth gold spike - another mile stone.
(Politics forced us to set the spike three times in '99.) As if the school room of the playa knew well
of this, she has had the teacher sponge the chalk board instead of just erasing it. The winter mobile
playa lake has wiped it clean, and the playa once again is like a fresh jar of peanut butter. (It
always feels like carving ones name in wet cement.)
The playa is also acting as a large lens refracting clean slate attitudes throughout. DPW crew is
arriving in full-on force and our challenge will be to keep this spirited horse team from chomping
its bits off. It's a flood of diesel power that would compel anyone to stay out ahead and visit those
reservoirs of energy that never dry. Hammers in the sun will keep you strong!
Our rock star ranch hand, Mr. Quinn who during the winter remodeled - well - just about everything put
some wonderful quotes up on the Black Rock Social Club walls. One of them reads,
"Eternal youth - look within."
I just keep coming out here.
Big bad DPW - notorious for working hard and playing hard. It has a steady tradition of having a
reputation that has even more fun than it has. There are those who would believe that Pabst Blue Ribbon
flows from our abrasions. You can imagine the pinch of another milestone when my mother drank me under
the table last Christmas. At around four in the morning, Christmas night, my mom and sisters raged on
with a bottle of "Hot Damn" cinnamon schnapps and a year's worth of gossip. I saw the opportunity and
escaped out the back to the loving arms of my guest bed. Not ten minutes later, there, in the doorway,
stood the silhouette of the mother I grew up with complete with the blue smoke of a Benson and Hedges
Menthol 100 wafting up. Then came the painful pierce of the overhead light being flicked on, and some
good old fashioned Irish bed kicking while she was flatly stating, "Come on, big bad DPW guy! Get your
butt out of bed and visit with your mother!"
Please don't let the guys know.
So what lies in the future for our healthy lad of twenty with a head full of dreams and an army of friends
to help him get there? Well, what happens to any free spirit at that time in their life?
Travel.
I can just see him staying in world wide regional youth hostels with his hiking boots and back pack
- hitchhiking and living on local grains and favors. Riding on old belching rattle buses, and realizing
that his destiny of fire is universal - planting his dream seed of inspiration everywhere.
34 days till clean up.
Coyote Nose 
