
The Light Fandango parked at Swing City
The trick with a mutant vehicle like XyloVan is that you have to disassemble everything you spent many weeks building, and then rebuild it on-playa in Nevada’s unforgiving Black Rock Desert in a reasonable amount of time.
Last time (when we built Janus) the build crew was, um, me. I had a few hours help on setup, but I worked mostly solo for 2-1/2 18-hour days and by the end I was exhausted, cooked, a mess.
This time around, I had an excellent build crew – Thanks to Sam Hiatt, Julie Demsey, Lindsay VanVoorhis, Anna Metcalf and Jeremiah Peisert, as well as my kids, Biomass and Hitgirl – and the mutation from XyloVan to The Light Fandango took just 10-1/2 hours.
We bolted the pre-cut 1-inch EMT tubing frame together atop the already-assembled passenger cage with U-clamps. Then we installed the front wheel covers.
We sleeved the theatrical lighting-scrim panels onto the three sections of pre-bent conduit (thanks for the bend-expertise, Bender!), and used long poles with plywood hooks at the end to hoist the sections into the air and bolt them to the ends of the 14 struts sticking out from the framework.
At this point, a massive storm system came in – shutting down the playa to traffic, and shutting down our work party for a good 18 hours. We left the sleeved halo in place, but kept the fabric all furled up, which was a good move because the 50-60-mph winds would have thrashed it to pieces.
Once the storm passed and things dried out a bit, we unfurled and draped the fabric, installed the 10 carefully-tailored shrouds to hide the Ford ClubWagon XLT’s gorgeously brutish 1985 bodywork, and tied everything down with a Frankensteinian mess of cord and used Rob DeHart’s genius-magic trick of bunching the fabric around tennis balls tied to the frame.
We plugged in the 14 chandeliers and hung them from the strut tips with carabiners (thanks to Kristina, Christo and Lee for their tireless assembly work a few weeks earlier!)
And then we plugged in the LED strips – which promptly showed some kind of electrical fault by glowing all red, and only red. Our genius Arduino expert Spencer Hochberg quickly isolated the fault, we rerouted some power, and gorgeousness ensued. (thanks, Spencer!)
And we had fun and managed to avoid heatstroke while doing it. The miracle of playa teamwork and good friends.
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Framework built atop the passenger cage, Halo sleeved and hung
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Sam bolting down the halo
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Sam tapes on drunk-cushions to soften the hard-edged passenger cage
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Sam handles the body drapery
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Lindsay and Anna wielding the lifting-poles we used to hoist the canopy into place
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Lindsay and Anna goosing Sam
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Anna holds the drapery in place
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Lindsay, the desert flower
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Lindsay zip-tying LED strips to the inside of the wheel covers
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Lindsay gathers the draped fabric
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Anna assists with the drapery
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Anna hiding and/or working
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Sam the indomitable
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Sam the enthused
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Sleeving the halo
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Sam and Anna sleeving fabric onto the halo segments
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Sam and me hanging the halo
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Biomass and Hitgirl provide comic relief
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Base camp, base vehicle.
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Hitgirl helps reattach the keyboards
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