Playa name: BlueRick

Default name: Rick
Home other than the Playa: Canandaigua, in the beautiful Finger Lakes of NY.

My first Burn was in 2012. I was part of a volunteer camp that started many years earlier.

It provided all the on-site radio communications before BM contracted it out. The camp, known as The Army of Light, continued on as an unregistered camp. We provided shelter, refreshment, games, food, water, showers. Each night, we made dinner for twice the number of camp members and invited passersby to join us for dinner. That yielded us many new friends and future camp members. We found it was especially helpful for newbies.

Members/participants were primarily from the US but also included at various times men and women from France, Switzerland, Canada, Uruguay, Germany, Spain, …. Although the initial focus was providing radio for BM, we evolved over time to an open camp where people could wander in sit with us for a drink, a chat, a meal, without feeling as though they were an outsider at a formal camp.

I became part of the core group that hauled our gear, kitchen, water (in a several hundred gallon rotomolded tank that we used only for potable water), food, shelter for visitors, bikes, a shower from a camp member’s home in Phoenix. Aging and the Covid shutdown have reduced the group to two, both of us in upstate NY. We no longer have the numbers or equipment needed to haul and set up a camp.

I was invited to join in 2012. I planned to do a one-and-done as a sightseer. Was I wrong! What an experience. Here was a gathering that supported my personal philosophy that everyone should be accepted and able to do and be whatever they pleased as long as they didn’t hurt themselves, others and the environment. Each year that I attended (2012-2016, 2018) since then has been an incredible experience meeting, sharing with people – all kinds of people.

I’ve had several careers. Most recent and most rewarding: entrepreneurial facilitator. I am retired but still mentor young entrepreneurs with great ideas but no experience with the mundane legal, financial, market, development, … aspects of a startup.