Scootin'

Black Rock City is about two miles across, and much of the most interesting art is a couple miles out from that, in deep playa. Some sort of transportation is all but manditory at this point if you're gonna do much exploring.

A bike is by far the easiest solution, but even that has its problems. It's an expensive pain to transport one from the East, and the playa dust is gonna thrash the hell out of any bike you take. Buying a cheapie in Reno, and giving it to a thrift store on the way out isn't a bad option, but leaves you at the mercy of the fates with regard to what you end up with, and gives you little room to decorate or customize your ride.

There's another, subtler, problem with bikes that Jackiejack pointed out to me: a lot of the delight of Black Rock City arises in the random interactions you fall into when you thought you were trying to get from one place to another. A bicycle isolates you, puts you in a little bubble of goal-orientedness that tends to insulate you from most incidental interactions while you're on the saddle.

Considering my options, I started wondering about kick scooters.

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The language gets murky here: scooter can refer to two different things: a device that is essentially a skateboard with handlebars, or a light motorcycle--what used to be generally called a moped. The fact that both have enjoyed surges of fashionability in the last few years hasn't done anything to clarify the distinction--nor has the fact that there are motorscooters sold in a kick-scooter-like form factor.

The human-powered kind struck me as offering several possible advantages for playa use. The speed and posture are about at a halfway mark between biking and walking, making it easy, I hoped, to accompany either bicyclists or pedestrians in their wandering. Many scooters fold into a compact and easily-trasported shape. And, hey, it's different, and that's always worth a few brownie points at Burningman.

I couldn't find much on the web about using kick scooters at Burningman--a few other people wondering aloud about how it would work, mostly. I realized that one of the keys to success would be having large enough wheels. Though the playa is shockingly flat on a macro scale, inch-by-inch it's heavily riddled with substantial cracks. and covered with drifts of fine, loose dust. The tiny skateboard wheels of faddish folding scooters like the famous Razor would be useless on the playa. There are numerous scooters that are essentially full-sized bicycle wheels with a foot platform instead of a bike frame, but I really wanted somthing that folded, to save transportation costs, as well as scarce apartment space back home.

A bit more time on the web produced two candidates: The Sidewalker Micro or some sort of Xootr. Eventually the large pneumatic tires (and ease of pronunciation) won me over to the Micro.

My scooter arrived promptly at my apartment, unassembled, with no instructions and a label saying it should only be put together by a professional. I called up Sidewalker USA to wtf them, and the guy at the other end of the line was baffled that I would make such a fuss over the simple matter of driving the box down to the bike shop and paying fifteen dollars for its assembly. I urged him to at least include mention of the necessity on their website, which I was told he would take under consideration.

Lacking both a car and a spare week to wait for my local bikeshop to work through its summer backlog, I approached the thing myself with a hex wrench, a half remembered bike repair course, and mayhem on my mind.

Many thanks to Tom Landers for pointing out the several ways in which my brakes were fux0red before I learned about them the hard way.

At any rate, I got the dadblame thing assembled and on the truck with a little help from several kind souls.

On the playa, I procrastinated using my scooter for a couple days. In retrospect, I realize i was motivated by unconcious pessimism. I was afraid it would be an obvious flop and I'd be kicking myself the rest of the week.

Once I got the tires up to a good pressure, though (rather higher than the official rating), and set off across the playa, it was a pleasure to ride. The funny thing about scooters is that the tiring part isn't in the pushing that propells you--that's nearly effortless--it's in the work of bending your off knee enough to reach the ground with your other foot, then pulling yourself back up to upright.

Keeping up with bikes was indeed doable, though it did take bit of work. Keeping pace with pedestrians was likewise managable, though I often ended up walking the scooter instead, and the low center of gravity made that more comfortable than walking a bike.

My mobility was ample for tooling around the city, and quite adequate for visiting the Temple or SOLA. It isn't quite a bike for long hauls, though, and I never made it out to the trash fence this year.

Durability was good. I was able to hose it down after getting back from Burningman, and immediately use it around Davis Square. It's started squeaking a little now, so I should try to give it a tune-up before putting it away for the winter, but I am definitely impressed with its condition versus that of bikes I've taken to the playa.

Will I take it again next year? I really don't know. Considering how compact it is, i'm likely to throw it in my truck share even if I end up with a bike as well. If you're considering a scooter for Burningman, I'd say this: if deep playa exploration isn't your thing, or if you're happy to work a little extra for it, and if space is a consideration in your packing, a scooter is a very reasonable alternative to a bike.

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