Kyrsten and I had the pleasure of giving the bride and groom a Giant Iron present for the day that included the Snail car, the fire spewing Boiler Bar and fire gardens.
What a wonderful wedding these two had! I felt so privileged to drive them around for the afternoon. Music, a bucket of champagne, the wind in their hair and fire! Justin commented on how surreal it all was.
What a wonderful day we had in the hot summer sun playing with our favorite friends on the Front Porch. Plenty of Maple syrup and home made ginger beer with cookies right from the oven…Yum! And All the while great bands were keeping our toes tapping.
Kyrsten on her new Electrobite car. This was a huge hit.
What a rocket! the inside was just as nice and the fireworks we saw were over the top Zack!
Day before opening and they are still putting on the finishing touches. Zolie noticed the Monkey’s head didn’t work and impressed most people who didn’t even notice the monkey in the mans tummy.
The porch! We rolled with them most of the week and put on the 1st Steam punk rave Friday night after the rocket.
DPW parade with a live band on top! We got 19 people in the snail at the end!
Quite the show. I really liked the scale of the Man this year. I hope it keeps getting smaller.
Camp Mates jump for Joy!
Snail Crew stops to enjoy the moon.
Oilpunk Rave with the Hobo Goblins, the Porch and us. John hooked us up with a wireless mic and the snail became the PA for the porch most the week. Thats our spot light as well.
Big thanks goes out to Alan and especially Lauren for spearheading a major overhaul of the hot rod side of our snail car the Golden Mean. We took it out for a spin late last night and boy does it haul now.
We now have a new clutch, 85amp alternator and heat! These only a few of the amazing new things on the car for this year, more to come in the next few weeks.
Mid body is done and hoops for the frame are done. Now it’s time to fill in the sheet metal head and tackle the ribs on the rear potion of the body. After staring at pictures of millions of years of these things I finally found a set of rules to follow to make it look real. This thing is going to look like a fossil in the dust on the playa at BM.
Amy Jenkins came by to discuss the leather seat she’s going to make for us. The leather Kyrsten picked out matches the steel perfect. Amy is going to match the ribs we made in steel with leather. hopefully it won’t even look like a vehicle.
Lauren and Alan have finished the engine rebuild. Rebuild carb, valve adjustment, new 85amp alternator, ignition, gaskets, main seal, clutch, throw out bearing, heater hoses for heat in the snail, oil pan, oil change, and a fair amount of new chrome and paint! Should run like new. Tansy got quite a bit done on the new dash, and Christopher and I almost finished the Carney Wagon hitch and wiring. Still have a long list and 2 weeks to go.
Well we are back in the shop repairing the snail and adding all the things we wanted to do last year. On our short list of items to do:
Change the clutch. She started slipping in the spring and has gotten worse. Parades, lots of people and a heavy shell have taken a toll on the tiny little motor and clutch.
New dash board. We will now have a speedo, gas gauge, oil pressure and engine temp. Now I can finally answer the question of how fast do I go.
Heater. Yes we will have heat at our feet and wind in our face. Going to install a 12v plug for my MC vest too!
New lighting. More LED’s to replace some of the juice sucking lights we have now and better night lighting for the playa.
85 amp Alternator. The old generator was just not keeping up at low speeds with all of our sound gear running.
Lauren checking her notes to make sure we order the right parts.
Christopher taking a beer break after a long night in the guts of a snail.
The new dash! Thanks to John Bock for the vintage dash plate.
Once a year Pixar has a car show called Motorama and invites the friends and family of Pixar to show off their cars. My wife Kyrsten Mate has done the sound design for several of the Pixar Movies including The Incredibles, and Ratatui and we got invited to show our Snail Art Car the Golden Mean last week. Great campus and plenty of wonderful cars.
Great night in the Crucible’s new space for the Fire Arts Festival! Much more room to see things and fire art I’ve never seen before. Looking forward to the rest of the week. Wonderful to see so many kids lined up to shoot fire from the eyes of the snail car. Looks like I’m going to have to set up bigger tanks for the rest of the nights just to keep up!
