Today we became foot soldiers in the Chai Revolution. Burning Man is a no-vending event except for the coffee shop run by the organization in Center Camp. Everything else here is based on a gift society, even drinks at most every make-shift bar and art car. Whatever is needed, the community provides for free, everything from food to body painting to radio stations to wireless Internet access. If center camp stopped selling coffee, the community would fill the void and people would be forced to interact in new ways. Ron is doing his best to change this by giving out free Chai from his Chai cart in center camp and organizing Chai protests.

After talking with Ron, Juliette and I decided to join him in his protest against this unnecessary consumerism by painting our backs with Free Your Chai and by joining the protest in center camp. Slowly peoples attitudes will change and hopefully the message will get out.

Wireless access has been painfully slow over the past few days and we are lucky to just get these posts up. Getting the pictures up is another story however. We have over 10 meg of pictures to go up, but I expect that they will have to wait until we get home. Keep checking back though, we might find a wireless Internet cafe once we get on the road again Monday.