A useful guide to making lines on the Playa

Accuracy be-damned

We’re often asked :

How did you lay out all those lines, on such a scale. You must have used some sort of sophisticated system using GPS and a theodolite¹⁾or something, right ?

Yeah, sure we did.

Honestly, the layout of the village is about as accurate as a 20 cent clock. In some places we can have errors up to 5 feet. And frankly we really don’t care. [the first year I went crazy measuring to the 1/2 foot. I got smarter year after year. Jolly] The only critical spaces are the 1 & 2 person camps; they need every inch.

The main objective here is that we get the general feel right.

If someone’s camp is too small we just adjust it out so they are happy. We’re a community after all.

Your toolkit

So, now that you realise the level of accuracy we’re working with, the tool kit becomes a lot smaller.

You will need :

• Water
• A clipboard ( wind and paper don’t mix )
• A pencil ( pens hate the heat )
• A boatload of those little flags ( to mark corners )
• Some more water
• The ‘Playa Marking Tool’ ( see below )
• A few long tape measures (at least 1 100ft tape and several ropes w/ knots every 20’)
• Some long lengths of rope (1/4“poly for measuring, and 1/2” or bigger for the curves)
• More water
• A few helpers
• A big pole. ( about 10’ high to help locate the MAN )

And, of course

• More water (you will be marking the playa BEFORE any shade is put up)

How to mark the ground

We may as well shatter your illusions from the start and let you know that all those lines on the ground marking out the village didn’t just magically appear by themselves.

They were the result of three back-breaking days in 105 degree heat where we tried our best to make things line up with a rough sketch on an 8×11 sheet of paper.

The first thing to consider is those lines have to be BIG. Dragging your shoe across the ground just isn’t going to cut it, those lines will be gone with the first dust storm. You need something deep and wide.

The second thing to consider is that once you’ve marked your line, you can’t erase it (As that’s the whole point ain’t it)

So whatever you’re going to use to mark the line it is going to be big, heavy and you won’t get a second chance.

We tried a few different materials but found that long heavy length of 3/4 inch re-bar had the most desired effect. It also caused the most blisters so one year Geoff had a brain wave and invented the contraption you see in the diagram to the left.

We took a hand cart and used tie-wraps to strap the re-bar to it. We weighed it down with some water (which we were lugging around anyway) and just dragged the damn things behind us.

Walk slow and drag a big stick. (one person drags and the other directs)

Measure twice, cut once

Once you’ve marked your line, you can’t erase it

Did we mention this ?

Lay out your line with some flags, debris, people, whatever you can get your hands on. Go back and Check Your Measurements. Get someone else to check it. Measure it again just to be sure.

Then mark the line.

Everything is relative

The big problem with marking stuff on the playa is that you have very little to work from. In the world of surveying you need something called a baseline, but even that can be a bitch sometimes. Normally when we measure things we tend to use a thing called cartesian co-ordinates which roughly translates as

• This far this way
• This far the other way

The problem with BRC is that it is curved (did you ever notice that) so all your measurements go out of whack, and it is a big curve. You can stand on at the intersection of 2 roads and swear that they are right angles and dead straight, but they are not. That sort of thinking will quickly send you to the looney bin. If you think that 200’ is half way across the top of the village, measuring 200’ across the bottom of the village will not get you to the middle. Instead you have to take a crash course in alternative geometry :

Cylindrical polar coordinates

Because BRC is curved we have to think in in terms of curves.

Everything placed on the map will only fit if you imagine it as being a point that is

• So far away from the man
• So far around the city

This is what we call Cylindrical polar co-ordinates. On our case the cylinder is BRC and the pole is (of course) the man.

Playa coordinates

So Everything is a point on a line from the man. Find the man and you can map anything. However, it is kinda hard to find a tape long enough to measure from the man and it is even harder to develop a device that can tell you how far around the curve you are.

The angle problem can be solved by just using a relative distance. Instead of measuring the angle of the line, we’ll just measure its distance from a known point (like a radial road).

The distance problem can be solved be measuring everthing from another baseline. In this case, instead of using the man, we can measure everything from one of the streets that the DPW was kind enough to put there before we arrived

So, when we’re talking about placing points we’ll define 2 terms

• down : How far you measure down your line from the baseline
• across : when on the baseline you take your line

Mark everything from the man

So, this seems to make sense conceptually, but you really need to visualise it.

look at the photo on the left.

In this example, the front bumper of the truck is a point on our baseline. To extend that line down our camp all we need to do is line it up with the man (This, BTW, is why you mark the village EARLY before other camps block your view of the man).

• The Green line is the correct one
• the Red line is not.

Mark from the top baseline

So, now you know how get a line from the MAN. You need to do the DOWN and ACROSS Game.

To get ACROSS

You measure from a corner of the village around the road the required distance. Don’t worry about the curve too much, on this scale it doesn’t matter.

To get DOWN

Just run your tape measure from that point on your baseline out the required distance.

• Mark your point
• Make sure That point, the baseline point, and the MAN are in a straight line
• Re-measure it (twice)
• Mark your line.

Subdivide and conquer

So, we know that the village is BIG (Usually 450’ x 450’) and once you start to make a few calculation errors (trust me, you will) your errors are only going to get worse as you move away from the man.

To mitigate this effect Subdivde the Village.

Mark out big camps first.

divide the village into quarters or whatever Roger’s crazy map will allow you to do. Getting those big bits is easy. Then you have some more relative locations to work from (and you don’t need such a long tape measure).

You may not be sure if puce smurf butt camp is 100 or 120 feet from the road, but you’ll be pretty sure that is between camp x and smurf killer camp

Make other baselines if necessary

This also gives you other baselines

Once you have a sub-division you can take measurements relative to the corners of that area. Divide it up, look at the relation of the camps. If it look like 3 camps are spaced equally, then screw it, don’t bother measuring, just divide your area in thirds.

The look is the thing, not the accuracy.

Know the scale of your map

You will, of course, be working from an 8×11 scale map of the village and doing your best to get it to fit with what you have on the playa. The trouble with this is that the space you end up with may not be the same size as what you think it was.

So, putting real measurements on your plan is not going to help!!.

If you find out that the village is only 400 feet wide (instead of 430 feet), you are going to have to squeeze all your values. If you use the original measurements you will end up wondering why Red Smurf butt Camp is only 1 inch wide.

So you need to use relative values wherever possible. You need be able to think in terms of percentages and make adjustments on the fly

Some worked examples

So, rather than fill your brain with more useless theory, perhaps we should show you a few simple examples :

Finding the center of camp

Finding the center of camp is easy, you just measure from the half-way points. OF course you have to use the right half-way points.

• Find the middle of the top of the village, measure an equal distance from each corner – mark this point A.

• Find the middle of one side, measure one side street, find half way – remember this distance D.

• From point (A) run a straight line FROM THE MAN into the village.

• Measure along this line the distance (D)

Voila! – you have your center.

Marking points

Now we want to do a bizzare exercise of placing a random camp on the map. [geoff wrote so nicely, but there will be NO crazy camps this year. jolly]

This is where your 8×11 plans come in. From them you have to get the relative position of that camp in relation to the overall village.

Hopefully the plans will have a grid on them, or some sort of scale that will make it easy to say that it is “50 feet from the left road, 200 feet down into the village”

So you have to do some crazy math, factor in the scale of the map and eventually decide that the corners of the camp are “so many feet from the corners of the village.

The corner is key, because that’s where you will take your measurements from.

Then you just place your points :

• Measure a distance across the base line

• Run a line from the MAN through that point into the village

• Measure a distance DOWN that line

• Mark the point.

Place 2 points and check that they are right.

Get someone else to check them.

Drink some water, check the measurements again.

Drawing curves