From petrie@cdr.stanford.edu Mon Oct 19 17:23:40 1998 Flags: 000000000401 Received: from java.Stanford.EDU (java.Stanford.EDU [36.37.0.13]) by cdr.stanford.edu (8.8.7/8.8.8) with ESMTP id RAA26659 for ; Mon, 19 Oct 1998 17:23:38 -0700 Received: (from petrie@localhost) by java.Stanford.EDU (8.8.5/8.6.6) id RAA02174; Mon, 19 Oct 1998 17:25:26 -0700 (PDT) Sender: Charles Petrie Date: Mon, 19 Oct 98 17:25:26 PDT From: petrie@cdr.stanford.edu (Charles Petrie) Reply-To: petrie@stanford.edu (Charles Petrie) To: MrGreg38@aol.com Subject: Re: Land Yacht In-Reply-To: Your message of Sat, 17 Oct 1998 00:27:14 EDT Cc: petrie@cdr.stanford.edu Message-ID: > Dear Mr. Petrie, > > My name is Greg Abbott. I am the Captain and builder of the land > yacht. as for the day of the accident, I had two martinis in the hours > before the yacht was rolling. I was not drunk. I was given a drink by > a mustached man who wanted to " toast the man who built this yacht" > which later turned out to be GHB. I have no memories of anything after > this point. Everything that I know about the crash I have heard > secondhand; however, I have been told that the man who gave me the > drug is the one who was trying to crash the yacht, and I was trying to > save it. This makes sense - why would I spend all the time, resources > and effort to build this thing just to crash it!? I'll have you know > that after the crash I woke up in the medical trailer covered in > blood, vomit and bruises >From the reaction to the GHB. They told me > that I had been in a GHB coma for 4 hours, as evidenced by the EKG > patches I was still wearing. > > I am not an alchohol-guzzling yahoo out to maim and kill: I am > an artist, educator and businessman. I teach at the Southern > California Institute of Architecture. I have a furniture design and > manufacturing business, and I fabricate large scale public art > works. I have also worked with the mentor program and actively counsel > youths in substance abuse. > > I think you are attacking the wrong foe here. We are improving > the yacht for next year by installing all-wheel brakes and auxillary > power. We are also going to have a trained crew to keep out the > riff-raff. If you want to attack something, why not ban the weekend > warriors who think that Burning Man is a giant fuckfest to be taken > advantage of? These are the real threat to our event. I have been a > citizen of Burning Man for three years now, and am the founder of > Comfort Camp; as sorry as I am for your accident, your zeal by which > you attach the yacht only makes you sound bitter. I would rather, out > of the spirit of comraderie, have your input on how to make it > safer. You are at the mechanical engineering department at Stanford, > aren't you? > Looking forward to your > response, > > Greg Abbott Dear Mr. Abbott, How kind of you to write. I am healing well enough, thank you for asking. The first three weeks were kind of miserable, and I lost a month of work, but I am hoping to get off crutches next month. Then we will see the extent of permanent injury. Mountain hiking may be out, but time will tell. I see that you are keen to defend yourself, but saying that you only had two matinis before sailing seems an odd way to do so. I am glad to hear that you counsel others about substance abuse though. If the purpose of your letter was to persuade me not to attempt to have land yachts banned at the event, my advice is to seek a good editor before you write, as it had the opposite effect. The sense I have from your letter is that you feel you have no responsibility (rather you were the injured party) and sailing your yacht at BM is more important than any other consideration. You seem to think that I should blaim some anonymous sexual offenders rather than the Captain of the yacht that injured me. In fact, you don't seem to think I should be bitter at all, and rather should engage in a friendly design discussion (although, if you read my web page, you would see that I was a computer scientist, not an ME). With regard to design, you seem to think that everything would have been alright if you had had brakes. Things would have been better if you had just pointed out to open desert or dropped your sails. Brakes were actually fairly irrelevant in my opinion. The actions of the pilot are much more important. I am sorry to hear that you passed out with symptoms consistent with GHB. I wish I had passed out. I was in utter pain and misery during that same four hours, while I was being transported to the hospital, doing somewhat more bleeding than you. But thank you for letting me know you had a bad time too, even if briefly. You seem to suspect that I think you deliberately crashed the yacht when of course you would want to save it. Please be assured I have never thought this. I do have reason to believe you were drunk and incompetent. (And where were your friends and fellow sailors during all this?) I really don't know what happened up there on the poop deck, but I am unlikely to be sympathetic about the loss of your yacht. Your response is so odd (and self-centered), that I doubt I can explain it to you. Let me just say that a) drinking before taking out such a vehicle in a crowded camp is not a good idea, and b) having any such large vehicle with such a potentially strong power source near a crowded camp is not a good idea. Notice that b), while not a great idea, becomes a terrible idea with a). I thought your land yacht was great. That is why I was helping to push it, and taking your shouted insults at the pushers in the spirit of fun. It did not occur to me that it would be uder the control of someone deliberately impaired (in addition to any involuntary drug ingestion) and I certainly trusted the builder to keep things safe. I did not have your experience with these vehicles at the time, but I now have more than enough to understand that the land yacht is inherently unsafe - nothing can prevent a pilot (whoever is at the wheel) from having impaired or just poor judgement (including about who is allowed on the bridge). The land yacht should be banned near camp for the same reason that fires are banned near tents - any accident could be catastrophic. There are two separate issues. One is your personal responsibility. Let's see. You drank before sailing. You didn't control the bridge. Thus you didn't control the ship. And, the Ranger Director had a promise from one of your camp members that the yacht would not be sailed at all, but you guys sailed it anyway. But let that drop for now. You and I could argue over that one all day and not be moved from our opinions. Look at the other issue - the danger of sailing a land yacht near camp. Imagine your yacht had not hit the temple. Imagine that it went further, picking up speed, and then plowed into the main encampment. Imagine, if you can, what would happen to people's bodies when your vehicle struck them. (Really, think about it a bit.) You were lucky this time. It could have easily happened. If you would like to campaign to ban sex at BM, please do so. I will work to prevent vehicles like yours from hurting anyone else. I can only urge you to place the well-being of people above your urge to sail a large vehicle at a crowded festival. And I have some faint hope that imagining the scenario above might persuade you to do so. I don't appreciate your attitude and position any more than you seem to like mine. But I am pleased that you did choose to write and am appreciative of the opportunity to exchange views with you. Charles Petrie ----------------------------------- Stanford Center for Design Research http://cdr.stanford.edu/~petrie -----------------------------------