Burningman Oddity - 1999 White Chevy Astro Van Awd - World Famous Story And Van on 2040-cars

VAN IS LOCATED IN CALIFORNIA -

The story of this van is a legend at Burningman, and has made it around the world.  Since I bought the van, my life has been out of control.  Whoever gets the van has some exciting times ahead.  It just seems to have a mind of its own, and is always involved in some crazy events.  I wonder what happened in it before I purchased it....WOW!   All of the writing has washed off of the outside, and inside, except for 4 crosses on interior windows, and what is left on the dash board. 

The van runs great still but the check engine light has been going on and off.   When I ran injector cleaner through it stayed off for a while.  I believe a good tune up and new plugs and a fuel filter will have it running great.  It also needs new breaks and rotors.

The is the story.  Anyone who copies or reproduced this story in any way without my permission will be sued.  There is a book in the works and much more info to the story than is being used to sell the vehicle. 

My Van And I       -       A Burningman 2013 True Story

I'm Josh Gatto.  Unfortunately, this story is all true.  This was my first time back to Burningman since 2008.  I had just completely recovered from a bad head injury and could finally handle a festival again.  woo hoo!

Well, it all started after my girlfriend and love of my life, kicked me out after over two years of being together for some other guy she now liked.  I was living back at my parents house for three weeks before finding out that my ex was already engaged to her new guy.  It was just too much.  I lost her, my pig, my chickens, my farm, my kids(her kids), it was everything........I had a framed picture that my ex had given to me of us together in the picture that said "Love Forever" on the image.  That picture was now torturing me.   I just wanted to burn it at the Temple and let it all go and feel better.  Burning the picture was my main reason for going.

I had almost no money.  I did have a vehicle though.  It was a van that I had just purchased about two weeks earlier and was very excited about owning.  I had already missed the beginning of Burningman and decided to post an ad on Craigslist Austin looking for anyone that I could find to pay for the gas to Burningman if we took my vehicle.  I got a response from an Austin girl that had never been to Burningman, but wanted to go for the reason of finding her ex boyfriend and trying to fix things.  At 2am the next morning two broken people left Austin for Black Rock City.

On the drive the girl was fairly paranoid about some things that she said she had done to some people in the past.  She thought they were after her to kill her, or to turn her into a sex slave.  She would get a little wiggie, then she would take her medicine and begin to relax and get really mellow.  On the drive we switched drivers several times over the 33 hours on the road.  She was the worst driver, but we somehow made it.

When we arrived, she had a ticket and I did not.  I was wanting to find someone with an extra ticket at the gate somehow, but there was nobody there, as we were so late arriving.  We arrived at 3pm on Saturday just before the burn.  I made a really bad decision (on no sleep for days)of letting her take my van in and set up camp.  She was suppose to look for a ticket for me on the inside while I looked for one on the outside and once either of us found one we would then call the other person.  So, I hitched a ride back out to Gerlach with a really nice lady.  Once I got back to Gerlach, I got out and made a sign.  I held the sign up and the very first car coming by pulled over and had an extra ticket.  It was amazing luck! Maybe.

I hitched a ride in and was back to the gate in 20 minuites.  I walked in with a gallon of water and the contents in my pockets.

Once I got in, I went to where I had showed her that I wanted to camp but I never found the girl or my van.   Phone reception was GONE, and we could not communicate any longer.  She was nowhere to be found.

After loosing everything important in my life (my girl, my pig, my dog, my chickens, my rooster, my family and my fish) I had now lost just about everything else that I had left.  Despair began to kick in.  I had nothing but a gallon of water, the clothes on my back, and $120 in cash.

Once inside, I walked and biked around for three days and hit every street on the playa looking for my van, and for that girl.  I even posted at the info center as well looking for her.  The framed picture I had come to burn was in the van.   I looked for days..... I slept in the worst places, once on the playa, and relied on people I had just met for everything I needed while I was inside.  I made some really good friends in the process of surviving out there. 

Loosing everything I had and having almost nothing was an amazing experience.  Once I was able to accept it, it was very liberating.  I have never experienced anything like it before.  I'm not sure what to say about it except that it was very good for me to reach such a low.  I had no responsibilities, I had no material items, I just was, and that was it!  It was surreal.

The worst low came when the Temple burned and I was not able to get the picture to the Temple in time to burn it.  It was in the van. Hours before the burn, I hit one of my lowest points ever.  All I wanted to do was to put the picture on the Temple, sit with it for a while, and then burn it.  I had made it so far and could not get this one thing done.

The burn was coming in one hour.  The last time I had cut my hair was four days before my head injury two and a half years earlier.  I was celebrating my recovery and my hair represented a dark part of my life.  I cut all my hair off and was able to burn it at the temple.  I'm starting over.  My new hair will represent something much better.

I was not able to get the picture to the Temple.  Maybe I was never suppose to burn it, but I'm bringing it back next year to try again anyway.  Hopefully the reasons for everything will be clearer at that point.

The Temple burned.
I partied that night.

On Monday, at the end of my rope and after doing 50 miles through the desert over the last several days looking for my van, I began to ask for the Rangers help.  I spoke to every Ranger I could find and showed them pictures of the van I was missing.  Finally one of them had a winning idea.  His phone worked!  He called the girls phone and left a message that the vehicle had been reported stolen.

Later that night I got a bunch of text that showed up on my phone.  It was from the girl with my van, and she said the she had not stole the van and that it was at the Burningman tow yard.  Another text said "I'm sorry, I'll buy you a new one."  That text worried me.  I got up from where I was sleeping in the middle of the night around 4am and got on my bike and went ridding off to the tow yard.

My van was there.

There was writing all over the outside of the van.  I opened it up and it was trashed.  There were crosses on the inside of each window that had the word "sanctuary" under each one.  I crawled in and passed out, dead tired.

When I woke up two hours later there was a group of tow truck drivers gathered around talking near the back of the vehicle.  I crawled out and began to talk to them.  I was greeted with "is this your van" by one if the tow drivers.  I said it was, and asked him where they had found it.  I was told by the tow driver that had towed the van back, that it was found way up on a hill.  He pointed and said, "you see that hill right there, you see the one behind it, you see the one behind that.....it was way up there".  I asked how far away it was found and he replied "at least 30 miles from the tow area."

He then told me he had picked up the girl walking back to Burningman from the van.  She was walking the entire 30 miles back.  He said she might have walked 6 miles already when he picked her up.  She could have died up there.  He said she was acting really crazy, and he said that in all his years of driving he had never had a rider freak him out as much as this girl did.  The driver also told me that the girl had told him that she had put monster energy drink in the gas tank with some hydrogen peroxide.  I was slightly confused at this point.

I began to search through my stuff in the van and found the girls medication in my bag.  All I could imagine was that she had lost her meds and went nuts.   She had gone out there to fix her relationship but she never found the guy she was looking for, never found me, lost her meds, and lost her mind.   I do remember that at one point during the drive from Austin she had said that the people who wanted to kill her could not do it if she was in a church.  She had transformed the van into a church van.  At one point she thought that a car driving behind us was her killers and she held her bible up the the window as the car drove by.  That was weird!  She even said she had become a nun so they could not take her life or turn her into a sex slave.  She talked about human trafficking and was calling churches telling them her story on the drive.  It was drama.

So when she had the van, she really thought something or someone was going to come in to the van to get her when she was doing what she did to the van.  It's like a real live horror movie that existed only in her mind.  It was real and very intense.  It must have been crazy what she was feeling and what she was experiencing while doing what she did to the van.  Only she knows how extreme is really was thinking they were just outside the van wanting to kill her.

I stayed with the van after the tow company left Burningman and was the only vehicle left there near the exit gate.  My insurance company said they would cover the claim under "stolen and vandalized", so I waited for a tow truck they were sending me.

I did not report it as stolen, in order to keep the girl out of trouble.  I didn't think her acts were criminal,  just crazy.  I don't like getting anyone in trouble.

The van and I were towed into Reno where I slept in the van behind the car shop over the weekend waiting on the insurance estimator to show up.  Their estimate was less than the $500 deductible, and with no keys, no mechanical estimate could be done.  I called the girl to ask her to send the keys.   She said she would.

Five days later the keys showed up at the FedEx store in Reno.  I was staying at a weekly hotel waiting for the keys to show.  The morning The box showed up in Reno, I got a call from the Reno police to let me know they had opened and searched the box because it only had a first name on it.  She had sent it to "Josh".  The cops thought that was strange enough to open it.

When the keys showed up, I got on my bike to do the six miles to the FedEx store where they were waiting.  On the way there, I was coming over a bridge with lots of cars behind me and I had a very bad bicycle accident when trying to go from the street to the sidewalk.  I flew off the bike like superman. A bunch of school children getting out of school saw me do this.  Both arms were hurt so bad, still are at the time of this writing, and I can barely use a can opener at this point which is a huge improvement.  Back to the story... I had to ditch my bike and take a bus to get the keys from the FedEx office.

Once I got to the van with the keys I had to fill it with gas.  I purchased a gas can at the gas station and filled it.  By this time my arms were hurting so bad they were almost unusable.  I got help filling the tank with the gas. I put the key in the ignition, and it started up after a few trys.   By this time I couldn't even turn the key with my right hand.  I reached over and started the van with my left hand.

The van started up but ran really rough for the first few minutes.  It was shaking like crazy and a cloud of playa dust shook off of the van.  after a few minuter it began to run much smoother.  Once running a little better, I took it to the gas station and filled it all the way up.  I drove it for a while with the words still on the van but way too many people were looking at me.  I started to feel like I was the crazy one at that point.  It had rained and some if the paint was coming off so I went ahead and washed the van and most of everything on the van came off of the outside with a high pressure sprayer.  It was acrylic paint.  I finished my week up at the hotel to let my busted arms rest. Everything began to swell and turn purple and I ended up going to the ER to get X-rays taken.  I'm in luck (if that's what you call this), no broken bones.

When my week was up at the hotel in Reno,  I left to California to see a friend who told me that he had a job for me, and a place to stay. Well, he didn't have either for me when I got here.  It all fell through.
So I have been living in my freaky van right by the bay.  Just waiting time.   It's really nice here.  I can't even make it home, but don't really have a home any longer anyway.

As of now, I have been here one week looking for work and think I want to live in California.  Everyone seems really happy here.

One week after arriving here, I went out drinking with a friend.  We were walking back to our vehicles when a truck came backing out of a driveway very fast, totally out of nowhere, and it hit me hard as I tried to jump out of the way.  I got hit on my right arm,  the arm that hurts the most from the bicycle accident.  "Ouch" I yelled!  I guess I was just in shock and just ended up telling the the guy that I was ok.  I didn't want to get him in any trouble.

Later, I am realizing its a little worse than I thought.

Ouch ouch ouch.  Did I just hit by a truck!

ADDED....I found a job and went to work for a guy I just met installing glass.  On my way to work one day I was greeted before I got to his home by several of his friends.  They thought I was the EMS for some reason.  I asked what was going on and was told that my boss was having a asthma attack and that they had called 911.  I had just passed a bad rollover accident on the way to work and knew that all the EMS in the area were tied up.  I rushed down to where he was laying on the ground getting CPR from a lady.  I told them that the EMS was busy just down the street and offered to take him to them.  We put him in the vehicle and drove him off of the property up to the main road where EMS was just showing up.  When we pulled him from the van he was lifeless.  CPR had continued on the drive and when we pulled him out blood from his lungs went all over the van.  It was on my pillow and blankets.  EMS tried to work on him but he was gone.  I had just lost my boss, my job, and my place to sleep.  I spent all the money I had made from working with him on hotel because I didn't want to sleep in the van where he died, and on new blankets and pillows.  I just lost everything again.  It was tough to move back into the van again and sleep where he had died, but I finally did it.  This van is haunted!  Believe me!  My boss will be along for the ride.  I always feel like I have company in the van now.  Super creepy!  His name is TJ, and I have named the van Moses.


 Oh yea, back to the story....

While I was in Reno I spoke to the girl that had taken the van.  She compared her self to Moses, and said she had taken the van up on to the mountain to hear from God.  She said she then went and wrote Gods commandments all over my van, and on the inside.   She wanted me to take pictures because she could not remember everything that god had told her.  I can't believe she wrote Gods commandments on my van!  How common is this kind of thing? Wow!   So the story of the van is one of the craziest stories to come out of the biggest party in the world ever.  The van is a legend and I want it to go to someone who appreciates it for where it's been, and where it's going.  I'm sure it has a crazy future coming up.  The skull and crossbones on the front of it are kind of crazy as well.  The cobweb picture was taken the last day my boss was alive on the way off of his property.

It's clean of most of the writing now.  I also have an item that the girl burned as her "burn", that will be included.  Its a green jacket.  It represents madness and should be framed or something.  Please bid on this van and bring it back to burning man next year.  I have to sell it to move into a room for the winter,  it's too cold to be sleeping in a van.  

I don't want to loose it, but its just too cold.....

: )