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A
Man and His Dinosaur For 51 weeks of the year, Justin Lanphear is a landscape designer with an odd hobby: reconstructing a 1970 Frito-Lay van at night. But from Aug. 28 to Sept. 4, the week of this year's Burning Man festival, his old delivery van will come to life as the bio-diesel-fueled "Black Rock Triceratops" in the prehistoric landscape of western Nevada.
"Burning Man is the Mecca for manifestations," says Lanphear, who makes annual pilgrimages to the desert of Black Rock City, Nev., to join an extreme society where self-expression reigns and personal manifestations are shared. Burning Man is a lifestyle. The art and music festival runs on a gift economy; alcohol, food and sun block circulate freely among Burners. Lanphear felt compelled in his fifth year of "burning" to offer his gift in the form of a potato-chip truck turned triceratops. Lanphear's vision was to take something prehistoric, "replace the dino-based fuel it ran on and bring it to a more sustainable future." He hopes the dinosaur will inspire other festival participants not to rely so heavily on petroleum-based fuels for their own projects.
On a sweltering summer Saturday, Lanphear and a dozen friends gather at the Eugene Sign and Awning Company garage where Lanphear's right-hand man, Darin Hauer, works during the week. The scene is a mix of hard work and hangovers. Lanphear wants his alternatively powered silver dinosaur to glow with incandescent red neon lights shooting from underneath its belly, horns, forehead and tail. Partyers will perch atop its top deck as the vessel weaves its way through the desert "playa," while the host pours from a barrel of Lanphear's friend's homebrew, TriceraHops. Lanphear hops around like a painter looking for new perspectives in a portrait, making sure all the angles are correct and checking that the large-scale dino looks like his pet-sized triceratops at the workstation. His eyes seem constantly to be searching for the answer to a math equation, whether he's visually measuring how the legs will retract or calculating his time before takeoff. Bringing 31-year-old Lanphear's vision to reality has taken the dedicated help of more than 30 friends, countless 14-hour days and more than $8,000. The transformation involved sanding down the van's exterior to a silver shine, building a tail, bending metal to create pudgy dinosaur legs, padding the interior — and doing all of this while ensuring the vehicle's safety. Even after 33-hour weekend work binges at the shop, the vehicle still needs work to make it look like its mini-me. Lanphear feels that he couldn't do this project without the support of his Eugene community. He relies on his friends showing up each weekend to lend their welding skills and creativity. "This town happens to be a great place to network. Pretty soon you can do things that you might have thought were on the edge of possibility," he says. His own sweat- and oil-spattered jeans show that he's devoted dawn-til-dusk energy on the project. Lanphear's car is only one of a three-part fleet voyaging from Eugene to Black Rock City this year. The Black Rock Triceratops will caravan along with Jade Mangiafico-Greensberg's "Temple of Pure White Sin" and Gaia Tribe's "Voyager," both shortbuses turned party lounges. More than 1,500 art cars travel to Burning Man annually, but friends are sure that Lanphear's creature will be among the festival favorites. "Justin's car will be one of the top dozen art cars at the festival," says Mangiafico-Greensberg. Soon enough the tools will be pushed back into the corners, witty costumes will cover bodies, and the dinosaur will make its slow, bio-diesel-fueled, less-traveled trek towards the dusty alkaline playa.
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