We Ride Together: Passing the Torch at Burning Man 2025

This year, I’m heading back to Black Rock City — but not with the wife. This time, I’m bringing my oldest son. A virgin burner. A wide-eyed traveler stepping into a place where the surreal is ordinary, time dissolves into dust, and stories are told not in words, but in neon, rebar, and fire.

He’s asked to ride my original tenner bike — my trusty steed. The same clunky steel frame I once pedaled across the playa years ago, when the Man still burned with a little more anarchy and a lot less internet. It might seem like a small thing, but for me, it’s symbolic. He wants to “keep it real,” and I can’t think of anything more real than feeling the alkali crust crack beneath your wheels as a mutant vehicle hums by in the distance, blaring opera at sunrise.

This trip isn’t just a rite of passage for him — it’s one for me too. I’ve spent years trying to explain to my kids what Burning Man is. Not just the dust, or the art, or the fire, but the why. Why I go. Why I build. Why I burn.

That’s part of why I started working on a Burning Man–inspired music project this year — to translate the untranslatable. A soundtrack to the stories. For him. For me. For anyone who’s ever tried to explain to their kid why a giant wooden man in the desert matters so damn much.

I think he thinks I’m a bit crazy. He’s probably right. But I also see that spark — that glint in the eye every true burner has before their first burn. It’s curiosity. It’s excitement. And maybe, just maybe, a readiness to understand what it means to be part of something bigger, weirder, and more fragile than anything else on Earth.

This year, we ride together.