Genesis of the art car journey

This is a short story about how my life took an unplanned detour into the art car world.
At Smoldering Dude, most people use the term "mutant vehicles" since they mutate a mass produced vehicle into something else. It isn't quite apropos to what I do since I'm building the chassis from scratch. We're not mutating anything.
"That Thing In The Desert" (Smoldering Dude) gets bleeped out in the video, but it's only because we're not supposed to use it in any sort of commercial branding. I wish I could talk about it more since I never would have built an art car if I hadn't gone to Black Rock City. But, whatever. I think most people will get the point.
Intro and outro music is "Alive" by Soul in the Machine, the band described at the start of the video.