Without further adoā¦
Getting all the food ready. Carl made me set up a spreadsheet to inventory all our food. We were in charge of snacks, mostly, so youāll note a preponderance of juice and cookies and a dearth of things with like, protein. We still brought too much food. The cookies, however, were delicious.
All packed up and ready to go. You canāt see it so well in this picture, but the Volvo was packed with such expert expertness by Master Logician Carl that there actually was some rear visibility, which is always nice on a two day road trip. We are modeling the Chillba hats as well for your viewing enjoyment, and because we are dorks. I am particularly pleased in this picture because we are only half an hour behind scheduleā¦but in fact we are an hour and a half ahead of the real schedule in my head, which had us leaving two hours later than the time I told Carl. Iām sneaky, yes? He told me later that he was just as sneakily planning to drive the entire time, in case my stick-driving skills proved insufficient for the task. We both showed each other!
We had gone to Carlās ten year high school reunion the night before.
We had meant to stop in Oregon and camp at a campsite to save a little extra money but we couldnāt find the campsite and thus had to push on to Alturas, California, which is a big stop for Pacific Northwest burners. We saw all these cars and vans and trucks, packed to the gills and full of excited freaks, from then on out. The people in Alturas were very happy to see all of us and were very friendly.
We spent most of our time on this road behind a big truck, but we did get this moment of solitude in Nevada, on the way to Gerlach. Weāre about two hours away from the playa at this point.
Driving up to the main gate. Weāre already on the playa; see how flat it is? These are a couple of the Burma Shave-like signs that line the road to the gate where you hand over your ticketsā¦in our case, to a mostly naked fellow wearing a large hat and some gold body paint. We got there much earlier than weād anticipated (as a result of having driven an extra hundred miles the night before, donāt you know) and so it felt a little odd to just…be there. I was not so sure I even wanted to be there at this point in the game, yet all of a sudden, there we were.
The signs say “I confuse things with their names. That is belief–Jean Paul Sartre.”
This wasnāt set up yet, of course, when we got there on Monday but hereās a picture of our camp sign, made by Anna. We had a dim idea of where we were supposed to be camping but we went to the wrong place at first. We unloaded the bikes to go look at a playa map, and I was so excited to be out of the car that I took a quick ride around the blockā¦and passed our proto-camp, with everyone under the shade structure. I didnāt know half the people I was camping with and at first was not sure how I felt about that. By the middle of the week I was proposing marriage to any and all of my campmatesā¦and as Sundry said when I told her this; āYou werenāt even on a handful of Ecstacy!ā
A picture of two of the aforementioned campmates, one of whom is the lovely and talented Anna, who shows up fairly frequently in this journal, and the other of whom is the lovely and talented Paul, whom I hadnāt really known beforehand but to whom I proposed marriage at least once or twice. Paul juggled with fire in the inner circle (surrounding the Man) the night of the burn. With fire. We were positioned so we could see him and we were all really proud. He said later that as he was juggling (with fire) he just sort of stopped and realized that he was just having the time of his life, right there and then. Thatās great, Paul, but donāt you think when youāre tossing fire around you should keep your mind on what youāre doing?
Also, please note the little disco balls decorating the shade structure. Those were my idea.
And hereās the camp the first day of the salon, from a tower across the street. See all the bikes, see how popular we were? We hadnāt started valet parking yet at this point. Also, see how in some respects Burning Man resembles a gigantic trailer park, with all the cars and RVs and stuff? Weird, right?
And hereās the car and tent and my new bike. Home for the week.
Tomorrow: All things salon. Including the one and only shot I took of the much-touted Barbie Head.