teresa

Consider this installment one of an unknown number of installments from my Burning Man memories.  Sadly enough I made only mental notes while on the playa.  Although the day or two after we returned I sat with the notebook I had bothered to take to the playa and never use and mapped out with Elliott’s help what I could remember from our week long journey to Black Rock City.

First I would like to reflect on the weeks and days before our trip.  I think the thing that sticks out most in my mind is lists.  We had lists upon lists of things we needed.  Batteries to power our EL wire and headlamps.  1 ply toilet paper (we barely used except for that one late night number 2 [Elliott says not to include this but what do I care] when the porta john’s were all out, that was entertaining opening the door and shouting to Elliott can you get me some t.p.?).  Shopping lists were broken down by store including Home Depot, Target and BevMo.  Beyond shopping lists we had a list of things to pack, things we already owned like towels, tent and umbrella that we also wanted to take.  This was spread over hours of shopping, hundreds if not over a thousand dollars (hence a dollar short, a day late will be explained in a later post) of strange additions to our home, and multiple slips of paper that finally were completed just hours before leaving, the final item being ice, check.

Leading up to our departure we also transformed our hair to get into the mood.  For Elliott this meant a red mohawk  and for me it meant pink highlights

Not to skip around to much although FYI this was remidied by shaving the mohawk off for a short do for E and my hair is also shorter and darker with more socially acceptable burgandyish highlights now.

We left Sunday night after packing our stuff and the Blue Playou our camp’s Louisiana Bayou themed front porch and house facade and other miscellany bbq, kitchen tent, couches, bikes, etc into a trailer that would be hauled by an RV that we were lucky enough to catch a ride in.  Actually thats not entirely true Elliott and I split up for the ride down, he went with the towing RV I went with Mark in another smaller RV to keep him company and make sure he stayed awake for the ride.  We left around 7pm from the East Bay.  The ride wasn’t bad, slow and go,  We met some fellow burners along the way at gas stations which added to the excitement.  On a side note, I learned that I love those faux mocha’s and chai teas dispensed out of vending machines at gas stations.  We picked up more of our group in Sparks, where Brie, Kevin, Suppa Matt, Sandy and Christine joined us.  I took over driving the RV at some point, I think it was here.  We went through Fernley, where shortly after traffic started to pick up.  We were just short of our goal of getting in line with everyone else for the midnight opening of the gates.  We trudged along on the highway and then up to the gates where we arrived around 2am.  After waiting in line to ring the bell and roll in the dirt, at least for us newbies, we arrived at our reserved campsite (thanks to Christine and Ryan the stellar surveyors who with an early entry secured some awesome land) around 5 or 6am.  At this point excited to have arrived we decided to keep going and unload the trailer and start setting up.  Life was all good until in the afternoon a sand storm picked up that didn’t stop until the next morning.  I won’t dwell much on this except to say for the first day it was a tough way to get acquainted with what would be our accommodations for the next week.  We spent part of the time with the group in the kitchen tent drinking some helpful vodka punch although even that didn’t last long enough to make the misery of the storm go away.  We were well broken in, playa dust was everywhere, on our food, in our ears and hair, and on our minds, we were put into our place the first day.

For days after returning Elliott found that with a small gust he reacted as if he was still out on the playa looking around for loose items to secure and having that uncomfortable feeling in your belly that your shade structure and tent may get scooped up and blown away.