BM - Day One - And We're Off!!

Burning Man - Day One

(8/25/08 to 8/31/08 written later)

(Click photos for larger versions. Copyright - Heather U-K).

I got way too little sleep last night and now have to get up and leave too damn early from work. But at least I got home and packed earlier than usual. Although I think we got on the road earlier than I usually do, around 10:30am and usually it's 12:30pm or 2:30pm. Packing was about three hours. Always is. And I should never be surprised that it doesn't take six hours to drive there, but twelve. Every time.

We drove up to Sacramento, which is on the way to Burning Man in any case, and visited with Marty's parents. Only his dad was there but we sat and chatted for a bit. Then to a brief lunch at McDonald's where I haven't eaten in years and may I never eat there again for more years to come. Although one can only hope that McDonald's is gone in many more years to come.

One of my favorite things in driving to Burning Man is seeing other Burners on the road, always identifiable by the amounts of crap jammed into or strapped onto vehicles. There weren't so many at the beginning, too early I guess. But later in the drive, we saw more and more, giving the surfer "hang loose" sign as we passed by.

Then we hit the long two lane road up to the gate, it's about 90 miles to the BM entrance but I think it usually takes six, considering that traffic reduces itself to a crawl. It seems there were a lot of accidents too, on this road, more than usual. Mostly involving RVs, some that looked like they had rolled over and been twisted apart at the seams and one that was a burnt out husk that we didn't know the story behind. I didn't hear later about anyone dying at Burning Man in a car fire so I'm assuming the people all got out in time. But dang. Does that mean your Burn is over? How do you get home? Icky.

Plus, later we found out there had been a massive dust storm that shut down the city "Introdus" and thusly we were sitting there for quite some time, again, I think about six hours? Usually only Exodus from the City is this bad.

You can see the line up here, heading into the dust hanging over the Playa. Miles of cars and RVs ahead of us, single file. And this is still miles from the main City gates. Fun, eh?

But Gieve and I passed the time chatting about all sorts of things and eventually we got onto the topic of photography, in which we are both interested. Gieve has a decent point and shoot which he has always used on automatic. It's taken great photos. I use my Canon Rebel DSLR on
manual. We started talking about manual settings and then I started explaining the basics of photography and how to use a digital camera on manual settings. We passed some time, taking photos, since we were at a dead standstill for quite some time. It was fun and as good for my own sake as it seemed for him. Always good to review aperture and shutter settings.

Here's Gieve in the driver's seat of Zippy (Marty and my Subaru - the truck has always come to Burning - Zippy did an admirable job). Gieve did a lot of the driving, fortunately, I was so tired.

But we got into Black Rock City in the dark, as usual. We wandered only a little bit but found VICC fairly quickly. Always good to have the address before hand. Of course, Avalon Village is rather big, hence at least the little bit of wandering. We started setting up our tent by handheld lamp and car headlights. It was a little windy but not too bad and not too dusty either. I didn't even need my bandana although later learned I should have worn it anyway.

After we got set up, we have a very fancy dinner with Sundancer, our resident Black Rock City Ranger who delights in challenging difficult situations by creating practically gourmet meals. So we ate crumb-crusted scallops with salad and such. Heh. Sometimes I just love certain aspects of Burning Man over others.

I think we ate dinner around 2am and I was so tired at that point that I was starting to hallucinate which I don't think I've ever done before when tired. I could have sworn at one point that I saw a black dog darting away out of the corner of my eyes. There are no animals allowed on the Playa, it would just be cruel. So I was fairly certain it was not an actual dog, but that strange "corner of the eye" sort of effect. But then I started seeing slugs all over the ground and I knew I needed to go to bed as soon as I could. I almost felt like I'd taken Ambien but I hadn't. It was quite an odd space to be in.

So we crawled into our blow-up bed, saying a prayer to the Playa Gods to not have to pee in the middle of the night, meaning crawling out of your warm bed, stumbling through the dark and the cold to the Porta-Potties, but somehow they never hear your prayers. It was very hard to sleep although it was quiet. Which will be this night only. But finally we both drifted off.

To suddenly wake to morning. Gieve and I sat up and stared at each other. Because in our minds, it shouldn't have been morning yet and we were both sort of stunned and surprised because we really needed more sleep. It was bright all around, that sort of white, yellowish morning light you get on the Playa, not just uni-directional as if someone turned on their car headlights. And then after a few moments, it flicked off like a switch. Completely dark again.

Later, asking around, none of our other campmates had experienced such a thing. So Gieve and I think we were abducted by aliens. At least that's the colorful version I like to spread around.