BM - Day Two - Settling In

Burning Man - Day Two

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

Timing gets all screwed at Burning Man. Plus when you're sleeping in a tent, there's nothing you can do about the light. So you're up early in the morning and down early at night. Even for night owls like me. My sleeping schedule is all fixed up when I get home after Burning Man, well, for at least a few days.

So bright and early I was up and eating a nutella sandwich for breakfast which was fantastic. The "saying" holds true that "Everything tastes better on the Playa." Even with all the damned dust. So that nutella sandwich was sooo tasty. And that was it for breakfast. I don't really eat a lot of food when out on the Playa, always have left overs of what I bring with me.

So after our filling breakfast, Gieve and I decided to go out for a ride around the City and out to the Man, sort of a traditional tour, to see the Man after getting all set up and settled in. But wow, the Playa was extremely mushy, lots of drifts built up after some of the severe dust storms Black Rock City had experienced before we came in. My bike is a "hybrid", mostly street, some mountain and it was too "street" to take those big drifts. You'd be biking along at a decent clip, hit one of those piles of dirt and either go wildly fishtailing around and come to a wrenching halt or basically get dumped over onto your side. I usually would have to waddle out of the drift, both feet on the ground, pushing and moving the bike like a little kid learning to ride. It was very hard work to do some of the simple touring we usually do. Usually it's nice and packed flat.

And then I came to realize why I should have been wearing my dust bandanna last night while setting up. And probably should have worn it more throughout the week. I had a pretty bad case of Playa Cough. That deep racking cough that never seems to want to cease with a hint of metallic in the back of the throat. Bleh. Some people cough up stuff. I'm betting they're smokers. I just coughed deep and hard with nothing to show for it. How disappointing. Well, this may have been the cause of the sore and raspy throat I developed, sounding like a well-smoked out, washed up blues singer. And I don't know if all the coughing was causing my arrhythmia to go off but it was bad, every other beat and just about all day.

But despite that, Gieve and I muscled our way out to the Man to have a look see. This year's theme was "The American Dream". So the Man was on this huge tower that you could go up in, wrapped in the flags of just about every country in existence and some that weren't anymore. We climbed up into the tower to look out over the City. And then back down after writing something somewhere on the Man (all wood structure). This is tradition too, since the Man is going to be burned at the end, you write what you want to go up with the smoke. The man had various interactive art projects placed around it and we wandered around, writing things, poking at things. There was a debarkation sort of thing supposed to be Ellis Island but arriving into the State of Burning Man and Black Rock City from the "regular" world. I went down the gangplank and wrote my Playa name in the book. Marty would have scoffed. I did it for fun.

Then back to camp to sit in Chez Bryan. Remember Sundancer, the intrepid desert cook from last night? Sundancer is also a Black Rock City Ranger, the civilian mediation "force" that patrols the city. He brings a full kitchen with him every year which he calls Chez Bryan. Last year and the year before, it was a small structure with the table and shelves and grill. We all kept trying to jam ourselves into this small space around the table to avoid the sun and to chat. So this year Sundancer decided to bring an entire portable car port, one quarter or so being the actual set up of Chez Bryan and the rest being a nice shaded are we ended up putting most of our chairs under. And where I ended up spending a good deal of time at Burning Man.

I sat and went through the event booklet, circling things that I wanted to try out or do. Of course, I never get to these things. Time is just so messed up and I usually don't have the energy. And since every Burn is different, apparently this Burn I just needed to sit around and do nothing. But I looked through anyway. Because you just never know.

Then Sundancer had his traditional dinner of marinated Ahi tuna with noodles and salad for the entire camp. Soooo tasty.

After dinner, we had a giant camp meeting with everyone of VICC (Vietnamese Iced Coffee Camp) attending except one, my co-worker who asked to come along, his camp having fallen apart. We went around saying names and Playa names. We have Bryan/Sundancer from Seattle with his friend Javier/Vortex (from San Francisco), a huge crew this year from New Mexico, namely Albuquerque, I don't even know if I'm going to get everyone right, or if I even remember real names, I get so used to Playa names: Ricky/Leo, Brian/Aiden, Charlie/Ruckus, Sean/Blue, Woody, Voyeur, Pan, Luz. Then the group that came to be known as The Israelis, two Israeli friends of Marty's (and mine a little) who live in San Francisco and two of their Israeli friends traveling the US: Gal, Liron, Etan, Shirry. Then the San Francisco crew: Heather/Fryii, Gieve/sometimes Buddha as called by others, Chris/Pretty, Dan, Chel. Then my co-worker Kiril/Anakin, who wasn't at the meeting. We set up coffee shifts and planned the service week. It was great and pretty amazing to get everyone together all at once.

In the photo are, from left to right - Blue, Aiden, Ruckus, Dan, Sundancer, Liron, Gal, Etan, Shirry.

I ended up going out after the meeting with the New Mexico crew. Woody was so completely smashed on something. But he was a fun and sweet "drunk" and I felt like staying with him to take care of him. We wandered around, finding a cool dome with "chill space" seating and caves. Chill Spaces are extremely important at Burning Man, spots you can go to where the energy is toned down, there is relaxing, not so stimulating music or much stimuli around. We plopped Woody down to watch folks dancing behind white screens so they looked like shadow puppets. Vortex (Javier, who is a professional dancer) got up behind one and did a lovely dance with us quietly cheering him on. I sat inside one of the cave features, looking out. It had rugs inside and was quiet but it was nice to have my body inside and poking my head out to watch, tucked between Aiden and another New Mexican sitting on either side. Very sweet.

Then Javier decided to go roller skating (yes this exists) and the NM crew disappeared somewhere and I went to go look for the pointe shoe tree, which had been listed as "if it fits, you can take a pair", but nothing fit. I have aircraft carriers for feet. It comes with being a 5' 9" woman. And that's nothing. I'm the second shortest woman on my mom's side of the family.

My home for a week.

On my way to my (hopefully) last Porta Potty visit for the night (uselessly) praying to the Porta Potty Gods, I saw 5 bikes zip by, one in front with LED wire made up as a Pac Man and four bikes with LED made up as the four ghosts chasing it. I laughed all the way back to the tent.