I foolishly decided to skip breakfast, as day three of ramen with ketchup (ick) or handfuls of cashews lost its appeal and so I just ended up having a lot of powerade then leaving the camp with Lucas to go and explore a bit of C and D some more as we'd not really been out around the back end of the site yet, just into the Esplanade and Deep Playa. We walked, I think, and loaned our bikes to Dave maybe? Either way I seem to recall being on foot, and also in my most favourite outfit of the entire time, black dress with red petticoat and giant boots.
Walking around was great, and we met some interesting people and saw some good things, like the BALL PIT which we revisited later, and Barbie Death Camp. My favourite part was easily getting to this chillout camp with a lot of army-style cots set up in the shade with tonnes of burners 100% passed out around the camp, and on the cots, and Lucas had a lie down. I saw a couple of dudes on a trampoline so instead I decided to go and do that.
Barbie death camp and Wine Bistro!
After this I was pretty fucking exhausted, so we decided to make our way back to camp but we found, en route, SNOW CONES!! Well, shaved ice in a plastic cup that had syrup on it. Kind of fucking awesome. I knew I was fading a bit though, there was this really hyper chatty virgin burner in the queue talking to everyone, and despite it also being my first time I had no interest in talking to him. I think the lack of sleep and food was getting to me.
I got back to camp and everyone was laughing/sympathising at how weak and pathetic I was. They took amazing care of me, especially this girl we camped with who was called Kristin. We'd met her the day at Reno, one of Fredrik's friends and was quite close with a couple of the dudes who ran our camp (hence why we were there.) Hanging out with here turned out to be pretty great, but I had no idea that she was SO good at foot rubs. Basically I was collapsed in a camping chair, in my boots and all my petticoats all floofed up around me, and Kristin just came over and sat on the cooler and gave me the most spine-tinglingly good foot rub with special cream and let me tell you I love a foot rub but out in the desert? Holy FUCK.
Kristin and Fredrik
AND THEN - dust storm! For the first (and what would be the last) time. It felt much crazier than it would because we were all quite hammered at this point. I went to the loo, and noticed that in the direction I was walking, it was pretty bad. On my way back, I was walking into the dust much more and had to immediately get my goggles and dustmask when I got back. But we went out to the meditation deck, and watched the sun go down behind this small dust storm which subsided quickly enough. It was lovely.
Night time at Burning Man is so fucking amazing.
The Happy Dome with shotskis. This photo taken by someone on my facebook friends list :)
Eventually we finally sorted our shit out enough to fucking gather everyone together and head out properly. Getting things sorted is SO HARD because there's no light and you can spend an hour getting exhausted over and over trying to find your fucking socks. Additionally, by now my tiredness from earlier was catching up with me and I was feeling kind of you know, worn out and that slight hangover-y feeling you get when you realise now I'm going to stop. Other people were fine though more or less. This was the only night ALL of us - so me, Lucas, Espen, Dave, Kristin and Fredrik - went out as a group. I put lights on my boots that night which was fun, and after Dave said it was a good move as no matter how crowded the place was he could always locate me by finding my boots.
We walked out along the rim of the Esplanade, and this amazing thing happened which is hard to describe in text without me being able to wave my hands excitedly as I talk and jump up and down and raise my voice, but, we were walking. And down a street, in the distance, there's this WHOOSH - WHOOSH - WHO-WHOOSH - WHOOSH. In a rhythm. It's some guys with an art car that has about four or five fire funnels, and each of them are shooting off at a time in a big fire ball.
WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHOOSH.
I make everyone stop and look as it's coming towards us. It reaches us, but stops doing the fire, and stays still for a minute. I run up underneath, and look up at them sadly and scream (despite my extremely hoarse throat from all my laughing on the trampoline earlier)
"DO IT AGAIN!!!"
And they looked at me. So I said even more: "DO IT AGAIIIIIIIIN!!!" .... "DO IT AGAIN!" .. "DO IT AGAIN?!!!"
And they looked at me again, and waited, and then..in a perfect beat of like three, two, one,.. they set all FIVE fire funnel things off at once and I just went absolutely crazy. The heat you feel on your face suddenly is super fucking incredible. And it was the best thing ever. It really was. lol happy days.
This image is from 2009, but I'm convinced this was the same car
Anyway, we continued on our merry way although I didn't have the best time this night as I mostly was feeling 'gotta lie down gonna die oh god so tired' but everyone else was having great lovely fun. We stopped so Kristin could talk to God on the phonebox, and met a guy with a bike he'd modified to look like a wolf and I suggested he call it Arthur.
At one point we finally found an IRISH bar and I was like OKAY IRISH YEAH WOO even though I wasn't feeling it, we went in because the had fucking sofas thank christ. So I kind of fell onto this sofa and everyone went to go and investigate, with people dancing on the bar, and the lady behind giving you beers etc which was great. Fredrik got up on the bar in his kind of chicken outfit and started dancing which was hilarious, but then a lady up on the bar got a little bit too sexy for us so we got freaked out and left. I had to physically almost drag Lucas, the chattiest man on earth that night :3, from another friend he'd made sitting outside.
We headed down towards the sound camps, including Disorient (which I thought was Opulent Temple for about four days because I'm a dumb newbie.). Disorient was actually fucking awesome, because they had this super intense light effect strobing the whole time we were in there that I'd never seen anything like, three lights each projecting R, or G, or B, and flashing in such a way as to make it look like you were viewing the world through old school 3D goggles. And also, a lot of fire dancers.
Here's an excerpt we laughed at from the BRC newspaper, BRC Weekly (formerly Piss Clear) which is well worth a look if you're interested. I like the stereotypes of burners that you meet especially.
I’d like to end this with a quote from a good friend of mine, Bill. He’s a clever bitch: “Dubstep is literally the rhythm of vomiting. The staccato expectoration of bile punctuated by intermittent cacophonous attempts at melody that more resembles a broken ackhammer operated by a crack-head. It is the favorite music of those incapable of actually dancing,Lol.
simply because everyone looks like an asshole trying to dance to it.
We went up and down this sort of bit of 2:00 up into about E or D? And after a certain point me and Dave basically crashed again and went and sat down on the sand while people were making friends and dancing. He was a bit disorientated, as basically where we were, we were looking right out into deep desert. There was nothing there, no outer limit, just black emptiness and hundreds of neon bikeriders and art cars.
"Where are we?"
So I drew a map in the sand. Burning Man is a semi-circle.. and we're camped here.. and this is ..A and B and C.. and this is 2 O Clock.
"No, but... where.. are we?"
Later I realised this was hilarious as we'd been sitting under a giant luminous question mark.
A lot of our chat of this evening ended up being 'GOD i wish we could find an art car' but eventually, with me playing camp teacher and always rounding people up (sorry i have a tendancy to do that, although dave did thank me for keeping people together) I said look I'm dying I need to go back to camp, and actually everyone was down with that so that was cool. When we got back, Dave basically crashed out immediately, as did Lucas more or less, Fredrik was starving so he went to sort that and Kristin went on adventures. Me and Espen found a large group of people at late o clock sitting around/lying down on the meditation deck, so we decided to get up there and lie down too. Which was a great decision.
It is extremely beautiful to look at the night sky when you're deep in the desert. The level of light out there is so low that there's virtually no interference with the view of the sky and it is stunningly gorgeous, the stars. So we were up there, for a while, and eventually we were a part of the conversation, lying on my back talking with all these people that I didn't even know what they looked like, laughing my ass off. I laughed so much that my leg ended up getting reflexy and twitching and I was just dying and my throat making this husky goddamn sound because I was almost voiceless.
It was one of the best nights ever, really. ESPECIALLY when the dude who was lying next to us received extra blankets from his girlfriend who returned from her tent, and let us have some. It gets so cold at night. So we just made such good friends with this guys, and everyone and I was laughing so much I apologised. (I apologise a lot everywhere I go, nervous habit). And they said "WOMAN, are you apologising for laughing??? You're not allowed to do that, laugh more"! and that was such a great moment because it just kind of dawned on me that even here, on the other side of the world, with people that I don't even know what they LOOK like are telling me that I shouldn't apologise again. It was lovely.
I went to sleep before dawn that night with total aching everything because of how much laughing, screaming, and fun I'd had.
Day 4
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