Burning man day 4 (sunny morning, free beer, bunny parade, 1am bike ride)

Thursday was my favourite morning. On account of sleeping happily and heavily the night before, I woke up feeling extrodinarily happy and full of energy for the coming days. Of course it was lovely and sunny, there just seemed to be a really nice vibe around the camp. I ran off to get a mimosa from our camp bar (ice cold orange juice and champagne, for breakfast? yes), and had a lovely chat hanging out with some people who I'd seen around but really not talked to all that much. The music was amazing that morning too - loads of Beatles and Beach Boys and Pink Floyd - Lucas was swinging in a hammock inside the bar dome while I was just loving hearing MONEY by pink floyd at maximum volume.

We ended up chilling out in the sun at the front of our camp on the meditation deck - I LOVED that thing - , talking to people who went by, and there was this excellent completely naked hippy dude with dreadlocks just spinning in circles for what felt like forever, smiling. We loved him. And I was talking to this guy I met at Happy Camp, his name was Oli and god he was from Finchley in North London and he had the most PROPER North London accent. I adored him, so it was pretty nice just chilling with him again. I may or may not have told him he was my spirit animal. Lol. Don't judge me okay.

The meditation deck. <3 It doesn't look like much, but it was the most wonderfully comfortable thing ever. That's my umbrella in the evening light . I didn't have too much planned for the Thursday, not until the evening, and the EPIC DRUM AND BASS night (which I never made it to) or the CORE Regional Burn (which I never made it to) but I really wanted to go out to the Temple again in the daytime and so did Espen, who'd not been yet, nor had he been on a bike so we decided to go out. It was really awesome, because we ended up doing some pretty manic cycling - Espen hadn't been on a bike in years, I think. And in any case, we were taking the long route, behind C and D and going along to 3:00 and that, but we had this guy was running behind us going STOP STOP DO YOU WANT THIS BEER!! and shoved it in Espen's hand, with a beercozy and everything on it, without us even stopping our bikes. Which was LOVELY. And then we got some more lemonade, because that stuff is amazing. So, yeah, we did a slightly longer route to the Temple, just simply to enjoy the bike ride a bit more in the hot sunny day, and we were having a pretty awesome whooping time, but the Temple was kind of a mad experience because as soon as I got there I kind of wandered off and within about three minutes I was crying my eyes out. The atmosphere for me completely changed, in a heartbeat and suddenly I found it hard to stop properly at all. I wrote some stuff, and read a lot of really beautiful sentiments.

I love how over-exposed these photos are. This is how I remember it. Bright, white, heat.

i really cannot fully articulate what the temple is like. It's just impossible, really. I am so glad I managed to go back there three times. "Why can't I always remember to be this happy?" being one of the most relevant things I saw. I was just standing at the balcony, with my hand over my face, and my huge hat pulled down, quietly crying for about 20 minutes, and no one gave a fuck and it was so kind of wonderful. Quite heartbreaky though. Oof.

It was also a pretty intense time for Espen as well. In any case, we didn't stay for ages and soon enough we were on our way back given we'd been hoping to meet internet people at 4pm at the Pier. Cycling back was great again because I started to really enjoy shouting things at the top of my lungs and cycling with no hands (shouting out my workplace for instance, just because it was so hilarious and headfucky that I had a job in the real world). We managed to get back to camp at 4:15 and at the Pier for 5pm but noone was there - I'm pretty sure noone would have been there anyway. So we did what you normally do - go for a bit of a stroll, see what you can see. Lucas tried to climb the thunderdome in my tutu. We went through the 'gate' or whatever it's called, and got someone to take a photo which I magnificently ruined with my oversized stupid hat. From there, we clambered onto an artcar which was done up like a tiger, and got taken for a bit of a ride around 7:00 I think, and eventually got out at DISTRIKT which was awesome.

HOW HAPPY AM I RIGHT HERE

It's this huge ravey soundcamp that we didn't make it out to in the nighttime on account of it being aaaaall the way over on the other side, and even though it was about 6pm there was a damn bouncey crowd. Around this time we started to reaaaaaally get a bit oof and decided to head back to camp and try to get some of the food that we'd pitched in to the kitchen for. We started on our way back and accidentally got caught up in a huge bunny parade of something like 2,000 people dressed up as rabbits. RIGHTS FOR BUNNIES. PRO BUNNY. Etc etc. And a proper parade, too, with drummers and french horns and counter-protestors (FUCK THE BUNNIES and everyone booing them and god it was hilarious.). Then they reached the Thunderdome and swarmed all over it. Lol.

We got back to camp and waited around to see if we could have some food. We had some pretty excellently awful meals out there, the worst one I think being Espen's "Stale wrap with smashed tortilla chips and ketchup" or my "Bowl of own-brand pretzels drowned in sweet chilli sauce".

In the kitchen area, most people were having a fine time but I got up from my chair to go and have a drink of water, and when I came back my seat was gone. I was so tired I was kind of dead on my feet so I just thought ehhhh fuck it I'll just have a lie down and ended up waking up at 1am. Oops. At least at that point I was feeling full of beans and amazingly, Lucas was up for going out for a bike ride with me! I think Dave and Espen were asleep in any case. I was soo mad I missed the regional burn, where they burned 14 effigies all at once.

So we got on our huge coats and flashy lights, and boots, and water bottles, headscarves, cans of beer, everything we'd need for a night out. I quickly ate some ravioli heated up over Dave's trangier thingy covered in ketchup - sustenance is important - and we were off, with our bikes, flashy flashy flashy in the nighttime air. It was quite chilly that night, compared to what it was like the night before, but we were well dressed for it. I want to take a second to say how GLAD i am that we had bikes - it made everything so much better. I put a sign on mine saying "EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY"- my motto for planning burning man. Then underneath, while i was writing it, I realised that actually it already was. So I added that too. Lucas's bike just said free hi fives :D

BM at night, and below, the CORE regional burn (that I missed by sleeping.)

We did a little circuit to check things out, I don't remember too much but we went from art piece to art piece that night, going "what's that, over there?" "i dunno, LET'S CHECK IT OUT!" and we did! We found a guy, oh god poor chap, he was wandering around in the middle of nowhere, with nothing around, wearing no coat, and had no lights on. He was looking for his bike. "I think i left it around here earlier..." bless him. We gave him some of our LED finger lights, so he wouldn't get, yknow, killed, and continued on with our exploration. We managed to see _some_ of Andy C's set at the Temple of Boom which was awesome, but being sober and kind of shivery-awake meant that we weren't really as into it as possible. So we didn't really fancy staying for so long. Ah well.

The most fun thing we did was queue up to climb the Man, and underneath there was a guy in this amazing robot costume just bouncing, slightly dancing, for about an hour I think that we were queuing up and down, his torso blasting music out the speakers. He was really, really funny. And i've said this to everyone but lol, someone goes "Hey man great costume! What's your name??" "Robot."

I found this photo of Robot on another website entirely, two days ago, and I just realised HOLD ON A SECOND, I KNOW THAT ROBOT! His tie strobed colours haha. Look at his smiley face :3 I admit I gave him a hug before we left, haha.

The view from the top of the man was great, and it kind of made me enjoy it even more when they burned it down. It was cool standing underneath it, looking up at all the blue/yellow/red light.

Coming back we stopped and started slightly and found some fire to warm ourselves up around - this HUGE firepit metal flower art installation - , and met these two guys who'd arrived only about an hour before. They were standing next to this old dude who'd had the presence of mind to bring marshmallows and a stick to toast them over the firepit, looool. The two guys were totally lovely, they had like, the biggest :O on their face the entire time. Pretty much like I was on the first night. You could see they were still adjusting and it was so sweet, I just wanted to give them a big hug but I didn't want to freak them out any more than they already were. Quite a mellow day, by some standards.

(Photos from a few facebook friends, this Burning Man blog post, and Charles Gee)
Day 5