2013 is my year!

After neglecting my poor blog, I'm happy to say I'm writing again, this time looking forward to returning for definite in 2013!

This time I'm going again from the UK with a theme camp, we're setting up a bar... all the trials, tribulations and benefits to follow. Hooray :)

BM2011

Welcome to my over-excited and gushy blog about how amazing Burning Man 2011 was, and how it felt to go as a British person!

Go straight to Day 1 here

How much will it cost to go to Burning Man from the UK?

Cost of Burning Man
One of the main things that puts people off making the trip to Burning Man from Europe (or the UK) is the cost. It can be really expensive, and we were really unsure as to how much it would be as well - even in retrospect, it was pretty easy to lose track of it. Yes, it will probably cost a lot of money. After adding all this up below, it looks like per person, splitting a car between 4 people in 2011 was £1500.  
Lucas, who was kind of admin-organiser of a lot of the tricky stuff went through his receipts and bills and came up with a really nice breakdown of the costs below, so hopefully this will be informative for people out there who are wondering!

Here’s a list of what we actually paid per person for everything to get to Burning Man 2011 with a group of four people. Some of this is individual items, some of it shared between me and my girlfriend and some of it was four all four of us, but I’ve divided all the cost to make it all per person.


If you’re with a smaller group some of these things might cost a little more because you can’t share things as easily. So, here we go:

• The ticket - £135 That’s what we paid last year as we got in Tier 1 which cost $205, but this year it’ll be more. With the different price tiers and the lottery system we’re not sure what it’ll be, but I will assume we might well end up in tier 2 and pay $320/£205 this time.
• Flights - £600 - We booked in January, right after we booked the Burning Man tickets, and went for direct flights from LHR to SFO with BA. It was possible to go down to £500 if we didn't mind changing planes in Dallas/Chicago/somewhere else, but it would've meant a 4 hour layover each way as well. We went for convenience here. Instead of SFO you can also fly to Reno's airport, which means a change in Dallas/Chicago/Seattle, but less driving as Reno is only 3 hours from Burning Man, San Francisco 7h30 or so,
• Car £140 We went with FOX Rent a Car, who were considered to  be burner friendly. The queue at SFO was huge and it took us an hour and a half before we got the paperwork done, then another half hour before we got the actual car. We went for a Minivan and got a Dodge Grand Caravan, which was absolutely massive and had enough space for all me and Nancy’s things and two bikes, with space left over, and quite a bit of other people’s though we only ever had three people total in it.  The car was £480 or £120 each.
• Car insurance £16 We went with iCarhireinsurance.com and paid £65 for a year long policy that covers Europe, the US, Canada and probably some more countries. Check price comparison website and make sure it includes the US, because many of them don't!
• Petrol £20 This was surprisingly little, really.  We chose to deliver the car back empty, and stopped once in Fernley, when leaving the main motorway i80 and taking the state route to Wadsworth. Then just once on the way back somewhere just west of Reno to top it up a little. In total we spent about £80 on fuel, so £20 each.
• Reno Hotels - £47 We spent 2 nights in Reno, Sunday>Monday beforehand and Monday>Tuesday afterwards. The night beforehand was at the ElDorado and cost us £38 for our double room, the night after at the very good Atlantis hotel for £55 per room. The buffet at the Atlantis afterwards was the best thing ever after spending so much time living on noodles, nuts and raisins.
• Food in Reno - £40 Something like that, for 2 buffets as decribed above.
• Supermarket - £125 We made sure to find out where to find a Walmart  along the motorway that wasn't too close to a big city, and made sure that it was one that sold food as well (not all of them do!). We spent $393/£250 at the Walmart in Dixon, CA on the way in for all our food, water, booze and so many other things. Nancy has already done a big post on what to get so I'll just refer you to that. Things are generally a lot cheaper than they are back in the UK. We didn't buy anything over 20 dollars, which is what of the bottles of liquor cost. Beer seems to be about a dollar a bottle. A gallon of water was 75 cents, of which we bought 9 per person.
• Home Depot - £85 This was at the Home Depot in Vacaville, CA, along i80 again and very close to the Walmart. We spent hours in here, mostly because we were pretty disorganised and had loads of people not really sure what to buy. We just sort or split everything we had and bought a few of our own things. The cost came down to $271 / £170 for a big tarp to use as a shade structure, poles to attach it to (which we didn't use as we managed to build a better construction), rebar for the tents, solar lights to pitch around the tent, flashlights and headlights which were incredibly useful, a cooler, batteries, ropes, tools etc.
• Travel insurance - £17 We used MoneySupermarket for this and paid £34 between the two of us for a Travel Insurance policy that covers the US.
• Clothes etc. - £200 This is completely up to you and depends on how much you want to spend, and how much you already have. We bought a number of new clothes and costumes here before we left, got a few things (like EL Wire) ordered to a friend of ours in the US and bought a bunch of stuff in San Francisco as well. It obviously depends on what you already have as well. I bought a number of shirts, goggles, sunglasses, 4 strings of EL Wire I think, a hate a warm coat, some camo shorts, a cheap watch and a bunch of other stuff for maybe £200 in total.
• Bikes £25 Absolutely not necessary but we reserved two old bikes in Reno for $40 each and they were a great way to get around.
• Total £1450 So that's about £1500 then, and I'm sure we could've saved money on a number of things. This year will probably be a similar amount – we’ll spend a bit more on tickets but there’s a lot of gear that we bought last year that we can re-use. Book your hotels, flights and car as early as you can to get the best deal. It's quite a lot of money obviously but it's totally worth it. :)

Going it alone - Burning Man from Europe as a solo traveller

Written by our friend Tarmo who we met out on the Playa :)

Last year I travelled to Burning Man by myself from Oulu, Finland, knowing no one who had every been to the event or anyone who even lived near Reno. 

Planning and organizing everything first seemed quite impossible, but in the end it turns out I worried way too much. I had a great time, met some excellent people from all over the world, made friends, experienced so much weird shit you wouldn’t believe. If you are in the same situation as I was, don’t worry – you can and should do it.

The most important thing is to know what you need to know, how the transportation works, what kind of things you need to plan for, and what you need to bring. Simply gather info by reading the burningman.com site and forum, the SA forum thread, googling, whatever. Look around for people’s experiences, packing lists, and newbie tips. 

Short survival info for convenience - you will need: 

• A ride to and from Reno and BRC. You should expect that you'll need have to bring everything you will use yourself, and expect to need to haul all the trash back as well
• Much more food and drink than you think you will use yourself
• A bike if possible
• Warm clothes
• A tent
• illumination
• A lot of beer and booze
• Fun stuff to wear.

Transportation
If you are coming from abroad your supplies will most be limited by the space you have. If you have a driver’s license and can afford to rent a car – great! Start looking for one now, you can probably rent one from Reno, if you reserve it early enough. If you have enough money you can just roll around Reno buying all the stuff you need a couple of days before the Burn, then drive there and back.  

However if you’re like me with no driver’s license, very little money, and only a small backpack to bring from your home country – no problem, you can still do it! You will need to start thinking about how you will get to BRC and back, but luckily there are a lot of rideshare sites just for this purpose. It might not be until a few weeks until someone can offer a ride for sure, but there are so many people going from Reno to BRC that you will have no problem finding a ride if you just spend some time emailing people.
Theme camps
Another option is to join a theme camp through the ePlaya forums like I did – look around for what looks like fun or something you would be willing to participate, or who is willing to take first-timers. There’s everything from bars to naked yoga camps. Contact the camp and offer your body and mind to the service of the greater good, as well as possibly a monetary donation to the infrastructure. 

Some camps require a daily participation in the camp activities, others like my past camp just want help with set-up and teardown and a small donation. Likewise some camps have a tight close-knit community where it’s mostly friends setting it up, and some are a collection of strangers focused around a few organizers where everyone mostly does their own thing. 

As a first-timer you’ll most likely want to wander around a lot, so make sure your camp would be okay with you not being at camp a lot. You will probably have contacts through the theme camp so you shouldn't have a problem finding a ride. Joining a theme camp is completely not necessary though and most people at Burning Man aren't a part of one (I think).
Supplies
Regarding supplies and limited space - shop around for some of the more difficult to get small items through internet before the trip and bring them along with you – stuff like EL-wire, hats, goggles, etc. The rest of the stuff like food, medicine, tents, sleeping bags and so on is easy to in Reno once you have a ride. 

You might consider a small solid-fuel camp stove and a diet of boil-in-bag meals, beef jerky, dried fruit, and canned tuna. Lots and lots of canned tuna (ok yeah it creates trash you need to take away with you but it is so delicious). 

Simple camping food is easy to find from all supermarkets, and the solid-fuel stoves you can get from online stores or military surplus stores. This was my food plan and I survived just fine, although I did bring a bit too little food. 

Protip: Bring a lot of protein bars or equivalents! They’re very handy on the playa at 3am miles away from your camp after partying for 12 hours. They should also make good gifts forthe same reasons. If your ride is bringing a cooler, ask if it has space for some of your stuff as well. Don’t bring anything that spoils easily.
Bikes
Bikes are harder to get and harder to bring with no car of your own, but I do recommend bringing one, as it makes getting around much easier. Look around the burningman.com site for bike outlets, or buy a cheap one from craigslist or Walmart, or arrange for a bike deal with other Burner. 

You can do fine without a bike too or sharing a bike with a friend. This year I'm actually intending to not bike around as much on purpose, to spend more time just wandering around instead of getting from one destination to another.
Socializing by yourself
Once you’ve ensured that you will stay alive during the Burn, you might ask yourself if it’s any fun by yourself. Yes it very much will be! 

People in general are very friendly to strangers in BRC, I had no problem finding a lot of cool people to spend time with.  Hell, if you’re bored, ask anyone passing by on the street if there’s anything cool nearby, what he’s up to, how his Burn is going. The cool thing is that just by being in Burning Man you both have this enormous common ground, so that makes conversations easy. Just embrace whatever happens and say yes when people ask you to join for an activity or other adventure. Don’t be like me and end up regretting not sucking that lesbian’s dildo!

There’s also internet meetups of several kind, look around if a forum or community you frequent has one. Or you could register on the ePlaya forums, introduce yourself, and go to the ePlaya meetup. Or you could even send me or Nancy a message and we’ll try to find you at some point. Last year I went in knowing no one and came out with a group of awesome friends – all it took was an open mind and a few forum messages.

To sum up, the one thing I most wish I had known was to not worry as much. There are rides a plenty even for a lonely person, most supplies you can find in Reno, and you’ll have fun even if you don’t want to. See you home!

Tips for what to eat for Burning Man newbies

After buying all our crap from a gigantic Walmart

Burning Man lasts seven days and you have to bring all your own food with you, so it took a bit of planning on my part to figure out what to buy. I definitely made some mistakes! This is a guide for people basically who don't really know American supermarkets/brands/foods, and who have only got a day or two to get their shit together.

Some people join camps that  have group set meals, and while we contributed to our camps evening meal ingredients, we didn't eat that often, so largely looked after ourselves.

Planning in advance 
I had all these food ideas coming from the UK that I would be able to buy all this great stuff in Walmart and use it to produce tasty dinners as worked out in my meal plan, which was a good idea in theory but actually failed me pretty hard. As someone who was flying into the country, we really only had one trip to do this all in so it was very intense. I couldn't buy anything in advance.

By the time we were going for our EPIC shop in Walmart, we were all exhausted after spending 3 hours in the Home Depot next door, and I was shocked to realise that either due to my own stupidity, the sheer size of the place or the fact that it just Doesn't Work Like That, I couldn't find half the stuff I wanted. So I had to improvise.

I couldn't find couscous, or jars of curry sauce, for starters. Nor could I locate soft pre-cooked noodles (like those Blue Dragon/Sharwood ones) that weren't ramen that we can get over here. I thought tinned/jarred hot dogs would be a great idea but I couldn't find those either except these tiny cans of kinda reconstituted chicken sausage in brine, and I'm sure there were chickpeas (garbanzo beans) somewhere on a shelf but I just failed to see where.

It may be different somewhere else but it caught me off guard while I was already exhausted (and kind of ill) and struggling to cope with the difference in temperature between Reno and San Francisco. I had to figure out how to do American supermarkets and on very little sleep too, so that was a mistake!

Good types of food to get
(List further down.) The thing I was super glad I bought were tins of spaghetti/ravioli, like spaghetti hoops, and some beef jerky although I didn't buy NEARLY enough. Cashews and almonds were helpful for a handful of quick nutrition, and the bag of peppermint candies I bought was a total lifesaver for sore throats and general refreshment and nice for gifting. The thing I ate the most of was ramen.

The best meal I had out there, more or less, was those tinned sausages, heated up on a trangier stove, in a tortilla wrap with ketchup. Everyone in the camp who was eating with me was practically jumping up and down going OH YEAH OH GOD OH YEAH.  You eat some goddamn funny meals out there - I had a bowl of pretzel bits dressed in sweet chilli sauce while Espen ate a wrap with smashed up tortilla chips and ketchup. UGH.


Food shopping list

For 2012, the following at the very least are on my list, and probably more in the future.  I daresay I'd have better meal plans if I wasn't flying in but I am so it has to be the bare survival minimums really! I hate tuna by the way but tuna on crackers is apparently very decent out there.

- Bagels
- Small raisin boxes
- Wraps
- Tins of spaghetti
- Pepperoni sticks - they have these things called Slim Jims which are basically Pepperamis, which I ate a tonne of.
- Chocolate (the chocolate melted and i discovered it liquidy and squishy two days later so I stuck it in the cooler and forgot about it only to discover this icy-reformed chocolate bar two days later and I almost wept because it was so good. that was a great idea)
- Nuts
- Ramen
- Peppermints
- Beef jerky
- More tinned sausage/hot dogs in brine (if I can find it)
- Pretzels
- Granola bars/cereal bars
- Some fruit (which can go right in the cooler.)

Drinks

- Water-flavouring sachets (so nice when you've been drinking plain warm water all day).
- Ginger ale/Mountain dew/Lemon and lime drink - something fizzy I found very refreshing.
- More isotonic drinks - Powerade or Gatorade are like Lucozade and while they taste pretty disgusting imo they are very helpful given how much sweating you'll do without realising. Plus you can stick some gin in them and it's a pretty decent cocktail haha.
- Limes and lemons to freshen up my water bottle.

Coolers
I've never really used a cooler before! I'm 25 and I live in the city and we don't have this epically hot summers where you have to take a cooler to the park, not properly. Before we got out there we spent a lot of time wondering what the hell we were going to do with a cooler and in the end, we bought non-perishable food and kept mostly just drinks in the cooler which turned out to work just fine once it was filled with a few blocks of ice from Artica camp.
In my view, when you're already having to struggle to get out there, at least as a newbie, trying to make sure food that HAS to be kept cold survives is a bit too much hassle.
We bought a normal cooler from a Home Depot for about $30 and on the day after we arrived, we picked up some ice for it. The ice lasted for AGES and we also used the cooler as a little seat :3. Nothing will freeze in it so buying ice-pops was a stupid move of ours but it was amazing having cold beer.


Bad types of food to get
Anything that requires a lot of effort, or too much of anything. We had way too many nuts, ramen and pretzels by the end of the week which we had to take out with us. Anything that uses a lot of water to cook that you have to throw away is a bad idea (pasta and rice). Anything that produces a lot of waste, sachets, boxes etc.
Otter pops/ice pops will not freeze in a normal cooler so that was a waste. Everything that couldn't be eaten once melted had to be binned. Half the stuff goddamn melted on its way to the desert so bear in mind you might be sitting in a hot car for 5 hours with it all, unless you're clever and pick up ice and a cooler in advance which we weren't! (That's a good tip.) Fredrik brought a palette of eggs almost half of which smashed en route, which was a bit predictable really.



Make sure you eat, even if you don't feel like it
Don't do what I did and get sick of eating, or not bothering to make the effort to eat. The hot temperature really zaps your appetite, and by night time you feel ravenous. On Wednesday and again on Sunday I got seriously weak and dizzy. After my boyfriend brought me some ramen, I felt ten times better.

Tips for taking care of your body at Burning Man

It's time to register for Burning Man 2012 and somehow I'm going back again this year - or at least hoping to! I'll be signing up to get tickets tonight, and will find out if I got one (and I'm not TERRIBLY worried) by February 1st. 

Which got me to thinking - what do I know this time that I didn't know last time? And wondering what I brought that was an excellent idea, what I brought FAR FAR too much of, and what I'd make sure to do in advance next time. 

The first thing I'd add would be tips on taking care of your body. I've never been to a desert before, given that I grew up in Ireland and I had no idea what to expect from the elements. Here's some stuff I learned that affected me, at least!

Hair

If you have hair that is in anyway considered to be long (and is of the not-poker-straight variety), I found myself wishing I had taken the goddamn time to brush my hair every single day. By Thursday morning, my hair was a shockingly matted sheet and I had to spend 45 minutes that day trying to untangle it. It was painful and a lot of it fell out!

When I finally washed it at the end of the week, the amount of hair I lost was pretty stunning. Make sure your hair is super clean and shiny when you get out there, don't put any product in it that morning, or on the way because it will stick and you will regret it. I have wavy-straight hair, unfortunately I have no idea what it must be like if you have curly hair. 

• Wide-toothed comb
• Spray bottle
• Hair ties, hair ties, hair ties. 

Skin

General hygiene 

You're not going to sweat - or you will, but you'll barely notice. I brought cycling shorts to avoid thigh-rub in what I thought was going to be a slick, damp sweatfeast. It wasn't. I didn't wear them at all. I felt dry and really not too bad most of the time I was out there, apart from when I was pickling in my tent. A huge tub of wetwipes did me just fine - I had a 'bath' in my tent every morning, followed by deodorant and I felt more or less fine. You don't stink. 

Additionally, you do have misting tents out there so you can get nice and damp, as well as people who will spritz you with bottles so it's not nearly as bad as you imagine! 

• Wetwipes
• Deodorant

Sunburn 

As for sunburn, I am the palest goddamn girl on earth. I got sunburned in San Francisco without even meaning to, under the clouds, because I wasn't being careful. Every single friend of mine joked about how I would die in the sun, but you know, I was absolutely fine. What worked for me was SPF 100, a huge sun-hat, a loose jacket (I had a silk dressing-gown - see the picture) and not being a moron. Apply it often, of course. Especially to your nose and shoulders. If you are worried about sunburn a significant amount and burn easily, bring something loose and float you can wear over your tanktop. I was so glad I brought my coverup! And inevitably when you do go a bit pink, put on aloe vera. It's nice to bring some of that and people will want to use it as well. 

Additionally, my friend Tarmo adds: "also check yourself in the mirror every once in a while so an elderly lady at center camp doesnt stop you and practically force-rub sunscreen on your nose"

• SPF 100
• Wide-brimmed hat
• Dressing-gown/floaty beach cover-up item
• Aloe vera

Playa-foot
The one problem I encountered with very dry skin was playa-foot, only with my hands. The alkali quality of the sand can really mess up your skin and while I was extremely clever and careful with my feet, cleaning the dust off at night, not putting my socks on after walking in the sand in bare feet -  I neglected my hands. 

By the sixth day they were cracking severely and if I'd left it any longer, they would have bled, and my friends were getting freaked out at how deep the cracks were. I was doing things like coating the palms in moisturiser and leave them there to soak in but it was no good. Finally, the only thing that helped was putting something acidic on my hands, to neutralise the alkali. Some goddamn genius in my camp recognized my symptoms, thank god, and gave me a lime to rub the juice of on my palms and within 20 minutes I felt better. 

We had brought a fucktonne of white vinegar for some insane reason - and it did feel great on my feet, but we had way too much left over. Next year I'll bring a small bottle of vinegar, and a few limes. 

• Small bottle of white vinegar
• A few limes
• A giant tub of moisturiser (everyone will want some and it feels great)

Lips

I don't have lips that crack and dry, but lots of people do and if you even mildly think you or your friends might get dry lips, make sure you have some lipsalve somewhere you can easily find. It will disappear SO quickly in the big pile of mess in your tent you have no idea, so maybe worth buying a couple. And be warned, it will melt. As will everything.

• A few sticks of lipsalve, kept in the shade

Bit more on food and that next time, I guess! 

Burning man, day 6 +7 (Tuna guys, temple burn, moop sweep, exodus)

About 2,3am maybe? On saturday night? Wandering around the tents off the main Esplanade, and feeling a bit 'need booze where can we find some ugh we could go back to the tent but if i go back there i know what will happen and i'll get tired'. We chanced across the Barbie Death Camp and Wine Bistro, who seemed to have just had some meal, and there was a lady playing piano, but no bar unfortunately.

And then, this guy appears, with a beard and a red teeshirt and a lanyard round his neck with some proper BM shit on it, and a big silver platter with some fish on it. I'm not even joking. I'd heard about 'the tuna guys' before I went, they're like some legendary old dudes who bring albacore tuna to Burning Man and then serve it after they magically appear. I don't know how they cooked it (I asked of course) but it was tart, and zingy, and amazing, and I would have licked the platter clean. We chatted with him for a long while. It was amazing. And after the French toast as well!

By now I was euphoric with how much wonderful shit had happened. I just kept laughing so much. We hung outside by a kissing booth sign, shouting GETCHA KISSES, EUROPEAAAAAN KISSES, NOW WITH LESS STDS AND DENTAL PROBLEMS with Tarmo and quite a few people came over lolol.

Then one of my other top moments - we're walking in towards the centre, the Esplanade, and there's a guy who stops us. "LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, THIS - " he gestures at the bar behind him which two big domes together with nipples on top like a pair of tits "- IS THE WORLD FAMOUS BOOBIE BAR! We've been coming here for years, and this is our last night!! You have to come in! But first!"


We're looking around wondering oh jesus is this some kind of sexy nudey bar and he goes "I want - YOU!" and points at me, and then "YOU!" and points at another girl who's stopped to listen. And we're thinking ahh fucking hell I hope he doesn't ask us to take our tops off. And he pulls back his jacket to reveal a pink stuffed bra on top of his sweater with a button on each cup.
"I just want you to lightly push this button, go on!"

And I did. And as soon as I did, in the background, on the corresponding tit (so left bra cup, left boob of the bar) shot up HUGE FLAMES. It was a wireless pyrotechnic thing and oh boy I started screaming and laughing. It was amazing. I'd never made fire happen before. We go inside, and there's like, a huge bar with EVERY drink, so I had a beer (I got a taste for it) and I think Lucas had a gin and tonic. We coloured in the Henry Rollin's Colouring book while I stood on a chair feeling euphorically happy, then this fucking random thing happened, where they played 'Everybody Loves My Baby', which is a track off my old Jazz Playlist. And the next thing you know, there's a dude on the bar, with a creepy old marionette puppet, the lights are going down, and the bartender is crouching next to the puppeteer, shining a torch. He then proceeds to have the marionette mime the entire jazz song, in the most hilarious way possible and everyone was dead silent. Followed up with Minnie the Moocher we were having just about the best time.

We moved on to find somewhere to get warm because god, it was freezing, and ended up around a big firepit off the Esplanade where Espen had a bit of a moment going "I'm having a great time but I wonder if I'll get gifted anything while I'm here. I'd really like that. Anyway gotta go to the loo." And then he comes back and someone has given him a bracelet. IT WAS AMAZING. I'm also sitting there with my throat in ribbons just laughing at how terrible I sound, when we spot a lightning ball - a singing tesla coil - over in an enclosure near The Pier. We all ran over to see what was going on and everyone was just silently watching this ball of electricity being auto-tuned to fit the bassy beat that was playing under it. Quite amazing. I went "HOLY SHIT" and everyone turned around to laugh, and went yeah that's the appropriate reaction.

Things started to wind down a bit now - we went on the Pier one last time, and Lucas got into a long chat with some girl in a huge white floaty dress and someone gave us some lollipops which were perfect considering I could barely speak by now. We headed back to camp, Dave and Tarmo desperate to crash, but me and Lucas and Espen were still awake so we followed the sound of jazzy guitar jamming to the tent across the street from ours, where three guys were improv'ing some really lovely music. With a few beers, in an armchairs, we sat and fought off the chill and watched.

Then some guy proceeded to show up in an orange nasa jumpsuit, an afro wig and a monkey mask. He took off the mask, gave me a beer, and said to Lucas "Can I have your hand?"
"Uh what for?"
"I'm going to give you a hand massage."
Cool guy in the end, we hung out for a while! And hand massages were looovely. We got a cd off the jamming guys, and Lucas went to go to sleep. Me and Espen desperate for fire went back to BRC, a short walk from where we were camped, maybe looking for our old goony friend Nico, but mostly looking to get warm off their fire pit. We found his mates instead. They still let us join their little fire circle, though, huzza. BRC are the ones who built The Pier, and I had contributed to the cost of it a little, you know, supporting art projects. And to thank you, they sent you some stickers and a thank you note.
"Wait.. you contributed to the Pier, and you're name's Nancy and you're from London?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm the one who sent you the stickers. I remember being worried about the postage not working"

Which was amazing, truly.

*~*~*~*~ SUNDAY ~*~~*~~*~
Sunday was hard. The place was really a shadow of its former glory. I woke up and almost collapsed from lack of sustenance, and Lucas brought me another ramen. The salt really helped, and I chugged a pint of gatorade as well which was good too. This was the day you clean ALL YOUR SHIT UP. And other people's shit. Just get all the shit fixed.
I cleaned up Happy Camp for ages and we sorted all our trash, threw our burnables into the huge flaming wheelbarrows positioned around the place. Wondered what to do with our bikes (we took them to a bike drop in Gerlach.)
Reduced down our tents, siphoned off any grey water. Picked up bits of Lucas's broken hat. Any of my hair I could see blowing around. Any thing that wasn't there when we got there, had to go. Put it in bags, put it in the car. We had quite a few gallons of grey water. I remember being so immensely exhausted that I could hardly walk at one point and had to sit down again. I think I did cry for a bit, I was sad it was over.

We had decided to stay for the Temple burn - it being of the focus points for many of us. The Temple burn is when they set fire to that amazing wooden structure, with everything inside. But rather than it being a whooping, cheering, crazy time, it's a really silent, profound moment. It was really intense. The fireball was gigantic. The heat was really painful on our faces (again we were sat very close to the front.) but we didn't want to look away. Kristin, who we'd been with was actually magically seated only a few feet away from us, with someone from our camp who'd shaved off all his long dreadlocks for the event! It was wonderful, remembering all the things that had been in there, all the things I had written, other people, the things they'd left.

We'd packed the car and driven it out to the far perimeter then walked back before, so we went off to the car, taking one last look at the Playa, the final thing I remember being that a lady on a bike blasting the Monkees out of a sound system riding past us. Then we were in the car - in doors! Driving! Me still in my gold bridesmaid dress with my ivy in my hair. 11pm we set off, without much of a meal inside of us. Lucas did so well.

~*~*~Reno~*~*~*
It' 3am and you've just arrived. What do you do?

STEP ONE - FIND THE HOTEL. What's that, our room isn't ready? Not till 3pm the next day you say? Aw shucks.
STEP TWO - DROP OFF YOUR CRAP. Go find the appropriate recycling place, almost give the car a flat driving off the pavement without realising.
STEP THREE - FIND A FUCKING MACDONALDS. Eat the hell out of a huge quarter pounder and large chips in a carpark at 4 in the morning.
STEP FOUR - SLEEP IN YOUR CAR. Even though the carpark of the hotel has fucking Elvis blaring on speakers everywhere.
STEP FIVE - HAVE A WASH AT 10AM DISCOVER YOU CAN CHECK IN. Make orgasm noises when you get in the bath because it feels amazing.
STEP SIX - EAT THE BUFFET. I practically cried. Cold tomatoes. Ice cream. Smoked salmon. Chinese food. English food. American food. ALL THE FUCKING FOOD.
STEP SEVEN - GO MAKE LUCAS HAVE A NAP BECAUSE HE'S BEEN UP FOR LIKE 30 HOURS 6 OF WHICH HAS BEEN WHILE HE'S BEEN DRIVING

we then ate in and out, and Fredrik ordered champagne for the room while wearing a banana costume.

The end.

Pictures from here and here.