Burning man, day 6 (Part 1 - henna, misting, mojitos, and THE BURN)

Okay, Saturday was my favourite day in so many different ways. It had the man burn, the epic walk we did after where tonnes of crazy shit happened, dancing, facepaint, henna, all the elements you could ever want. And we started the day really nicely too - me and Lucas went for a sleepy-assed bike ride and decided to pull over at a bar that was doing coffee and bloody Marys. We ended up staying there for a good hour, chatting peacefully with the other people on the barstools, including a dude who went out at 5am the previous day and managed to score a PLANE RIDE at the Black Rock City airport. How nuts is that?

Plus this bar was serving like, frozen watermelon, granola bars, orange juice - all good stuff. Didn't stop Lucas from having about four bloody Marys. We also had a great chat with some people who were from Oakland, who knew the Ruby Room bar that Cory took us too which was so cool and random. They had a makeup box, so I drew in glitter on Lucas's face, and painted his nails, wrote BONER MAN on his arm in permenant marker. lol. You're in no rush out there. I don't know how many hours passed, but I was feeling run-down so this was perfect. Given there's no actual plan, you might as well stop and do things like this. It was really lovely and just what we needed, a bit of peace (p.s frozen watermelon is the absolute shit in the desert oh my god)

We come back and find people in a lovely mood as well. Back at the camp, I got some Henna done by a really nice woman called Kindle, who did my face, hands and chest while everyone watched lol. It was great, and I loved how it looked but I didn't realise how much of a challenge it would be trying not to get it to flake off completely! I put on some funny outfit stuff and a couple of nice old people on a golf buggy said "Ohhh that is CUTE let me take a picture" and then gave us a bag of jellybeans, lol. I felt very swish B-)

We decided to go on an adventure and start by hitting up the misting tent again - someone actually built a tent that sprays out mist inside in a contained water-proof lining and it is just the best thing EVER. We went there about three or four times, and went to find jets to stand under. We went in there for a bit, then across the road to the Danish/Pirate bar where I promptly completely fell asleep for about 15 minutes on a sofa. Dave decided he fancied a bit of time back at the camp, and I believe he went off with Tarmo on the bikes, whereas me, Lucas and Espen went on a bit of an exploring mission, mostly to stop by BRC Lemonade again, haha. We also checked out the bar some people had mentioned to us - it was super cool but we never managed to make it back there again, but the main feature was you could climb on the roof and there was a hanging, circular bed, swooshing gently in the breeze. How awesome would it be to be up there with pints and all your friends, at night, in the desert, surrounding by flaming torches. Although I almost fell off going down the ladder given I had henna on my hands and was trying not to get it to rub off lol.
On his way to the loo, Lucas was like "I saw a FULL SIZED TENNIS COURT" so we decided to head up that way, get off the beaten path and it was a cool thing we did. I mainly remember someone playing a dubstep remix of I'M ON A BOAT and additionally, a glass sarcophagus procession funeral parade, held high by palanquin-bearers, with a skeleton of a cat (and 'angel mice') inside it. And then some guy stopped us and said YO WANNA GET MISTED and we were all fuck yeah, then he said well NOW you have to come and get a mojito. So go the fuck inside!

So inside you're queuing up for all these drinks, and there's people dancing to some great Gorillaz music and you're chatting with some Irish guy from Cork about how Kerry ALWAYS beats Cork in the All Ireland and Espen's being hit on by two lovely gay guys (lmao) and Lucas is drinking his mojito like the happiest guy on earth and _fresh mint_ and lime and ice!! and there's misting spray INSIDE this amazing tent. God it was awesome.

Then we left, and immediately stumbled across a huge VW art car that has even better mist. You climb up and basically they have nozzles so you can hose yourself with delicate soft icey mist and hooo fucking boy. We practically had showers. We didn't want to leave!

Although hilariously, when we left, there was some girl with a big strap dildo, standing there, drinking a beer, and thrusting it over and over, and laughing when some _real_ fat dude on a small art car stopped to watch, and he eventually yelled at her:
"Yeah well, you may have a bigger dick than me but I'VE GOT BIGGER TITS THAN YOU"
We made our way up into G I think, then back around, stopping only for me to ask a nice old chap with a life-vest covered in fruity polo sweets (lifesavers?) if I could have one and he said OF COURSE so I gave him a big hug and he looked really surprised I did :) And some people said "STOP STOP!!! TAKE THIS BEEER! IT'S THE COLDEST BEER ON THE PLAYA!"
:3

We revisited the ball pit where some girl correctly identified me of being from Ireland based on nothing more than the way I looked - she was from Galway which was cool and kept calling me 'my irish lady' which reminded me of Lynda :) And I got stuck on the chair where this photo was taken and couldn't figure out how to get down again lol. We also spent some time just lying in the ball pit while lucas swung off the rope and dove in. And I was the king for a bit.

We got back to camp and the little girl in our camp, who was about 6 or 7, Isis, insisted on painting my face, only she had to dash half way through. She was a sweet little girl. We met up with Tarmo and Dave, and decided to all go down and check out the burning of the Man together, and was informed by our camp that at something like 1:30 on the circle around the man, we'd be able to see some of our fellow Happy Campers drumming, and doing the fireshow, and such so we got down there, and parked ourselves on the sand, second row.

Me, Tarmo and Lucas flip off the camera while we head out to see the man burn.

While we were sitting there waiting for things to get going, me sat on my huge dusty coat, Tarmo made friends with, coincidentally, some other FInnish people who were sitting right next to us which was quite crazy. Finally, after peacefully sitting and enjoying a beer, the fireshow began. Around something like 30 groups of people were dancing around the place doing insane fire things - fire people on stilts, girls with huge flaming wire skirts, umbrellas, - and the happy camp people were doing some kind of dance.

Then right before the end, loads of people in immolation suits rushed out all you know, burning like crazy, then the fireworks started. Bear in mind, we're sitting in row two of about I'd say 100,000 people? I mean at least half the attendants will go to the burning of the man? Maybe not. Either way it was EXTREMELY busy and I loved how all the art cars had parked in a big circle around the perimeter, so it was just like a little enclave of delightful lit up oddities and weirdness.

Of course, the fire works were awesome. I won't go into it too much, but you need, explosions, etcetera. But they got progressively more and more intense and insane, and finally at the end, and I had my arms linked with Lucas and Espen on the other side, and we were all going AAEGHHHHRHRHG OH MY GOD, there was a giant roman candle at the exact moment the man exploded with a huge fireball and the HEAT on your FACE and we all kind of jumped together and ducked away from the fire and started laughing and screaming at the same time. That was probably my favourite moment of the whole thing. The man burning down was great, everyone whooping and cheering, until it finally fell, and then AHHH

It's 4 seconds into this video.

We then proceeded to, after much toilet visits, and much shouting and fooling around, decide to have the best night out ever. We tried to get to Opulent Temple but failed lol, and ended up again out by 2 O CLock, which was nice as previously on the wednesday it wasn't the best time ever - I was tired, Dave was SO CONFUSED about where we were, and the dubstep was driving me crazy. I spent some time dancing on an empty picnic table outside of the Irish bar while laughing my ass off, before Tarmo was like FUCK YEAH and joined us. I must have looked completely mad. Around this point I gave my tutu to Espen - Lucas was wearing a beret and jurassic park tie and looked hilarious and Dave was in a bathrobe.

I insisted he mustn't piss on my tutu, every time he went to the loo, and god the boys had to pee a lot that night. At one point he just turned and said, in such a sincere way, "Nancy! I would never piss on your tutu" with a sad face and I believe I had to sit down from the laughing.

Espen, Tarmo and Dave having fun :)

We found a wonderful bar that was pretty much empty that had sofas, which was what I needed, and there was a guy in a full red velvet suit and Mad-Hatter Top Hat doing and INTENSE eyes-closed swooshy-arm dance in the middle of an empty space. And after we laughed at him for a while I thought fuck this, and jumped up and went to dance with him, and Lucas rushed over too. He didn't even see us for ages. Him and Lucas proceeded to dance and hug and jump all over the fucking music-club-camp-area-bar whatever for about 20 minutes, lol. His name was Mushroom and he asked us to look after his girlfriend Psychadelic Angelic Jellyfish (who was dressed like bo-peep with a 10 foot high shepardess brolly that shone multicoloured lights from underneath) while he went to get something.

The bar there was serving I think limoncello and lemon vodka with lemonade? It was some crazy lemon drink that I didn't want any of, but to get anything from the bar you had to bring a piece of MOOP (litter) you found lying around which was a novel idea. On the way back.. god this night just gets better and better... Lucas got over-excited by some crazy LED thing and while dancing around was given a DANCETRONAUT bracelet, before we jumped on an art car that had a lady on it dressed as Snow White from Ireland (i think) - funnily enough it was the same VW one as before, and it was going home, so despite our quest for crazy epic funtimes, we found ourselves deposited back at like, 3 O Clock and D or E. But this turned out to be a great thing.

While walking, the four of us, around 3am? ABSOLUETLY haggard and laughing and my voice sounding like a scratched record, we were so hungry, of course. And as if, by, complete, fucking, magic, this lady walks out of a camp. "Hey guys, do you want this French Toast?"
And it's hot french toast. And it has a bowl of chocolate maple dipping syrup. Oh my god. We WRECKED that toast. I was practically crying. I think i told her I loved her a bit too much. She seemed mildly shocked at how fucking fast we ravaged that french toast, haha. Oh god it was the best thing ever.

I'm gonna wrap up Part 2 and Sunday in the next post I reckon! This one is SO LONG ALREADY.
Photos credits from here, here and here. 

The last day

Burning man, day 5 (New friends, gin, BRCU and Bunny Suicides, spinny LEDs, crowsnest of danger)

Friday morning is usually when most festivals start properly, but by now we were all feeling twinges of 'god, it's all going by so fast!'. I managed to get my ass out of my tent and dressed fairly early, and made my way (with one of my coveted Strongbows) with intention to meet a friend I'd been emailing about how it is to get to Burning Man from Europe - this dude came all on his own from Northern Finland! And he wasn't camped that far away from me. So we made plans to drop by each other's camps, only I'd never quite managed to sort myself out until that day.

This was our little enclave. It was tough to escape because it was so lovely and comfortable - we even had coat hooks towards the end off bungee chords dangling from the bus lol. I've also rammed my brolly in the gap because I broke it so I taped it better only then it wouldn't shut :|.

I went over to 4:30 and D, I believe, and found Club Verboten where Tarmo was camped, and it was cool meeting him! Luckily he was in - apparently he'd been by my camp a few times looking for Nancy or Pale British Girl (much more recognizable than my name) but every time I wasn't there or NO ONE had any idea who I was. Doesn't surprise me really, I didn't mingle nearly as well as some others. We had a tasty, tasty Strongbow and rambled on about the various amazing things that we'd been up to while his campmate took a vinegar-footbath and talked in a French accent about being keen to attend critical tits - a naked topless bike ride which takes place every Friday at Burning Man.

At this point I realised I hadn't even looked in the fat little pocketbook guide they give you at the gate, which you're supposed to use to find out whats on, when, and where. I didn't need it! I think I'll probably start trying to do that in future. In any case, Tarmo was lamenting his choice about not bringing any beer, or something, and just liquor, which is also what a couple *cough* of my friends did so I was more than happy to share the 40 or so cans of PBR i bought. I also wanted to invite him to try some of our camp mimosas, so we brought Tarmo back to camp and introduced him to everyone. In the end he became a great buddy of ours out there and spent tonnes of time with us which was awesome, rode back in the car with Dave, hung out in Reno, etc ;)

Me with some facepaint, plus Tarmo in the black cap and Dave. On the righthand photo, Lucas with Nico and friend.

This is the only day I got fully, properly, "Oh jesus Nancy" drunk. I stand by the fact it was a long-ass festival and I was more or less EXTREMELY well behaved the rest of the time! But I went for it that day. I had a lot of gin and a lot of beer, and some cider, and I think some shots at one point. Fuck it. It was a good laugh! I was sitting in the sun, swinging my legs off the meditation deck, merrily enjoying some alcoholic refreshment, getting my arm painted, hanging out with Tarmo, Dave, when some dude comes over to us.
"Do you guys know a pale british girl?"
"THAT'S ME!"
Another person from the internet that I'd chatted with prior to getting out there which was super cool, who was Nico. He was also camped just round the corner at the Black Rock Centre for Unlearning (amazing that - seriously) so we went down to his camp, and he introduced us to his friends and his wife which was incredibly fun. I think I got him to put a fake temporary tattoo on me, and I got given a really awesome necklace I spent the rest of the week wearing!

Plus, of course, a fully loaded bar, with like, crisps on the counter in bowls to eat and I spent a long time sitting on the floor on some cushions talking with people I didn't know. And I had a gin and tonic. WITH ICE! (i think. I may not remember this 100% clearly.) Some lovely lady showed up who needed to find a girl to drink a cocktail from the same cup as her to 'earn her badge' - there were literal badges - so I did that with her and got it all down me and I didn't even give the smallest fuck,I was just having the most ridiculously fun time. After a certain point, both Tarmo and Nico spun out a bit (bad brownies possibly) and disappeared and I went off to dance on my own to some excellent dubstep music in the back because I was more or less at that point where it didn't matter.

Lucas and I went on a little adventure across the road to the Bunny Suicides camp, where you have to go in through a low tunnel door and a big hanging blanket, so you don't know what you're going to find, but inside was this really hot hot hot blue-tarp bar where we picked up yet another beer and got some stickers and chatted with the barman who was in character the whole time. Mostly just saying 'OH YEAH' in a high-pitched raspy voice that I still do at Lucas to make him laugh.

OH YEAH!

Time was getting on by this point, so we headed back to camp where I was, in my outgoing friendly and enlivened state, requisitioned to stop people to insist they come and drink our alcohol in the Happy Camp bar. It was actually quite a bloody good laugh.

I'm on the right in the stripey hat.

Standing in the road, with your arms out, roaring stop! it's the law! you have to have a drink with us! and so on, in varying stages of creativity. At one point I went and got dressed up in my corset as I realised I'd not even bloody worn it yet, but I got actually quite uncomfortable with the attention I was getting from the passers-by and in my inebriated state, it didn't feel too radical so I took it off quite shortly after.

Me and Lucas decided to spend the night apart that night, so I went off with Espen and he went off with Dave on the bikes. I kind of wish I'd thought to ask for the bikes ;/ In any case, the main thing I remember, apart from having a loooong talk in this 100% empty dome right off the esplanade with the most insane lightshow inside that drove me more or less nuts, and going on a booze hunt and filling my water bottle with warm white wine (blegh) was this amazing fireworks.

Holy fuck - you think you've seen fireworks. At Burning Man, fireworks feel how they did when you were a child. Like, when you were a 4-year-old watching New Years Eve and it's the most insane thing ever. I was coming out the loo, and it was all, oh hey, fireworks, shall we go a bit closer? Spectacular.



And we walk over slowly, and the entire time it's just going MENTAL above us, and as we get to the perimeter, we we realise it hasn't even gotten properly started yet! And . It. Just. Got. So. Insane. Fucking hell! The crescendo of the whole performance was a huge shooting streaming giant jets of fireballs right up into the sky while the most ridiculous roman candles detonated above us. I was just screaming OH MY GOD and jumping up and down and putting my hands in the air and Espen doing the same who was also screaming HOLY SHIT. It was actually more amazing than the man burn fireworks the following night! Ahhhhhhh god.

Anyway, this was apparently the pre-cursor to the Trojan Horse burn, which I missed which was rather gutting - they lined up hundreds of archers in roman costumes with fire arrows who then fired into the horse, and it burned to the ground. Instead, we went on some adventures, got on an art car that was playing a track from New Vegas which I completely failed to sing along to given my voice now sounded like gravel.
We came across this great art installation, which was a load of white umbrellas glued inside a structure that played rain and thunder storm noises. I lay down in the dirt and looked up at the brollies, and it was all so incredibly cool. Then we had to spend 5 minutes beating the shit out of my coat to get all the dust out. I regret nothing.

We also found the **spinny LED lights thing** (not the official name but that was what everyone was calling it).
It's basically a hanging cylinder which is wide enough for one person to stand up in, so you go down on your knees, then stand up inside. Once you're in, you can only see the LEDS. Neon, pulsing, shifting lights. And then your friends _spin_ the thing. And the world just turns to rainbows and lights. It was fucking insane. The best part was seeing people's faces inside while you spun it! Me and Espen stayed there for a while spinning it for strangers and encouraging them to have a go, lol. It was amazing. The entire time I was in there I had my hands over my face peeping out through my eyes going AAAAA. Remembering that gives me a pretty lovely feeling :)

A clip from the most excellent video someone made called 'A Day in the Life' which was quite a lovey summary - this is someone inside the spinny lights thing.

God I was dying that night though again, I kept saying, let's sit down here for a second, then falling asleep. We revisited the temple, which was always as it is even more beautiful at night, and the view and lights were amazing. Plus there was someone playing the Harp - the strings, attached to the temple and its struts. Pretty glad I got to see someone do that finally.

Our final stop was that old biker bar where Lucas had done the shots with the Belgian guy, the biker-themed one. I conquered my fear, probably stupidly, of climbing this really rickety thng, and went up this insanely dangerous ladder that was attached to a crows nest that had a sofa on it. And it was 2 people at a time limit. And once you're up there, on this sofa, looking out over the Playa, the entire fucking thing SWAYS. And climbing down was probably the most scary stupid thing I've ever done lol. The girl who was up there when I got up there - she climbed down, she had to swing herself around the outside of this ladder off the platform and looked me with these huge wide eyes and just said 'holy shitballs O_O'. in the most American accent ever.

That was Friday. Saturday was to be the best day ever ever. I'm really looking forward to writing that up

Photos from me and Dave, but also Scott London and Trey Ratcliff.
Day 6

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

Burning man day 3 (exhaustion, trampolines, ice cones, dust storm, fireballs)

I woke up late - like noon or something which is crazy late for me, even though I went to bed at dawn. I missed the camp meeting at 10. I also missed a dude from the forums who came by to say hello. I was vaguely aware of talking and someone saying 'Neris' but physically couldn't rouse myself. I felt pretty crappy that morning!
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!

The trampoline owned because I basically asked if I could come up, and they got super excited for me to jump with them. Plus, I have a bit of a giggling-problem on things like trampolines/rollercoasters/etc. So I was just jumping up and down with these French guys, screaming and laughing my ass off and electrocuting everyone over and over with the static I was generating on my socks, them going JESUS WOMAN YOU'RE NANCY MEGAVOLT (with a french accent). They must have loved it because they basically kept trying to 'bounce' me higher than I think I've ever been on a trampoline and me going nuts.
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

Anyway, after that Lucas also gave me some food as I hadn't eaten properly in 24 hours (I'm an idiot don't do this) and after I started to feel a bit better, we started to get our drinking on properly and hang out instead of this fragmented rushing around, beer here, beer there, oh god oh god etc. It was lovely to just stay around the camp for a while without having to stress about anything. Also, Electronics Repair in the desert courtesy of Espen fixing his stereo speakers to run off a solar generator and tiny bits of copper wire and shit and finally the iPad he brought - Yes an iPad, sealed in a ziplock bag lmao - was hookupable to the stereo. So we got our shitty rave music on too!
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.

Around this point we started all splitting off from the camp I reckon - Lucas went out for a few bike rides, with Kristin, and with Dave I reckon, and eventually with me, because cycling in the dark is pretty rad in general out there but when I went with him he took me down some paths I'd never seen before and never found again - an entire street themed like a war camp even blocked off with bollards and a guy in an army-get up doing a our-troops style standup thing to an audience, camo netting and it was all very stylish and cool.
Night time at Burning Man is so fucking amazing.

You know those kind of effigies people wear/carry? That are like puppets with a stick on each leg and hand, so that when you move, it moves? We ran into a guy who had one of those, that looked like the Man in blue EL wire and we just started shouting OH MY GOD THAT IS AWESOME, and his posse said "Get off your bikes and HUG THE MAN" so we fucking threw our bikes down and rushed over and hugged the goddamn man. It was awesome. Apparently Lucas had been in the bar doing shots again (that boy) so he was having a GREAT time. Our bar had an excellent set up - shotski! which means basically there are four shot glasses glued to a ski so if you wanna take a shot, you can't do it alone. So he was just running out over and over to grab strangers apparently, lol.

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.

But there was way way too much classless dubstep. I'm not going to get into a discussion about dubstep as it's the genre which winds people up the most I find lol (including me) but there's a limit to how much comedy dancing I can do and filthy huge dubstep drops are amazing but you can't maintain that for hours. I would have killed for some drum and bass or even some proper house but you can't really find that out there, and I hear before dubstep infiltrated every single corner of burning man it was psytrance everywhere. And MUCH better to have dubstep than that.
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,
simply because everyone looks like an asshole trying to dance to it.

Lol.
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

Burning Man, day 2 (Shade construction, exploration, pirate ships and BRC French Quarter)

Waking up was a fun moment, because there's nothing like unzipping your English-festival tent and you're used to seeing mud, grass and 10,000 other tents and the far off sound of the slamming door of the toilets and getting a load of blue sky and desert.

Me and Lucas were the lucky ones - we put our tent up by our car so that we'd not get the full brunt of the morning sun and it worked well enough. Espen and Dave on the other hand were not so lucky! After a short period of feeling a bit like , argh, how are we going to rearrange this shit. We'd also been asked to move Dave's car and some tent as well so we were feeling a bit confused.
Things started to feel awesome as soon as we went on a little mission to get ice for our cooler. I finally had a cause to wear my huge floppy sunhat. I was also eminently glad that I brought my silky dressing gown as it was really helpful to keep the sun off me generally. It was pretty awesome taking Dave and Espen down to the Esplanade as they hadn't seen it at all yet, when I'd seen it the previous night by bike. It looks insanely different in the daytime, and the first time it was virtually unrecognizable to me.

On the way to the ice tent (there's two things you can buy at Burning Man - Coffee, at centre camp, which I never bothered with, and ice!) some good things happened - we saw some great art (huge teacup with WORLD'S BEST GRANDMA on it) including the Pier which was a massive art project I donated to and was interested in following which was a group of people from Reno who spent ages working on. The Pier was super cool - it looked like the photo below, and had ocean noises, and a 'bait shop' which people enjoyed mucking around with, with a book where you could write stuff. At night, you could go up and sit and dangle your legs off the end. When we were there, at about 1pm the crowd on the pier was amused by a bloke pretending to swim below.
"How's the water?"
"Fuckin HOT!!!"

So we're making our way to 3:00 to find Arctica where the ice is, and finding the BRC Lemonade stand by mistake playing ridiculous dubstep. It's a beautiful thing, if you can imagine being so parched and hot and adapting to this temperature, then suddenly getting a pint (I had my pint glass from Latitude as my cup for the week) of gorgeously ice-cold perfectly tart lemonade. It was divine. I was practically jumping up and down on the spot. From there we asked for some directions and eventually found Arctica.

We queued up and talked with this awesome guy from Eastern Europe for a while with an amazing half-finished tattoo, and I remember it being really good fun, as I find queuing at Burning Man isn't really like queuing at all, it's just like hanging out I swear, way more than Glastonbury. At Glastonbury if you're queuing for the loo or the atm or the bar or whatever, chances are you will have a nice chat, but at Burning Man it's just even nicer, if you can believe. Lucas fetched the ice, and we all rejoiced at carrying it back. Espen in particular held it on his shoulder, and it was melting down his back and soaking his shirt and he was just going 'Ahhhh'. Ice is pretty amazing in the desert.

Here we are with some ice. You cannot see my face at all because I have a dust mask all the way up to under my eyeballs because the sand played havoc with my nose and was too dry so by keeping the mask up it made it a bit more bearable and moist.

We also got misted by some lovely guys who had lavender-scented mist - protip at burning man is if someone says "Misting?" you go "yes" and "please do my back as well". It's awesome. Honestly, you could probably jump into a pool of water and get drenched head to toe out there, and quite reasonably you'd be dry within 10 - 15 minutes I'd estimate. It never lasts.
Getting back to camp I think we basically decided that we knew how we were going to do the shade, so invigorated by the promise of eventually-cold beer when we were done (ice in the cooler, beer in the cooler), we set to work setting up a shelter so that we wouldn't bake in the nighttime. Eventually, after running around a little bit, and checking with some people, and the other people, and everything, we decided to use a huge white schoolbus as one strut of our support, and me and Lucas's rental as the other. The schoolbus was so high, we decided to just pull the tarp down in a diagnonal slant and tie it down using bungee cords and ... winchy... orange.. rope things that I don't know the name of.

Espen managed to climb up onto this fucking schoolbus in the middle of the hottest part of the day and was up there for a good 40 minutes securing shit, while we all ran around like idiots trying to stop the tarp from blowing away, grabbing onto flapping corners, and when when it was done we were all so fucking pleased with ourselves, even though we only used about half of the epic Home Depot shopping trip, and NO POLES after all that. It still worked. We had our little space. Set up Dave's awesome camping chairs, cooler in the middle, some LED fairy lights and Solar light sticks, finger lights velcroed onto guy ropes and off bungee chords, and we were good and cozy. (By the end of the week, by our drunken shenanigans or costume-encorportation, we had NO lights left. WHERE IS MY TORCH WHERE IS MY EL WIRE fuck it i'll just take this)

And then it was time for some beer and some food and some fun! Eventually me and Lucas decided to head out on our bikes and see what the Playa looks like in the daytime, which entailed us having a bit of a stop by Centre Camp, and also going on a huge ass swing where some random stranger started pushing us while I had a beer in one hand and my arm around Lucas with the other so I was screaming a lot. There was a tight-rope walking game and we watched someone fall quite hideously on his crotch wearing a sarong and nothing else (not even underwear) which looked painful but as we'd been goading on the punters for 30 minutes drinking beer we decided to have a chat with this bloke.

He said we should go to the Mardi Gra night at the French Quarter over on 7:30, so we returned to camp with this news and as a result, for our group that night out was kind of epic because we all decided to head out and explore but had a clear destination in mind. Which we reached about an hour before dawn as it turned out because wow you do get distracted on your way somewhere!

Here we are all ready to ROCK - Lucas, Me, Espen

We walked down and popped into this bike-bar themed place where Lucas got his shots on with some Belgium guy and I had a really nice heart to heart with a leather-wearing gentleman in his 50s I'd reckon and his wife. Also, shots of rum are disgusting. We headed on, and saw the Wheel of Fortune (Burning Man style). Not sure I'd want to play that, and then saw something that was basically LOOK FIRE OVER THERE QUICKLY FIRE IS AWESOME LET'S GO!

Biker bar of the many shots and that Belgian guy

This thing was awesome

It was insane, this kind of helix-shaped mini-rollarcoaster style art piece that had flames running around it, surrounded by people. Then we spot the Pirate Ship - one of the many boat/nautical themed art cars which drive around the Playa - and decide well, hell let's get on. We clamber up - I'm in my gold bridesmaid dress with opera gloves and 6 or 7 fibre optic glowies braided into my up-do so this was a little challenging - and got a very good seat swinging our legs looking out on the Playa.

Our sweet ride around the Playa on Tuesday night

Took ages to get going, a lot of riding on art cars is just sitting and waiting, to be honest, but it was fun being up there, meeting a girl who lives in London - in PADDINGTON (10 minute drive from my house) - and then finally the car driving around. We jumped off in the middle of the Playa and by now our booze supplies were getting quite dangerously low. I.e, nothing. We needed booze, damnit. I think it was 2:30am by this point.

We ended up spotting ANOTHER art car and rushing over to that, because it was a fucking church on wheels and even though it wasn't planning on driving, inside I sat down and had a really awesome chat with a guy who had, I think, quite weird body mods, if I recall correctly. He started chatting to me first.
"Hi there, how are you?"
"I'm brilliant!"
"Hi brilliant, I'm Dave"

Me walking in

It was quite a nice moment anyway. And inside it was all furry and cozy as the walls were lined with felt and it was pretty chilly out there on the Playa without a beer jacket on. Places that giveaway booze are less easy to find at night so it's better to overestimate the amount to bring, and then you can always give it away, but this wasn't something we learned.

So we finally made our way to the deep edges of around 2 O Clock, going past all this crazy art. I really have to mention the Charon styx art piece. It was utterly insane. Look at this video. Like a giant zoetrope that creates the illusion of movement by strobe light with these skeletons.




We also got into giggles going past the 'Period Bar' which was menstrually-themed (lol), a lit-up death star that was driving around the place, a crazy art piece with loads of tripping people lying underneath it, and the Duck Bar where YES BEER HELLO THANK GOD. Although they were serving some kind of malty stouty aley thing I believe so I was glad they only gave me half a cup as I cannot drink that shit in pints and it's not like I can tip it in a bin or on the ground.

We had a good time at the next bar, mostly because my mental image is of Dave, one knee on the ground, seranading the bar keep to get a free drink (some places do this.). He had to do three songs, lol, whereas I got away with just babbling in Irish, and Espen had to tell an embarassing story (Lucas wasn't there as he'd just gone to find a loo). I actually loved this bar - it was huge, with comfy seating, and had a second attached tent and music and everything.

FINALLY we got to the place we intended to get to five hours prior - The French Quarter. It's hard to describe how cool it was just bumping into this place. Given it was 4:30 in the morning, there were still quite a few people here, music, a bar with booze still going and a huge table of crayfish (crawdaddies?) which I was like OKAY YES EATING DIS. Some guy with 1.5 of his eyebrows shaved off - it was for a bet - came over and helped my rather addled self break into the shell and get the meat out. Dude turned out to be a really lovely person actually, called Bowman, and he ran off with Lucas for a bit to show him some thing while me, Dave and Espen sat there rreeling that we were at burning man, taking it in, drinking this AWFUL drink the French Quarter bar gave us which was largely blueberry syrup and vodka I think :barf:

At one point I went off to the loos as at C on every major time intersection there's always loos, so I wandered off by myself up the street. On the way I almost got lassoed by a neon cowboy dancing on top of a huge camp, seriously just managed to jump out the way, what was that about! And went past sooo many cool dancey sound camps which were all a bit empty given the time of night and also that it was only Tuesday.

We finally straggled back to camp, unwillingly but our bodies had had enough. It was dawn when we got there. I slept quite well indeed.
(Photo from Dave, and also Scott London and this Flickr page.)

Day 3

Burning Man, day 1 (Reno, arrivals, biking, Temple Guardian and HOLY SHIT WE'RE HERE!)

"Jesus I don't even know how I'll explain this to people back in the UK"
"Just like describing a color to a blind man! :D"

Yeahhh basically it's pretty much that. I don't know how to even approach a grand-summing-up of the whole experience. I just sort of basically went into overdrive mode, and I don't think I've ever felt so happy, peaceful, accepted. I was so completely in my element. It was so heartbreaking to leave that I cried on the Sunday morning. Sounds so ridiculously hippy bullshit back here, of course. As expected. You do go quite quickly into a new mindset out there - at least I did. It was everything I hoped for and more. Oh god.

So yeah. After fucking year of planning, and so much stress, and endless google docs, it happened. It didn't go to plan at all - things went wrong of course, mostly due to bad planning and things which weren't our faults. It was a bit adventurous trying to do all the goddamn shopping in one day. I honestly estimate we spent about seven hours in two supermarkets that day; a Home Depot, and a Walmart, en route to Reno. It was hot. We were stressing the fuck out. A LOT. Oh man. But you know, keep smiling and all. Are we buying enough shit, are we buying too much shit, etc etc. At least we could throw money at the problem until it went away. KInda.

We managed to hit Reno at like 11pm I think! I was so happy, as you can see in this video.




It was all wonderfully surreal - we were all there, together! We made it, at last! Supplies, in the car, clothes, all ready to go, ziplocking those bad boys up. The lads emptying the minibar of their beers, and our two rooms linked up with a shared door so we could all hang out. It was amazingly hyper.

The next day me and Lucas picked up our bikes from this warehouse type place in Reno where we chatted with the lovely owners, one of whom went to the UK for the Royal Wedding which was a bit adorable. We picked out our rides for the next week (mine was light green, Lucas's I forget because he covered it in orange masking tape) and stuffed them in, and soon enough, we were off, desert bound! God I remember the excitement so well. Listening to various radio stations as we drove through the Nevada hills and the wide open spaces, then up a rocky mountainous path, then Pyramid Lake. We had a terrifying moment in a petrol station where chatting with the people behind the counter (I love love love the chattiness, I have to say. I'm a chatty person. I do enjoy a good natter with some lovely locals.) that they'd heard the queue was 12 hours to get in. TWELVE. Fucking awful news, hanging over our heads the entire way. But we kept upbeat.

Finally, through Gerlach, passing tonnes of 'GET YOUR WACKY BURNING MAN SHIT HERE' stalls and people holding up signs 'Trying to go home! Need one ticket!'. Loads and loads of em. I don't think they would have been all that successful, but still. Imagine heading out there with all your supplies for the week, not knowing if you can swing it. I salute em.

As we approached the desert, we were very worried about the dust fucking up our car as we didn't want the rental company to charge us megabucks so we were careful and taped up some of the AC vents and in an effort to adjust ourselves to the hot hot heat, turned it off completely a good 20 minutes before we got onto the sand.

It was crazy dusty and hot. The problem was that we didn't want to sit in the car with all the doors and windows shut but we didn't want the car filling up with dust either so it was a lot of SHIT CLOSE THE WINDOWS HERE'S ANOTHER CLOUD OF DUST. We also saw some interesting stuff in the queue, dudes walking around dressed as robots, girls hulahooping, some people playing insanely loud music and dancing on the roof of an RV. It was good craic anyway. I was enjoying it. Still feeling a bit upset in my stomach so that was a lingering anxiety but yeah.

Finally got to Will Call, rejoined queue, got to the Greeter's Station. Lucas was shirtless at this point and I'd changed into a slip, to cope with the heat. Our first BM experience really was Lucas's shirtless hug with a topless 40-year-old woman who was our greeter, lol. And it didn't even matter. I'd get used to nudity pretty quickly - by Saturday, I was happily getting henna'd by a lovely mostly-naked woman called Kindle with a hairy stomach and didn't even register she wasn't wearing clothes.

Anyway, we slowly drove the huge perimeter at the 5mph limit, but it felt like it took forever. Goddamnit. I just wanted to get Lucas to GUN IT. and GET IN!!! 4:10 an B, 4:10 and B. We tried to navigate around. Went past a camp where people were dancing around in Banana costumes to a dubstep remix of 'Wanna be like you' from the Jungle Book and gave us free bananas. People putting up their tents shouting 'WELCOME HOME'. Trying to not bump into anyone, cycling around. It was still sunny out. 4.5 hours in, not at all terrible compared to the 12 we'd been worrying about.

Our initial impression of the camp we had joined was a little stilted, really, as everyone was trying to get the Dome up - we camped with a group of people who were awesome called Happy Camp, but yes it was stressful. We knew that we had to check with someone about where to put our car and tent so it didn't upset the balance of people but that person was NEVER around when we checked, so eventually and exhaustedly, we just put up where another guy suggested. I'd helped with the mixers for the bar by donating $10 and when the dude realised it was me, I got the biggest bonecrunching hug EVER that lifted me off the ground which was a great way to start out, even if everyone else was stressy. We got our tent up, then Espen and Dave showed up and it was so awesome to have a proper hug.

JESUS THIS IS A LONG ENTRY AND I'VE ONLY JUST GOT THE TENT UP. Don't worry I'm sure my memory gets much more fractured later on.

I remember how good the first can of beer I snapped open tasted even though it was warm. And then I remember realising how fucking fast time was going and I needed to hurry if I wanted to make my 9pm - midnight temple shift at the Temple of Transition.

It's hard to describe the Temple of Transition - in essence it's a huge structure designed purely for the purpose anew each year, constructed out of wood, and far out in the middle of the Esplanade at 6pm in the Playa. Inside, on every available surface, people write things, leave photos, god the photos, I saw hoodies of people who they'd loved who'd died, someone told me about a child's colouring book, jars of ashes i think, so many things, people leave them there and then at the end of the week it all gets burned to the ground. It's an incredible place and in particular really affected a couple of people in my group. When I went back my second time, I managed about 3 minutes of reading tributes to those lost before I completely fell apart. It's shockingly beautiful and raw and honest and it's really one of the best things about Burning Man, easily.

This video captures it nicely. It's extremely beautiful (just get past the soppy intro.)

Dear Temple of Transition [Burning Man 2011] from Ian MacKenzie on Vimeo.

In any case, inspired by what the temple was, I signed up in advance for a volunteer shift as 'guardian', i.e., don't let anyone burn anything, no smoking inside, if anyone needs help, they can have it, anyone too drunk or on drugs, anyone trying to climb, etc. The idea is you just sit quietly.

We were supposed to arrive at Burning Man much earlier. Arriving this late meant I was late for my shift. Fuck fuck fuck. I tried to pack my backpack with what I thought I needed - water, food, a drink, some lights to keep myself lit up.. I didn't know! Warm stuff? It was still really hot! I fucking got on my bike and lucas and I gunned it across the Playa and MOTHER OF GOD. IT WAS CRAZY. I was just cycling, in the dark, with LEDs on my fingers and a warm night breeze blowing my hair, and looking around all you see is darkness, and neon. Neon and fire. And lights. And people. And everything looks amazing and you're just thinking "we're here. we're here. we're here." And I was just shouting at lucas "Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit! HOLY SHIT!"

Scott London takes amazing photos

That moment was incredible. Will always remember it. And we were looking for the temple, oh god, will we ask someone? And of course not, because it's all the way miles over there, I recognized it from the drawings. It was gorgeous.

Showing up I was flustered. I wound down while I was there. Very little happened, and I barely managed to have a conversation with anyone that wasn't me being extremely panicky-but-hiding-it. I think the lady I reported to was a bit alarmed at this panicky british girl showing up to be a calm presence, so I felt like I let them down a bit in that regard. Overall my shift was quite quiet, and I got into a strange headspace of feeling very out of myself, so when Lucas showed up to say hi and sign on for HIS shift we had this really long, nice, huge important hug for ages. I'd calmed down and let go of all the day's stress, and it was a really wonderful place to do that too. Just taking in the ocean of lights from the top deck was beyond anything my brain could handle, really.

I planned originally to stay with Lucas throughout his shift, but I was crashing hard so I went back to camp in dire need of water and reassurance that I wasn't getting sicker. My throat was so dried out and I got a bit lost on the way back and missed a turning. I asked some directions from some people, and the final guy I asked was like NO WAY MAN, WE'RE CAMPED OPPOSITE! So I went back with him and his friends, had a beer in his camp, made a friend then wandered across to our camp where my friends were hanging out and quite drunk if I do say so myself! We stayed up chatting for a while which was nice, me in my owl hat Jo gave me, and this guy from Happy Camp came and entertained us off his nuts on some energy drink in the US which has health warnings all down the side, spraying his costume with glue so that the reflective tape wouldn't fall off and nattering on hilariously, until 3:45am or so when Lucas got back and we immediately fell asleep.

Day 2