BURNING MAN!!!!

Burning man is one of those experiences that people tell you they can't explain to you but you just HAVE to go because its just soooooooo special and mindblowingly spectacular. Thats what sam had been telling us for years and years but we never seemed to get ourselves together enough to organise flying to the other side of the earth to camp in the lifelkess harsh desert for a week. Maybe the princess in me was a little afraid of the dust and the heat and the lack of showers and all the other hardships i had been told about; but anyway after many years of nagging finally we packed ourselves up and headed for black rock desert (a few hours out of reno, nevada)

We arrived in reno and met sammy (with his newly bleached hair-do) at the airport and then set about going shopping for all of our supplies for the day. Since we are going camping in the desert for 7 days we had to take absolutely everything we'd need. 14 gallons of water each, lots of food, tents, pillows, cooking equipment, toilet paper, torches, batteries, glowsticks, face paint, bits of fabric for costumes and so on. It took us the best part of the day and just as we were ready to take the long drive out ino the desert the truck started making funny ticking noises. You always have to have a drama at the start of these kinds of trips aye? Well we spent the next 2 hours driving it around tring to get people to look at it but it was the end of the day so it was hard to find any help. eventually a guy looked it over and said he thinks it might be ok but he's not sure. There is a possibility it will break down on us too. Oh well, we just decided to run the gauntlet and take to ticking truck out into one of the harshest environments possible and of course we made it!!

After all the preparations and car hassles we finally arrived at Black Rock City at night fall. Black Rock City is the name of the city that the burning man festival forms. aprox 40,000 people come out for the festival and form the 3rd largest city in Nevada for that week. So Anyway when we arrived BM (burning man) was Engulfed in MASSIVE dust storm and it was almost impossible to see more than half a meter in front of you. I was glad to be in the car and not outside at that point. the people outside looked like sand monsters. we handed them beers out the window (then quickly wound it back up!). I'd never seen anything like it....ever! How Sam managed to navigate us to our camp still mystifies me.

But the drama's of the day were not over. The shade structure sammy had set up the day before we arrived had blown over in the strong winds and dinted our camp neighbours car. In the spirit of burning man they were very forgiving and gave us some glowsticks and smiles so all was ok. We set up camp for the night and braved the dust (wich had settled quite alot) and went and got amoungst it!
We intended to only go out for a quick look and then go to bed but we were like little kids in a giant toy store once we got out there! As we walked the dusty streets passing pirates, topless glittered girls and giant pink mushroom cars we realized we wouldn't begoing to bed any time soon. We visited lots of bars and drank free alcohol all night and visited a massive wooden structure called the waffle. the bigest structure that had ever graced the playa and had a huge bar and dancefloor inside it, then we met fire blowing rainbow bearded dudes who took us to a 'vampire' bar where they were serving port out of bloodbags hanging from the roof and was full of people dressed as vampires and there were naked girls with shaved heads pole dancing. they were mesmerizingly weird. I ended up getting to bed just after 4am and they boys stumbled home after the sun was up.

Day 2 we slept most of the day and cracked a beer shortly after waking, had a bit of food and headed straight back out to see what the new day held for us. The way of burning man is sort of like being a child. You do something for a while till something else grabs your attention (like a man on fire riding a bike or a crew of multi coloured aliens wanting to abduct you) and then something else and again and again and thats the fun of burning man. So night 2 found us watching a chainsaw that had been converted into...ahem, some girating genitalia. it also found sam riding a skate ramp whilst simultaniously playing a trumpet in the middle of a dust storm and before long my top was off and my boobs were painted and we were dancing the dusty night away. I managed to have a pretty hectic bike accident that night and was cut and bruised nicely. Thats what you get for not wearing lights on your bike at night. The dust got into my wounds and i still have the scars months later!

Day 3 was wilder again because the festival was really starting to ramp up. more people were arriving and there were more art cars and wild tents being erected. there were wearwolves, robots, pharohs and fairies all over the place. there were beaver eating contests, naked twister, thunderdome fights and all kinds of other wild shanangans errupting all over the place! We woke in the afternoon and cracked our beers for breakfast and then I spent a good 2 hours dressing the boys up. Hair dying, body and face paints and bright coloured fabrics were all involved and then i donned my cop outfit complete with leather hat and big studded belt and boots and off we went. This was the first day i saw the water truck wich is used the wet the streets to settle the dust but everyone uses it for amobile shower. sam and matt has there clothes off preety fast and ran under it. i kept mine on but got nice and cool under the spray. then after i arrested and whipped several people for loitering we found a giant see saw to ride and then the biggest dust storm whipped up and so we decided the only thing for it was to seek shelter in this cute little cowboy bar with no walls but just salloon style doors sitting out the front on their own. these cowboys gave us shelter from the storm and some warm pink sweet stuff with high alcohol content. I painted faces for people there but it got so dusty that you could hardly see the paint and everyones face had the same pale grey dust mask. It was about that time i started arresting more people and giving public whippings. i ended up with quite a line up of people waiting to get a lashing from me. i gave em some serious welts but they loved it...he he he

After the pink stuff changed to brown stuff we decided to move on to an exciting and lively bar nearby and we danced and had loads of fun. i'll just leave it at that for this story as some things at burning man must stay at burning man (or at least not published on the internet) ; )
We sure had fun though and somewhere during the night it got cold and i found myself in a blue onepeice ski suit (given to me by a hot poledancing chick named goergette) that kept me warm (the suit that is). It is so hot during the day in that desert but the nights can get absolutely freezing cold.

By day 4 my hair was starting to form dreads and our tents were getting a bit dusty but we were having the time of our lives. We had taken to having cute little bird baths in the nuddy in the mornings with a bucket and a washer and matty would carefully wash my bike accident injuries. what a bummer that i had roughed myself up so much. Burning man was getting really full and atmospheric now. More art cars, more people, more vibe. We had become good freinds with our tent neighbours. We had a really fun boy from South Carolina with a really cool deep south accent right beside us. one of those "heeey yaaaa'll" accents. Then we had a talented spanish guitar player who would play guitar while on his unicycle and even went off a jump once on his unicycle while playing to guitar still...very impressive! All our neighbours were great and we often had people sitting around our camp with us eating dinner with us or having a drink or just a chat. It was such a nice little community we had going. Today was a mellow day of resting and in the night we decided to have a bit of a more chilled night & just walked all over the playa just taking in all the artworks and watching little shows and meeting people. It was beautiful. We went at checked out this massive metal serpant artwork that moved and breather fire, then we checked out a huge tent full of psycodelic artworks and watched a movie about the painter that was fascinating, we visited the thunderdome where all night they have fight matches and the two fighters get strung up by bungee cords so they are kind of weightless and they wack eachother with padded foam bats. that was incredibly crazy vibe. We saw many Incredible art cars that looked like dragons, venus fly traps, monsters and boobs. The other thing that happened that day was the tornado that ripped through many peoples camps and came close to destroying ours. We saw it coming and it was one of the coolest things i have ever seen! As it was coming right for us we had to rush to get anything that was loose and throw it in our tents and then we were getting ready to put all our weight onto our shade structure to keep it from flying away but luckily for us it stopped a block or two away from us and just hovered there a while and then went a different way...phew!

Day 5, After a sleep and a bird bath found us hanging out at center camp wich is a huge communal area. It was a bit sad that when we were there there was an accident that involved some guy falling off some railing he'd climbed up and injured someone he fell on. The guy he fell on was hurt couldn't feel his legs or walk and was wheeled off. It was a reminder to me that burning man is about radical self reliance and total responsability for yourself. If you want to climb up onto art cars and onto structures you can but if something happens to you out in the middle of nowhere then you'll be in a pickle. The people who make these structures aren't necisarrily going to be making them 100% sturdy and safe and you have to keep your head about you. People get injured every year cause they get high and then go 'play with the art' a bit to much or dehydrate and stuff like that. After my bike accident i was already a bit cautious and feeling a bit fragile and sore. That afternoon we went and watched the critical tits parade where about 6 thousand women do a topless bike ride with decorated boobs. what a cool site!! it sure was hot this day i remember. That afternoon we found out that our unicycle riding freind had earned a fight in the thunderdome (the people who run it loved him cause he was doing his jumps on the unicyle while playing guitar trick for them) so we all sat around at camp getting him amped up and the boys were drinking dark rum - not good for sammy cause rum seems to get him a bit crazy and agro and boy oh boy...really loud! Anyway it was good for going to the thunderdome to watch our freind fight so we got rummy and climbed up the thunderdome walls (i had to take my pants off and climb up in my undies cause my jeans didn't have enough movement in them he he he) and watched him get absolutely cained when it was his turn to fight. poor little bugga. After the fight sam had mellowed a bit from screaming and yelling at the thunderdome and as we roamed the playa looking for our next adventure we found dr megavolt!! Now seriously this is one of the coolest things i have ever witnessed. Picture a truck trailer with 2 MASSIVE tesler coils on it and this guy walks out in what looks like a space suit and they fire up the tesler coils and massive bolts of lightening come out and zap the crap out of him in this suit. the noise it makes is sooooo cool and he does this little show where he manipulates the lightening bolts in differnt ways with differnt objects and its just mesmerizing. never seen anything like it!! We also saw this weird artwork thing that blew an intense green flame out the top and made a scary highpitched noise like it was about to explode. then we danced at the waffle with brian and watched some great fire dancing and then saw the most amazing drag show EVER! it was a giggly wild night. i went to bed early and then boys came home well after the sun came up looking pretty rough indeed. he he he

Burn Day! day 6, is what burning man is all about. The burning of a huge wooden man stuffed with fireworks. The party is now in absolute full swing and there is electricity in the air. Every art car is out and every ones in fancy costumes and on their craziest behaviour. Now our tent in really dusty and we can never find anything cause our tents are so messy but we are very happy little campers. We went and slept most of the day in a big communal airconditioned tent that is decorated to look like a forest. Man that was nice. That night we headed straight out to the man and soaked up the great vibe. They had a ring around the man of about 800 or so fire dancers and when they set the man on fire it was incredible. there was such electricity in the air as the fireworks exploded and the flames grew huge. All these fire tornados started coming off the fire and ripping into the croud in one area are spraying hot ash all over them. What a site! We had a little mosey around but had a fairly early night as we had exhausted ourselves the previous night.


Day 7 was our last real day as tommorrow we had to pack up and leave. We were lucky to organise a lift back to reno with our mate brian because we had to give the ticking truck to sams freind hannah so she could drive it to sanfran. phew. Now i do have to admit that the heat, dust, dready hair and all that was starting to get to wear me out a little and i wasn't sad to be going home the next day. The thought of a shower and a nice hotel bed with clean sheets were very appealing indeed but i sure am glad we stayed because that night they burnt the giant waffle structure and this thing was the bloody size of a sideways skyscraper so to see it get burn was really incredible. i doubt i'll ever see a fire that big up close again! During the day we packed up lots of our stuff and then went on a fun bar crawl involving margarita ice cones and matty got shitfaced. We went and watched the burn that night with our mates georgette and sean who are a fun and sexy and inspiring couple from reno. It was a great night but you could see that many people had left BM already and there was lots of packing and a constant stream of cars leaving.

Day 8 was a real chore day. We packed up and it took a lot longer than we thought it would and it was hot and matty was hungover the poor boy but finally we got it all packed and got in the 4 hour cue to leave. That was a pain in the ass, and then we had a long drive to reno as well but we ended up getting a hotel room with the clean sheets and i had 2 showers and got all the dreads out and then we ate at a nice restaurant and it was soooooooooooo good to feel clean and eat food in an airconditioned restaurant. brian nearly fell asleep on the table at the restaurant cause he hadn't slept in almost 48 hours but he held out for the green tea icecream. he he he

After burning man we me sammy and matt flew to l.a and spent a few days in huntington beach to relax and unwind wich was perfect after BM. What a great adventure!!