It’s been a couple days and I’m finally starting to get moving on all the stuff I need to do, like unpack.

I drove to Wells, Nevada after leaving San Fran, where I spent the night in a HUGE room apparently saved for girls that show up alone after hours so I made sure I chained the door (the desk dude looked stunned that a girl would even talk to him, I’m pretty sure we creeped eachother out!). I was exhausted after driving 9 hours hours on little sleep so I slept like the dead and all was well in the morning. Frustratingly the maid banged on the door at 8:00am to clean the room, who cleans a room before checkout?!?

Early start anyways on my insane 15 hour, caffeine fueled journey home. I drove straight, only stopping for gas and rest-rooms, thank you cruise control! I did have to stop for a beautiful sunset though and took a couple pics. The border cross again was uneventful and knowing I was so close to home gave me the motivation to keep going until I slept in my bed that night. Ended up all wired from the caffeine and caught up on Mad Men until the wee hours and slept ALL day, so lovely!!

I think in total I drove nearly 5500km in the Jetta, and she held up just fine. The engine light kept me company for about 2000km but she’s out now. I went for an oil change and the verdict was it was likely the altitude and humidity changes. I ranged from 8900ft above sea level, to under sea hugging clouds, from desert to ocean.

Now I look at the chaos around me with all the stuff I have to clean and unpack and write and upload, etc, and I think I’ll give it a few weeks to complete :) The longer it takes me to unpack, the longer I get to smell playa and linger over the memories!

It’s my last day, it’s time to head home. I’m in San Francisco at the hostel using the computer since my posts keep disappearing thanks to the WordPress for iPod app, erghh.

Spent the night without a lot of sleep thanks to the snorers and farters and thunder and the couple that stomped in dropping things at 2:00am and repeated the same cycle when they left at 6:00am, I gave up and woke up properly when a cell phone went off at 7:30.

Yesterday was a good day in San Fran, this city is beautiful, I adore the architecture. We went shopping/walking/wandering/browsing on Haight Street where I found the most gorgeous sweater ever and some shoes I’m hoping will take me through my travels next year. Back home they’re twice as much so it was a bit of a splurge but the damage would have been worse at Gravity Pope. Some of the roads are insane though, I’ve never driven anything that steep and so glad I have an automatic! We saw a flat-bed of cars get stuck going over one of the humps and I was also glad of my short wheel base.

We then went out for Sushi, that’s right, I had Sushi. I tried every kind B&L ordered and I actually really liked it. It’s my third attempt since the first disastrous one 12 years ago and the most successful one.

Now I must pick the best route home and head out and hopefully be home Sunday night for a good bath and sleep and catching up with Max.

Also, found out yesterday that a site I worked on a couple months back went live, go check out the new budweiser.com!

Woke up, had some Red River, then proceeded into town for a wander. B&L recieved the sad news that Bookie didn’t make it through the night but were glad it was peaceful and that she had a long, loved life. We went to the Mecca cafe so they could contact everyone and enjoy a drink.

We also hit up a hat store that L had been wanting to go to and I found a hat that seems to suit me. We then went for a fantastic cajun lunch on an awesome patio at Ike’s. We hit the highway to Santa Cruz and the views were amazing! There were clouds on the water with clear blue skies as we went through San Fran and decided to stay in Half Moon Bay (which reminded me of Sylvan Lake) instead as it was getting late and we’d have to turn around and go back tomorrow anyway. There was a fruit stand on the way and we gorged on freshly picked strawberries and I think I may have eaten a couple spiders but it was so good!

We got a recommendation for seafood and we’re now back and totally stuffed. I think the theme of the day was amazing food and views and the soundtrack would have to be Bright Eyes. Incidentally my Burningman soundtrack was Firewater. Also drinking more mohitos. Chaotic post I know but I have very little power left!

Woke up a little earlier than expected by a work truck loading wood near my tent and the next thing I know it’s time to tear down the tent and have some breakfast. We splurged though and went to a nearby restaurant where Bruce educated me and the barista about what a dry capuccino is.

From there we went to Truckee and the infamous location of part of the Donner’s adventure, they were pioneers who did everything wrong trying to cross the mountains and ended up eating eachother. The town reminded me a lot of Banff and had a really cool bookstore and coffee shop that we spent some time in.

We decided to take the scenic route and went around the lake and it definitely was beautiful, especially the part where the road is really high up and on both sides you can see the lake. We then continued on to Nevada City where the roads were a little sketchier with no shoulders at all in some places on top of trying not to kill the cyclists on them.

Nevada City definitely has a Nelson vibe about it, but with more beautiful houses mixed in and hillier as opposed to on the side of a mountain. We’ll be touring around a bit more tomorrow. On a sad note though, there was some bad news about Bookie the 24 year old cat of Bruce and Leona who seems to have decided it’s time to go but we’re hoping she’ll pull through, it’s just wait and see right now.

We got set up at a nearby campsite, meaning my giant tent while Bruce and Leona have a sweet setup in their van. We were having a game of crib when an excited young man came up to ask if we’d just come from Burningman. His name is Ethan and we hung out for a while and found out he’s a local and directed us to the best places to eat and have coffee in town. Also found he’d just come back from 10 months in Asia and I drilled him for information. Basically Vietnam was a fail, Cambodia was a win, and Lao was a huge win based on the excited back and forth about the travels between him and Leona.

I’m now in my tent listening to frogs and I think Bruce and Leona are pretty tipsy and I’m going to dig into my book. I also wanted to apologize a bit for the bad grammer, the spell check is a bit wonky.

I’m going back in time in my head to fill in some of the blanks from the lost posts and dead batteries that created them.

In Reno, after I found B&L, (thank goodness for texts but I’m afraid to see my phone bill and evil roaming charges), we went for our best Mexican dinner yet. Even ordered Flan but it wasn’t as good as my momma’s. The guy working there I don’t think even knew I wasn’t fluent and it was nice to be able to get by in Spanish. While they were waiting for me at the cafe I never quite made it to, they were chatting with a woman who highly recommended we chill out at Lake Tahoe.

Her recommendation was spot on! It was beautiful! The roads were reminiscent of my harrowing experience in Croatia, but thanks to the things I learned on that trip and to the people who DIDN’T ride my tail the whole time, it was rather enjoyable and extremely beautiful. We got to the camp ground and I set up my tent while Bruce made us some yummy food and we visited a little with the pile of dusty foreign burners that were camped near us. I heard at least 3 different languages spoken and heavily accented English. It always amazes me how far people come to get to the desert.

We went for a walk on the beach at sunset and sat there chillin’, taking in the scenery before heading back to camp. B&L were smart enough to bring a crib board and had the patience to teach me how to play. I’ve played before, but years go by between games so I have to be re-taught every time. We had a goofy moment with our own little head lamp rave as we were all wearing them to play and the kiddies nearby had their tunes cranked.

Off to bed we went to get the energy for another day on the road.

A couple of rough notes to elaborate on later.

Tuesday:
Paul’s camp
Adventures with Niki and Jason

Wednesday:
Beats Antique
Conclave Rehearsal
Camp dinner
Cheb Sabbah

Thursday:
Tent control freak day
Wedding
Infected Mushroom
Adventures with Kanuckistan

Friday:
Paul’s camp
Poutine

Saturday:
Accupuncture
Burn night

Sunday:
Structure breakdown
Temple Burn

Monday:
Goodbye
Reno

Now I’ve lost some friends in Reno that I’m going to track down and then we’re off to Nevada City, rumoured to be the Nelson of California.

Morning came, we woke up, packed up, cleaned up, danced with breakfast bowls, loaded cars, shared hugs and promises of future gatherings. (Yes, we made it on the ‘nice’ list according to the playa cleanup crew so Church of Respect should be able to get the same spot next year)

Got in the giant exodus line, the longest I’ve ever had to wait but it was fun. There was a woman dressed like a muppet who came and gave me licorice and a colorful bio-diesel school bus full of Canadian lovers who kept telling me jokes on their megaphone. Seriously, it’s the greatest place ever, there is just nothing else out there with the same spirit anywhere! There are festivals that are fantastic I grant you, but I think a big part of it is the whole survival/self sufficiency/ money/marketing-free oasis of chaos and the unique camaraderie that comes with it.

Got to Reno with B&L and took LONG showers and filled up on Mexican food, yummy!

The end of my time travel, most of the posts were written as they happened, Sept 1-7 were written 3-6 months after the fact. If it hadn’t been for that first post out of the desert, no way would I have remembered half as much!

Last full day on the playa :( Early afternoon began with the beginnings of tear down. Down went the shade and down went some tents as some of the crew had to head home. We did end up with a new campmate though as people starting wandering about looking to hitch rides with others who were going in the same direction. Michael was on his way to Alaska and made a perfect fit in our ever-evolving group.

Not quite sure what else we did but I know I stuck close to home and probably packed more stuff and I seem to remember passing out chocolate and jello while Wil was misting people. The last couple days are always pretty fun because everyone is sharing all their stuff so that things don’t go to waste. It’s a bit like the last couple days of summer camp when everyone starts to realize that the magic is almost over and you want to make every moment count.

Then night-time came and we managed to have almost the whole Honeymoon crew together at the temple except some that we lost almost the moment we got there as they went looking for others who got lost, the ones still together stuck together to prevent the completion of the chain reaction. The procession went around and around and we Ohm’d around and around. It’s so beautiful, the contrast in energy between man burn night and temple burn night. The burn went well and there were little burning dust devils spinning about. I was missing my brother and his crew on the other side knowing it was the last night we would see each other for at least 6 months. After the temple burn, I decided to try my luck at finding him somewhere in the middle of the desert in the middle of the night.

I did.

It was kinda magic, there were at least a dozen of us that found each other, apparently during the burn they said they had all been sending their energy over to me and however crazy that actually sounds, it worked. We went to center camp and found a bench and all squeezed in and shared stories and hugs and gifts for hours until the reality of having to head back for the morning exodus spread us out again.

It’s always a bit more challenging to find your way home on the last night because the whole place has changed drastically and landmarks have either been burned down or been packed up and road signs taken as souvenirs. The only thing you can really count on are the rows of porta potties and you have a better chance if you try to find your street from the esplanade instead of taking what you thought was a shortcut, wandering the back roads because you end up completely turned around and lost. Like me :) Thankfully one of the landmarks near my camp was quite large and still there but I certainly could have gotten there a lot sooner!

Burn night! Woke up fairly refreshed after being lame the night before. I decided to join a few campmates and meander towards the Arizonians whose gift to the playa was sharing their naturopathic craft. It was set up like a proper little clinic, except in the desert, with parachutes for structures, with a waiting room even. And not just any waiting room, it had fresh coconuts with tops chopped off and a generous addition of Amaretto. That combined with great company made for a pleasurable waiting experience. When my turn rolled around, I was treated with some chiro, massage and accupuncture. I think I had over 20 (sterile!) needles sticking out of me from various points, head to toe. A girl came in with a wicked gash that possibly should’ve had stitches long before and they tried to clean her up as best they could (she had previously been to the medical tent but her drunken wanderings had gotten it pretty filthy and it was showing early signs of infection). She looked at me in shock at all the needles and wondered at my calmness in my situation. I tried to tell her I felt fantastic but she was too creeped out. She left after being freshly bandanged and came back not 5 minutes later because as she was leaving she fell off her bike and got cut up again. Forunately I think she was still drunk from the night before and didn’t seem to feel pain from her gashes and kept thinking I must be the one hurting.

The needles came out and I was all refreshed, blissed out, and full of vim and vinegar and the day continued. Can’t remember much, I likely wandered over to Entheon Village to look for Sol again and maybe took a nap or something, I just remember feeling great and a little floaty.

I got dressed for burn night as I had to be at the man before dark for Conclave in order to find the rest of my crew that was coming from various camps all over the playa. As usual, I was one of the first ones there, mostly because I was the only one coming from my camp so there was no cat herding involved. A dust storm kicked up and it was kinda chilly so we all sat together in a circle and played games (helps having people in the crew who work with small children so there’s no shortage of goofy things to do) As the sky got darker, a few people were feeling the stress of performance and it got kinda ugly which was unfortunate. It was to the point that many of us hoped the dust storm wouldn’t stop and the performance would just be cancelled like the previous year, which is a sucky thing to feel when everyone had worked hard for much of the year and had been really excited for this opportunity. This is what can happen when the days are hot, the dust is blowing, dehydration is rampant and people have been partying all week. Thankfully, when the dust died down, so did most of the tension and the drummers started drumming and the people started coming from all over the playa and we lit up! It was so awesome, the choreography changed on the fly to fill up the space we were working with and everyone did fantastic. After the main choreography it was play time, we went Quadro Flamenco style which is a half circle facing the crowd with people taking turns showing off in the center. There was some confusion as to how long we had and were given the finish up call so I took off the fingers (which are a pain to put on and take off) then we got the call to keep going for what turned out to be at least another 15-20 minutes so there was a scramble to keep people fueled and lit to keep going. I definitely wished I had kept my fingers on, I know I’m not very good but I also know the more rounds I do, the more confident I get, and my performance gets better, but I guess it was ok for a first timer and blended with the insane talent of my companions, I think it was a great debut for the first ever inner circle performance by the newly banded, first ever Albertan fire conclave. (Our audition video, I couldn’t there for the demo)

It was pretty amazing to have come full circle from my first year. I remember being in complete awe of the fire performers, I had never seen anything like it and never knew such a thing was even possible. And then, my fifth year, I was one of the people contributing to a performance that maybe other first time burners were thinking the same thing about. We huddled up INSIDE the inner ring after the fuel and tools had been put away and looked up to see about a dozen flames lighting up the sky attached to invisible people jumping out of an invisible plane as they parachuted down in formation with some kind of Mad Max inspired jetpacks. Next thing we know there’s this HUGE explosion. Then the man starts burning and it looks like he’s going to go before the structure does and his arm falls off and the fire guys are running around throwing flares in trying to get the structure going and some guy decides to entertain everyone by running into the inner circle buck naked and laughing and the fire guys start chasing him and then finally it all starts burning and the man is still up and it gets so hot we have to move further back and then the structure is mostly gone and the man is still standing! And people start to wander back to porta potties and whatnot thinking he’ll never fall and he’s still going and finally, FINALLY he falls and everyone is screaming and it’s awesome and probably the longest yet most intense and amazing burn I’ve seen yet!

Exhausted from the adrenaline surges throughout the night and a little burnt out (pun intended) I meander slowly back to camp checking things out along the way and sharing smiles with strangers. I take the long way and come across a girl whose mate seems to be trying to hold her back and she tears away and runs over to me to give me a hug and then thanks me for hugging her back properly. It’s the best feeling wandering amongst tens of thousands of happy people enjoying themselves with fire and light and sound coming from every direction.

Friday, today started yesterday so I slept in quite late which is an amazing feat in the ridiculous heat. I managed to wake up long enough to say goodbye to Jeff and Connie who had to get home and ready to teach at the U of C, it was sad to see some of our brethren start to leave, it meant the magic was nearly over. I’m pretty sure I washed up and ate, the usual, likely soup or something. Our kitchen was a beautiful mess but surprisingly not frustrating and everything was findable and functional and everyone took care of their own.

Wil decided it would be a good idea to have mimosa’s for breakfast as we had a large abundance of champagne so it was a tasty start to the day. I had plans to visit with Paul and Marie at Kanuckistan and Wil and Nikki joined me for the wander. We stopped by a saloon near Antartica and had our mimosa’s topped off with rum and juice or something and we wandered merrily across the playa; stopped here and there for random photo op’s, conversations, misting attacks, pee breaks, and giggles. We even found SNOW CONES. Snow cones are desert crack. We snuck into the dome and I found my inert family member. The expression on his face when he woke up to Wil misting water on his face will be remembered for all time. We snacked, we giggled, we chatted, we drank, we sweated. Wil and Nikki continued on their way and eventually we got moving too.

Not sure what the plan was but I remember wandering with Marie and Kira and my booze had run out and I had no water and I was tired and my feet hurt and wah wah wah so after a while I ended up going back to my camp to see if I could fix myself up. (gotta have at least one grumpy spell out here right?) Decided to lay low the rest of the day so didn’t go too far, the medical tent told me to stop walking so much because my feet were covered in blisters and not little ones either. I took my time, had a bit of a bath (small tub filled with dusty water and a washcloth) Chilled out with my peeps and my book. Went to bed early with the promise of a 2am wakeup call.

Why on earth would I want a wakeup call at 2am you ask? For POUTINE. Nikki was working the shift and Canadians got a VIP line so we had to check it out. B&L and I wandered across the playa watching explosions and rocketships and bonfires and glowing eggs and bright lights and shiny things as we made our way over to Poutine Camp where I ran into my Kanuckistani crew (my brother’s a little hard to miss in a crowd) and we ate glorious fresh poutine, mmmmmmmm. Now as I write this 5 months later, I have a really strong craving for salty, cheesy, gravy coated potatoes….

Any ways, food went in belly and I was glad. I was totally slowing down B&L with my lack of bicycle (I abandoned it after the first day, my bum was just not happy with the seat, and when I say abandoned, I mean I left it at Kanuckistan and had a friend bring it back to Canada and put it on his farm so that it could be donated to a burner in need next year that isn’t such a pansy) I split off to let them adventure and decided to wander over to center camp to see what was going on there. I was treated to some great performances at the cafe and an aerialist performing off some big metal thing out front and chatted with random strangers. Checked out the ranger station looking for a familiar face and left a note (that he only got after the event was over, surprise! At least he knew I was thinking of him :) It was nice to just wander all over the playa at night by myself and just go wherever my curiosity took me. I treated the feet with another soak and coating with vaseline and ended the evening with a fantastic sleep.