aroraborealis

As a vaguely-related followup to my post about people "stealing" the chocolate I keep on my desk for people to take (here), a story:

After Burning Man 2008, we planned to drop our bikes off at the roadside bike stand where we had purchased them. The person who runs this business takes bikes at the end of each festival, stores them, does a modicum of upkeep on them, and sells them to Burners at the beginning of the next year's event for $40. This is a genius business plan as long as space is cheap. It works well for burners, who effectively rent a bike for $40 for 3-10 days, and for the businessperson, who doesn't really have to do much except deal with a fuckload of bikes, which, I'll grant, is probably a pretty big job.

Anyway, we had picked up a bunch of these bikes on our way in, and planned to drop them off as we left, but the sign at the dropoff point said, "NO MORE BIKES!"

WHAT?? What were we going to do with 5 dusty crappy bikes? We certainly didn't want to fly them back to Boston.

Then someone had the brilliant idea to post them on Craigslist as giveaways in Las Vegas once we arrived. Perfect!

So, we got to our hotel, unloaded the bikes from the RV, parked them in a prominent spot in the parking lot, and posted to CL. Then, after hours of dusty RV cleaning, a bunch of transcendent showers, and dinner, we went to sleep. In the morning, the bikes were gone! Hooray!

I got back to Boston and told this story to one of my colleagues, who said in horror, "But how do you know the bikes weren't stolen??"

One of the funny things about getting home from Burning Man is how I am both intensely relieved to have quiet time alone and intensely lonely and missing the rich and constant interaction with friends and strangers on the playa.

Similarly, I am intensely glad to be clean and comfortable and not dust-covered, while intensely missing the noise and spaciousness and wonder of the playa.

It's good to be home; it was a great burn.

In honor of it being so hot today that I couldn't think straight, I just bought my plane tickets out west for Burning Man! I'll be flying to SF August 23, and back Sept 6. I accidentally bought the redeye for Tuesday night rather than Monday night on the return, and I may wind up changing that, but I'm going to sleep on it and see what I think tomorrow. In any case: OONTZ!

The hilariousest compliment that I've gotten in recent months came last Monday, in San Francisco, when a handful of Summer Campers were standing around outside Humphrey Slocombe eating delicious ice cream and generally goofing around. I was standing back from the crew to take a picture of the when a wizened, elderly woman tottered by and said to me, "You look lovely!" Before I could thank her, she continued, "So feminine! No boots or tattoos!" I blinked and considered pulling down my sock to show off my tattoo, but then thought better of it and thanked her back as she carried on her way.

On Wednesday, I flew to San Francisco and was immediately swept up into a flurry of preparatory shopping and cooking and packing for Burning Man. I barely had a chance to realize I was in the Bay Area before contessagrrl and I dove into a car to drive to Marysville for a concert last night, and from there to Reno, where we fell into bed exhausted for 6 hours. I now have about half an hour of down time before we meet elvendoll and sol3 for breakfast and then continue on our way to RaverdoonBlack Rock City.

I'll be out of contact entirely until sometime on Monday, September 6, and not really back in contact until Tuesday or possibly mid-September.

If you want to find me on the playa, I'll be at Summer Camp in the neighborhood of Athens & 4:00. If you have an emergency and need to reach me, you can send an email to 911@burningman.com including the information about my location and someone will try to get the message to me -- and will probably succeed within a day or so. Otherwise, wall country can wait. I'll see you all in a week.

I am not in the habit of wishing my weekends away, but I swear if I could fastforward to 6pm tomorrow and have everything that needs to get done between now and then done, I would do it. This week has kicked my butt up one side and down the other, and all I really want to do is curl up on a sofa and sip wine and do something easy for a few hours. After sleeping for a week.

Can that be arranged?

At Burning Man this year, I will be at Summer Camp, in the neighborhood of Athens & 4:00!

Do you know where you'll be?