i defied the nay sayers....who said I'd return with a mohawk, wearing a grass skirt and smelling of banana vodka and hemp chanting something about twinkies...but Lo!! behold I am victorious. Yes I have posted some pictures on the MWO gallery and more to come. Gory details as follows:
Burning Man festival at black rock city. when the festival comes it turns an unpopulated stretch of desert into the 3rd largest city in the state. More than 45 thousand attended this year.
and YES.....I did it drug and alcohol free!!!!!!!!!! must tell you it was hard since the couple we went with are big party animals and the smell of booze was annoying. the smell of "incense" in the air was kind of nice though even though I don't participate in that reminds me of some groovy parties my folks had.
sure hope my night-time picutres turn out...just simply amazing place at night. they have these flame thrower 'art cars' that cruse around blinking an incredible array of lights, pounding out music and blasting 60 foot flames into the sky. VERY surreal and much like the Mad max beyond thunderdome kind of party with a high-tech twist.
I would certainly have been better prepared for the wind and dust storms if I had simply realized that mother nature had a death warrant out for us...holy crap! it was about a zillion degrees of brutal sun and then 50mph winds destroyed our tarps and blew so much dust that you could literally not see 5 feet in front of your face....white out!! when that happened people on bicycles were crashing everywhere and the city stopped in it's tracks. very post-apocolypic wierd.
yes, some butthole torched the 'man' but is now in police custody. they spent the rest of the festival rebuilding the man which was good. The arson attemp happended as we were on our way out there watching the lunar eclipse which was very nice. the moon took on this amazing textural look to it and got deep red.
it was difficult to cook there but the grillmeister was not to be stopped! we had gourmet goodies in the dirt to preserve our strength to stay up on our graveyard party schedule. (I'm not a night owl)
people were there from all over the world...I heard Slavic languages, Japanese, Italian etc. Yes, lots of nudity and other woodstock-like expression. some really neat music and some of the folks that came brought sound systems that would absolutely shame most nightclubs....complete with huge geodesic domes and pyramids light up with laser light shows and powerfull lighting....groovy baby!!
during the 6 days out there I saw NO fights or violence of any kind! that impressed me a lot. saw some people making love in vehicles etc but they were at least making some attempt to be private. yes there was perverted type of sexual experimentation going on that others reported seeing but most of it was in private. Dx and I got a real bicycle workout and it's the only way to see the place at night since it's sooo huge and the only vehicles allowed are certified 'art cars'. some of the art cars looked like ships...Spanish Galleons etc. glowing and floating effortlessly across the dark playa.....
the funny thing is that since I'm so square nobody believed I was really going..not even my own sister...ha! it's good to operate outside of one's comfort level once in a while. that's really what we are doing here anyway to be AF isn't it? get out of our comfort zone and live from a different perspective.
Comment