Burning Man
I was suppose to mail this to my Mom from Burning Man but I forgot. I figured I should post it here.
Dear Mom,
Hope everything at home is going ok. I thought I should write you and tell you about what its like at burning man. You always are asking me about it and I cant ever explain it right so maybe a letter will help.
We arrived on Sunday during a nice dust storm. The 2 ladies that took our tickets were real nice. One from Australia wasn’t wearing any clothes, the other one I think was from England. She was just topless. I guess they make them wear bottoms in England.
After we gave them out tickets and they said we could drive in we gave them presents. At burning man it’s a gifting society. There is no selling of anything. So we gave them tequila and Texas beer. They loved it.
The next stop was greeters. The lady there was topless also. But she was from the states. She asked us if we had been before and Katy said yes it was her 2nd time and my 3rd. She said then she didn’t need to spank us or explain things. We agreed although a spanking during the middle of a dust storm by a topless lady cant be bad can it? We also gave her some gifts, this time some vodka from Russia and Texas beer. She loved it.
We arrived at camp and wouldn’t you know it, but the ones that had already arrived had been setting up all day and were already tired and had started to party. It was hard to get them to help unload but we finally got everything unloaded. Katy and I started building our shelter that we would live in for the next 6 nights. It didn’t take long to understand why everyone was either naked or topless. Its hot out here!
We got our shelter up and then we laid out the stuff for out theme camp. Our theme camp was to decorate peoples bikes. Since you cant drive a car there (unless its an art car) everyone rides bikes. Well since its an arts festival its real cool to have a decorated bike. We were there to help you make your bike into an art piece.
We were tired so we went to bed early. About 11pm I think.
Monday morning I awoke before sunrise and watched it rise. Wow it was really awesome! Katy got up, we ate some breakfast (I had tequila sunrise, that’s tequila and orange juice with a splash of grenadine, need my vitamin C just like you taught me)
We got the rest of the theme camp together and finally opened at noon. Wow we didn’t realize how popular we would be. Very quickly we learned we had to get people in line.
Lucky for us we had a guy that had a bullhorn (it’s a model cmg6666 and its really cool, plays some funny stuff on it) We got to decorating bikes. People would come in and we had cloth they could use or fake flowers or pipe cleaners plus some little LED lights. It was really fun. If the girls were real pretty I would find my friend Wayward (they call him wayward cause he can dress up like a real pretty lady) to come help them as he is single and likes helping pretty girls.
Some of the problems we found out real quick were that more people wanted to decorate there bikes than we had space for. We got one of our campmates to control the line with his Bullhorn. At one point the people camped across the street from us sent there 10 yr old boy over to ask him to stop talking on it as it was messing with his dads tripping. It was at that point I realized that nothing my dad ever did to me was that bad. Can you imagine…”son go tell the neighbor to stop mowing his lawn as I am trying to trip right now”…that would have been funny.
We figured that the neighbor was joking so we asked our campmate to make sure he talked on his bullhorn all day long. I think our neighbors loved it!
Katy and I got real tired working in the camp all day and didn’t have enough energy to drive our bikes out into the “city” so we just set our chairs up in front of camp and watched everyone go by. Just as we were talking about how it would be nice to ride in an art car Naked Jim drives up in one asking if we want a ride. WOW what great timing.
Katy and I rode in the front with Naked Jim and went out into the city. It was dark and kind of hard to see all the people walking around without any lights on. For some reason people get stupid at Burning Man and think that everyone else has night vision or something. It took Naked Jims and my full attention to make sure we didn’t run over anyone. We got to calling people without lights on “darktards”. Not a real politically nice term but after a bit it got frustrating. By the end of the week I was calling them that to there face…
We saw some awesome art! I can’t explain it at all, but there are some imaginative and creative people in this world. WOW (by the way, naked Jim got his name cause he goes around naked all the time)
Tuesday morning about 4am during a total eclipse someone decided to burn the man a little early. So when we got up Tuesday morning the man was all charred. Was really exciting to here all about it and get everyone’s opinion of it. They took him down and started rebuilding him so they could burn him again Saturday night. Made perfect since to us.
Tuesday we did pretty much what we did Monday. We worked in the theme camp all day then just chilled at night. You see a lot of weird or wild things at burning man, but after the first day it really does not seem wild or weird anymore. I didn’t see anyone “tripping out” but I did see a lot of happy people. There are a lot of people that do drugs and a lot of drink, but you don’t have to do either one to have a real good time. Katy and I don’t do drugs at all (well alcohol but in moderation) and we had a blast. Some of our campmates don’t do either one and have a blast. Its hard to explain but there is a lot of live and let live and that fosters a big since of community? Or acceptance? No matter how weird, ugly, pretty, overweight, skinny, you are you are accepted for who you are and welcomed. Our campmates were from one end to the other! Me and katy the conservative married for over 20 yrs couple to the young artistic couple (katy adopted the girl as her burner daughter.) to the guy older than all of us. We had teachers, to waitresses to students in our camp and we all accepted each other. It’s a shame the rest of the world cant get along a tenth as well as we did.
Wednesday we decide we were not going to work in the theme camp that day, and let some of our campmates do it. At noon the World naked bike ride started going by. I asked them were they were going and they were heading to “our lady of schlongs” who were at 4:30 and landfill (the streets have names) so I asked katy if she wanted to join and she said sure. So did Tigger. So we took off after them. We caught them and went on the world naked bike ride. From our lady of schlongs we went to Barbie death camp and wine bistro. Then we headed over to another camp but forget the name. (that wine was stong!)
I got to see a 65 pontiac hearse and remembered you making the red curtains for mine! Was really cool. I got to missing my hearse.
I forget what else we did Wed. I think we had a lot of fun.
Thursday was a march for male rights, sorta. The name is not something I want to tell my mom but it was very fun. Our camp was one of the places they stopped and we serverd them Texas beer and water. It was way fun.
Then the real dust storm hit! Wow 40 to 50 mph wind and white outs it was so dusty. We had to do some major tying down of structures and actually had to take some down.
Friday….we went and saw some of our friends at various camps and went and checked out the art. Then we had another dust storm, then some slight rain, a triple rainbow then more wind. For some reason it was fun.
Saturday….the weather was nice and we checked out the art work all over the city. Then that night we watched the man burn again. It was not near as exciting as the last year, maybe because they had already burned him once that week and we figured out that we didn’t need a man to burn to develop a since of community with people?
Sunday morning early Katy rode out with Disco Deb and another lady and they all flew home. I drove back with Button and arrived home Tuesday.
There are many many many stories and details I left out. Sure a lot I would not tell my mom, but nothing I am ashamed of just embarrassed to tell mom. And yes it wasn’t all rose’s…..there were trials and tribulations…but we all got thru them and still had a great time.
If there were not so many naked people or if the dust storms were not so bad or if wasn’t so hot I would try and convince you and dad to rent an RV and come out. Well that and you have to bring in your own water and take out your own trash and you cant leave a trace you were ever there and you have to use porta potties all week, and the music and sounds are real loud all night long…and your 2 hours from the closest hospital, and and and…well guess its not for everyone but if you did go you would be accepted!
Mike aka ESE that is long for SA which is short for swiss army, my burner name given to me cause I am always fixing things, kind of like a swiss army knife, many tools.
