Burning Man, part 13

I got a ride on a weirdly tall bicycle up 2 to Inter­tidal. Someone gave me an ice-cold grape Otter Pop.

The swim­ming pool was glor­i­ously cold, one of those child’s inflat­able pools that was just large enough to sit in up to my neck. I was alone there for a while, and it was bliss­ful. In the heat, I dried off almost immediately. 

I got another ride back to The Man and walked across the playa to Media Mecca for another round of cock­tails. Yet again, we were hit with a huge storm, this time so bad I had trouble breath­ing. News star­ted to filter through that the storm had delayed the burn­ing of Crude Awaken­ing which was now sched­uled for after the Man tomor­row night.

Dinner at camp. Went to bed early in the ham­mock strung up in the camp dome, but heard that Paul Oaken­feld would be play­ing at the Opu­lent Temple club on 2 o’clock and Esplanade some­time early in the morn­ing, so around 1am, when I awoke with all the noise around me, I dressed and wandered out again. I jumped onto a passing art car and bizar­rely, the hand reach­ing for me to help me up was Denis, who Doug and I met at Harbin a few weeks before.

We went off to the club and danced on the plat­form above the crowd. (Image cc cour­tesy of enpointe.)

Later I decided I was too tired and headed for home, only to dis­cover all the won­der­ful people I’d met from Flam­ing Lotus Girls sit­ting around the Illu­min­a­tion Vil­lage fire. Ended up sit­ting next to them and get­ting fab­ulously drunk on red wine, tip­ping some down Mills’ cleav­age when she wouldn’t stop singing ”Tie Me Kangaroo Down” at me.

I even went out again in search of the myth­ical steam bath at Camp Carp, dis­covered it but no steam engine, wandered back and on my way ran into Dave and Alison from Fire­Drums. Had a won­der­ful talk with them, went home, chat­ted by the fire again until silly o’c­lock and watched the sun rise with 

sig­ni­fier

. Slept.