Deep Playa, La Contessa, Hot Springs
Monday, timelessness o'clock. On the playa.
Heavy windstorms, total white outs, shade structure collapse.
It's the most amazing shit these elements.
Getting ready for the burn was a process. The years before
were more involved since I still wasn't sure exactly what I was going to need.
But this year, I knew. So I procrastinated.
My shit was in handy piles spread out around my place.
Half the time is spent trying to live there in your head, figuring out if you got it all.
Packing the car was probably the only time that geometry would come in handy.
I had those peeps working in my garage. The dyke march peeps. Sorting shirts. One was at Michigan so I had my first post Michigan sighting. Always a cool thing. We both had our wristbands still on. A silly but significant matter.
Nothing so far felt as good as closing all the doors and
gunning the engine up Tompkins st. Calling Ty to tell her I'm doing a drive by
for her pickup.
She's in,
and were off.
A quick stop at Rainbow for fruit and other last minutes,
then we hit the freeway.
Traffic's lite on a 2:30 Sunday afternoon. The drive was filled with the freedom of the next 7 days with no agenda other than whatever surprise came up next. Hitting mid California to scorching heat. Random conversations litter the drive. A great retelling of a story by Ty about the history of the Adirondacks and the Hatfield's and McCoy's. Gossip from our worlds punctuated by silence and day dreams. Watching the landscape change from the flat farm lands that make you wonder who lives out here, to the arrival of the sierra's with their tall pencil thin pine trees that make you want to grab a handful to play with. Odd thoughts zip through my mind. The recurring one from my youth, a strange urge to just open my door as we speed down the road and step out. I have always suspected it came from my intense dislike of road trips with the p's. The desire to escape the confines of the backseat of a 1970 maverick. Just open the door and step out.
Rolling hills now yellow from a prolonged empty sky, yet the urge to lay down on it's illusionary billowy surface.
The landscape changes again as we move through Truckee. Mountainous region. Huge mountains that lay mostly bare. You'd think that someone is laying on their side blanketed by the grasses. Shapely hips, jutting knees, rounded shoulders. It's all there to see if your looking for it.
A stop in Reno. A discovery that my mp3 player has malfunctioned again and all the tuneage was erased. An expensive mispurchase. (IRiver H300, don't go there)
Best buy, Circuit City, need to find a firewire to link to my laptop so I can reload my music. A sore neck, a frustrated search, a pissed off Cory blows off the wireage. This burn has to go off without the planned pink Floyd mushroom trip out in the middle of nowhere. A major bummer. It was my one desire.
As the sun sets, we hit the last 75 miles to the playa. (pronounced ply-a) I plug in my laptop and play some jams that has us crooning out in amateur vocals at all our favorites. Time fly's by. The road which most of the year is a desolate stretch of jackrabbit graveyard is now packed with the burners, all arriving with their own stories. Every now and again we hit a town marked by speed limit signs decreasing from 70 to 55 to 45 to 35 to the appallingly slow 25 mph. And I have watched countless times, car after car being pulled over by cops in wait for those still to ignorant to the diligence these small town cops give to the 30 mile an hourer.
They sit by the road, 4,5 cars, just waiting. The car right in front of us, a victim of the late night, to dark to care, need to get there, speed trap. Prior to his being nabbed, we are tail gated all through town by another ignoramus. Insisting through his close proximity that we are truly the reincarnation of gram and gramps. Not until our fearless leader, far ahead by now, was detained by our speed thirsty constables, did the potential butt fuckers back off and replaced their annoyed crawl with the picture of a more than generous space cushion. (at least a 10 second batch of emptiness between us)
Our last few days before leaving, as well as the trip itself was punctuated by frequent conversations about arriving early. No patience to wait till Monday. Had three early lists we could have been on but we all failed to do the work to get us signed on. Tribe. net was rife with warnings of not to arrive early. We fought hour by hour not to leave. But Sunday morning had us chomping at the bit. We were still hours early when arriving at the gate and expected to wait in line as they held us up till the 12:01 Monday morn entry time. But none of that happened. We were there, and we were welcomed home.