(no subject)

[elvendoll]

the short story:

sol3, goat and i flew into reno on Saturday. we cabbed over to the motel, dragged our luggage up (damn motels that don't have luggage carts) and then goat and i wandered off to the shopping plaza across the street for last minute crafts supplies and a bathing suit for her. this took much longer then we were expecting it to, and we were hungry by the end of it, so we called sol3, who walked over to meet us and find food together. eventually, we got back to the motel, other people started showing up and then adania and i finished up the costco shopping list before it was sleeptime.
Sunday was a day of a bunch of waiting, a lot of shopping, not enough eating and eventually showing up on playa. this year was dustier then the last one, and i remember being surprised at how difficult it was to breathe.
soon after getting there, sol3 and i set up our tent and wandered off to see the man, then center camp, and then back to our camp to crash.

i woke up before sol3 did on Monday, and because of how we had packed, i was a bit stalled on unpacking us in the morning. eventually, he woke up, we got semi-unpacked and then i spent most of the afternoon helping to make dinner.
after dinner, i spent some time chilling, waiting until sol3 finished up cleaning, and then we wandered off, walking down the esplanade, nearly all the way across, and eventually coming back home.

Tuesday i spent a bunch of time chilling before it was time to start cooking, being weary of tiring myself out too early. sadly, i totally underestimated how long it would take to make dinner and it was served late. the whole process was a bit of a clusterfuck, as some meat ended up freezing and i was having a hard time keeping track of everything that needed to be done. luckily, i had a few people help a whole lot and when the meal was done, i was told that the food was yummy.
after the meal, sol3 and i joined some sublimination folks in wondering through the dust storms, which was a fairly good way to spend an evening, though would've been better sans dust storms.

Wednesday sol3 and i woke up and decided to spend some time wandering. we got fairly far (and probably further then he expected, as i pulled us to a mission to try and find k.) and it was fairly tiring, partially due to the distance and partially because of the dust storms.
eventually, we made it back to camp, where sol3 collapsed and i spent some time wandering about, making sandwiches and socializing. in his sleep (well, when i woke him up to feed him a pb&j) sol3 insisted that i try and find k. again, and by sheer force of luck, saw him by the ranger station as i was told that it wouldn't be okay to page him (which someone else told me would be an okay thing to ask for). we made plans to see each other the next day, and i headed back to camp, and rode a bike around a little bit before dinner - but being tired from the distance i already walked and intimidated by the storms, i didn't get very far.
the evening's plans involved a lot of wandering with our campmates, and is definately one of happy memories from the playa. the campmates are an amazing group of people, and it was wonderful to spend the time with them, to get to know them a bit better and to explore with them.

thursday i woke up feeling off. i went to bed hungry the night before, and was nauseous from hunger in the morning. it slowed me down a bit, but eventually i realized that a pepcid would make me feel better and found someone who had some he could give me. after taking the pill and some time laying down in the ambient dome, i was feeling much better and could enjoy some of cuthalion's amazing waffles.
k. showed up during luftwaffel, and we spent some time cuddling before he went off for another ranger shift, promising to come back for me when he was done. not feeling up to dealing with duststorms at that point, i went to lay down in the ambient dome and ended up taking a nap - which are rarely good for me. i woke up really groggy, and it was just about 10pm by the time i got to be coherent enough to go change for the evening. i ended up hanging out in the ambient dome until midnight, and then k. and i wandered off for the night.
luckily for me, he had the good sense to urge me to wear the ski pants i brought, because that was probably the coldest night of the whole week, and we spent most of it in the open playa, which is even colder then the city. first, we visited adania and p. at the temple and then caught an art car to start our adventure. we ended up walking for five or six hours, not realizing how quickly time was passing by and being surprised by the beginnings of sunrise.
i finally got to watch a burning man sunrise, and then the two of us crashed out in his tent.

friday morning, he helped me trek all heavy clothing back to camp, where i caught up with sol3 and dragged him off on another wandering expedition - which ended with a bus ride to the temple and a walk from there to camp in time for dinner.
friday night, the plan was to go out drinking, but it ended early as sol3 and i. had sore feet, and the rest of us followed them fairly shortly.

saturday, i woke up feeling lazy and dragged time until 1pm, which i thought was early enough to start cooking. sol3 and amber_phoenix spent an amazing amount of time helping me chop up too many vegetables (thank you!) and time passed quicker then i'd thought, with the rest of dinner being behind schedule. again, my memory gets blurry of when i was (mentally) running around, but with the help of great people, dinner happened.
it took me forever to try and decide on what to wear for the night of the burn, and then all those plans were nixed as someone from sublimination gave me one of their environmental suits, which i wore that night and the night after.
the burn itself wasn't as impressive as last year's - after the man toppled, there wasn't this explosion of dancing and music, and instead there was a lot of shoving as people tried to make their way either closer to or away from the fire. at first, i wanted to get closer to the flames, and then the shoving got too much for me and sol3 and i turned around to head towards camp.
the first surreal moment of the evening was definately when, after we'd made it through most of the crowd, i looked up, mistook the plethora of art cars ahead to be the esplanade and asked what street we were at, a bit confused at not being able to pinpoint it. then, sol3 told me to look down, and i realized we were standing at the edge of the man's circumference, with most of a mile still to go before hitting esplanade.
at camp, we met up with most of the rest of the campmates and k. wandered up as we were trying to gather troops. we ended up splitting into two, and then three, groups for the night's wanderings. sol3, goat, k. and i walked around a lot, and eventually walked up the the zipline that had me drooling when i spotted it on wednesday night. it took sol3 and k. reassuring me that going on it isn't an insane idea and i climbed up to the platform about two stories up from the ground. the view from there was amazing and made waiting for my turn an experience in and of itself. when my turn came, i was scared, but, surprisingly, not as scared as i usually am about rollercoasters and such. the ride itself was great - and apparently, i had a great look on my face while sliding through the air. it turned out that my concerns about not being able to hold on long enough to last the length of the line were totally unfounded - not only was it easy, but i was also so focussed on lifting my feet up before impact with the mattress at the end that i didn't manage to jump off in time, rolled back past the second mattress, and sol3 grabbed my legs and rolled me towards the end again before i jumped down. overall, it was probably my best experience this year : )
we then wandered back to camp, ended up leaving a sol3 there, and soon after goat wandered back to camp, too. k. and i then decided to resume our mission of finding the diver (which i have yet to see a picture of!) and wandered off into the open playa. we wandered for a while, and eventually gave up. we were talking and aiming right for tensor when, all of a sudden, k. spun me around and i realized the diver was right behind us - it was an amazing site and a great end to the night's adventure (although the evening didn't end until we got back to camp, i looked around for sol3 and found a sleeping-bag-less ectropy)

sunday started up a bit lazily for me, and i nibbled on brunch rather then making a meal of it. after eating, i wasn't feeling too well, while there was more and more packing up motions. after laying down for a bit and having some caffeiene, i started packing up sol3's and my stuff. it took much longer then i expected, and because my end of it had a 6 hour pause in waiting for the sleeping bag to be rolled up, i was entirely underhelpful for the day.
packing up was paused to see the temple burn, which left a hole over my heart in the environmental suit, and then lasted until three or four in the morning, by which point i was just dead. so dead that i fell asleep in cuthalion's car before packing was done, slept through the storage area stop and didn't wake up until we were entering reno sometime around 10am.

checkin to the hotel took forever, and with only goat and ectropy's room ready, it took forever to settle into the day. eventually, all of us who were left went out for sushi, had parting drinks at the hotel and cuthalion drove off with adania and p.
sol3 and i then had a nice evening in our slightly posh room, enjoying the hot tub and each other's company.

most of tuesday was spent in flight and annoyance at having to come home; i think i'm still not quite okay with it.

Comments

[darxus.livejournal.com]

environmental suit ?