Not too surprisingly, Burning Man seems to be a very largely nocturnal event.
Ive been here a full day now, and here's roughly how it went:
The previous night, I found a little spot a few miles outside of the little town of Gerelach to camp. It was an uneventful night but there was a steady flow of traffic along the road near by as people arrived with their campers and RVs. The road I was on was from the North and was relatively quiet though...The road from the South was much busier... It was absolutely packed solid (bumper to bumper) for the entire night!
In the morning, I got packed up and drove off to the event site. I slotted into the flow of traffic and rode quietly along. About two Km before the gate, traffic came to a stand still and we were reduced to crawling forward in small sections... There are a LOT of people going to this event!... The gates opened at midnight and they are still backed up 2Km!... and its not just one gate, there are at least six lanes of traffic going in at once!
The traffic turns off the paved road and onto the "playa" which is the dry dusty lake bed. I spend the next hour moving slowly toward the gate surrounded by all manner of large camping vehicles... no other motorbikes to be seen, and even regular sized cars are a rarity.
I make it to the gate and am now free of the line up and the constant dust. I have seen what the wind does here each day, and Im heading around to the South side on the outer edge... Its up-wind of all the traffic, and its a walk-in camping area (no cars).
I set up my little tent. Then I set up a sun screen for the tent... It is "stinkin" hot out here in the day time, so I got a couple of those little disposable emergency blankets (mylar film with reflective aluminum coating). Ive duct-taped them together and now Im just fitting it to the tent... Looks good, seems to work OK :)
Now I go for a walk to check out "the man"... Its a long walk out to the centre of the tent and RV city (Known as "Black Rock City"). There are literally dozens of "art" installations scattered throughout the space, though its a big space, so even the art is points are few and far between.
The "man" is big and he is perched atop a crown like platform made of chunks of 2x4 wood...very creative... The platform will undoubtedly become his pyre later in the week.
Then I take the long walk back via the rest of the city.
The place is being built as I walk (its day one) Everywhere I look, people are erecting their camps... and they are large camps. Many of them have elaborate framing structures and towers 5-8m high. There are more geodesic dome frames here than Ive seen anywhere else. They look really cool...though I see lots of colour coding tags on the segments, I see no pattern in their assembly... but they seem to be going up.
Standard procedure seems to be to cover the framework with a large old military cargo parachute... looks like a great plan for shade :))
There are also lots of very large decorated vehicles...they call them "mutant vehicles" and they have elaborate super-structures and are often made to look like houses or barns or pirate ships etc... These vehicles are allowed to drive around the city very slowly, and they definitely add to the "other world" flavour of the place.
And then there are the thousands of bicycles here. many of them are decorated with long shaggy fake fur in fluorescent colours... I dunno why, just because I guess :)
Anyway, its all being put together today, and there is a constant stream of traffic kicking up dust and the sun is really hot, and the wind is starting to pick up.... so I go have a snooze for the afternoon... My tent is cool but noisy... That Mylar sun shade is REALLY noisy in the wind.
BUT, Its after the sun goes down that the place comes to life... The wind is blowing a gale, the dust is absolutely pervasive... Its actually like being in a snow blizzard... vis' is down to about 20m...
But that doesnt stop anything.
People are out and about... The bikes and the people are completely decked out in glow sticks and LED lighting... everything is silhouettes in the dark. Everyone is wearing outlandish (and usually skimpy) clothing... Everyone has gogles and and face masks on for the dust... There is all sorts of music and lights coming out of all sorts of large tents...
Its sort of a cross between the movies "Blade Runner" and "Mad Max - Beyond ThunderDome", and "Fear and Loathing in LasVegas" and maybe the Woodstock event from the sixties! - VERY SURREAL!!
Im just hangin out at the central camp point where there is a wonderful opera singer, followed by an equally amazing violinist... and then I go wandering in the dust and wind amongst the stroboscopic people in their costumes and their mutant vehicles... then off to bed again in the wind and the noise of my now redundant sun shade....
... who knows what tommorow will bring?
