We arrived 8pm-ish Monday, in midst of huge windstorm. It was very, very cold, a trend which continuted, summer decending full force by Thursday. Everywhere we turned, there were geodesic domes. Buckyballs are officially trendy - I saw graffitti in a Port-O-San that read "Buckminster Fuller Lives." Found St. Vincent Harvestore, Godfrey Daniels, Mark Simple, et al at 9:30 Uranus. Hanging out in the cold wind led only to frozen toes, so we held storytelling hour in the RV 'til Cheri, Chuck and Kaleb arrived from PDX. None of my photos from that night (mostly of Cheri's mind-numbingly cool art car) turned out. Blasted camera battery!

Tuesday morning arrived with the sounds of "Teach Your Parrot to Speak" emanating from Victor's Production Unit, punctuated by cries of "Turn it Off!" from neighboring camps. Kaleb's vocoder unit thingy added just the funky element it needed to become torture device supreme. The day was spent struggling to erect Victor's shelter - a tragically lost photo-op (Godfrey holding a 12' pole penetrating an enormous birth-canal-like parachute with Krishna struggling to emerge was an amazing site.), after riding too far out on the playa for the first day of acclimatizing.

Fandango called to us to camp with them. Tattooine also beckoned. We loved our Art Car cohort, and half of them were still on the road, but... We found Erich holding down the Tatooine fort while Kylen braved a long, complicated trip to Reno. There was a perfect spot there, in the void between Boomtown, Disturbia, Drano, and the Bleu Light District; we relocated to better invite random strangers to come and play, and to better help preserve folks' vinyl. That was a mistake. It was VERY VERY LOUD all night, every night, all day, every day. When we left Deuce of Clubs camp, we left behind all hope of sleep. The rest of the trip is a wonderful, noisy blur.

We left Thursday night, having scientifically proven (this experiment has been duplicated, triplicated, quadruplicated), that three days is all one needs of the surreal landscape, high decibels, and erratic behavior that is Burning Man. One more sleepless night, and we'd have been toast.

We had a fab time while we lasted!