Monday - Getting There

3:45 and C at Hall of Game was our address in Black Rock City, and we labeled all our bags and belongings with it. The city is arranged like a clock with radial roads at every half hour from 2:00 to 10:00 with the Man at the center and the Temple at noon, and annular streets A out to L. Because of this arrangement radial blocks out from the center are only up to 250' (75m) long, but the blocks are curved and the arc length of 3:00 to 3:30 along K street is much longer than the same arc along A street. 3:45 and C is an excellent spot - in a quiet neighborhood with clean porto-potties a short walk away on either end of our block, but very close to the city center as well as the plaza at 3:00 and C, which had ice, medical and emergency services, rangers, and Zendo, a "safe space" for people suffering difficult psychedelic experiences. I assume it's named after the meditation hall of Zen Buddhism.

Our tickets depended on us taking the Monday bus from San Francisco to Nevada, and we arrived at 8:00AM to get them from the will call. With all the tech snafus I half-expected they wouldn't have them, but we did get our tickets without a line or trouble and I gave the people sitting at the will call canopy a cold six-pack of beers. They seemed very surprised to get such a gift. I could have kept it for the bus ticketing people, who had to work on their feet, directing the line and loading bags, but I didn't want to hold on to it that long: they were still loading the 8:00 buses and we went to the bathroom in a nearby museum and waited there for a while. The line was all around the block when we got back into it and it took a little over an hour to reach the bus. But our bus was very nice, roomy and air-conditioned. It's a good thing we insisted on waiting for one so we'd sit near the front, rather than being separated in the back.

As soon as we arrived in Black Rock City my backpack was thrown onto the dusty ground to get all white. Good, now I won't have to worry about trying to keep my things clean. We hiked to our camp to find it all built up nicely and M. and her boyfriend J. waiting for us on the hammock. It was about 6PM when we arrived and I don't know how long they'd been waiting there. M. was wearing a onesie zipped down to her waist. We hugged them hello and went to see our tent, which was pitched for us but filled with a deep layer of dust that had settled through the open windows. I spent the next hour meditatively sweeping dust with a little broom into a little dustpan, then L. cleaned the floor with vinegar solution and paper towels, before we could finally lay out our bedding.

Burning Man is held in a high flat area of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada called the "playa", which is Spanish for "beach" but is also one of several regional geological terms for a salt pan, or alkalai flat, or dry lakebed. The omnipresent dust in black rock desert is gypsum fines. It's extremely alkaline and corrosive, so everything must be washed with vinegar to neutralize it. It won't penetrate long clothing or a sealed tent but does get blown around and fix your hair into a messy lump as dry shampoo. Just like the daytime heat it is a pervasive part of the Burning Man experience, but not a good one, and I think most would be happy to have the event somewhere else. You breathe the dust, eat it, drink it, lay your head in a pillow of it to sleep at night. I got nose-bleeds from the day before we left and for most of the week. "The playa" is also what most burners call the large space in the center of Black Rock City that is kept empty except for art, which I call the city center. "Deep playa" is the region outside the circle, where musical art cars roam.

Our campmates came back around sunset and we cooked our freeze-dried dinner, cleaned and moisturized our hands and feet as well as we could, and tried to get to sleep early. I'd read that the best times there are sunrise and sunset so I planned to sleep from about 10:00PM to about 5:00AM, and for the first night only, we did so.