Burning Man – Thursday

I make a big breakfast but it takes me hours to eat it because people want to see the T@B or drag me over to see their teardrops. I finally eat the last of it cold and make it out to the Man in time to line up for an 11:41AM satellite photo. We are circled around the Man in the shape of a peace sign and I should be midway on the 8-o’clock leg of the peace sign if you ever see the shot and is I remember to post it here. Saki last night means staying close to the porta-potty’s today and I hang out and finish a book I started when I left home. Remembering that the girl at Nomadia camp (mafia dad) had mentioned that she’d forgotten to bring her reading material I go over there and give it to her. Hmm. My first random playa gift. I ride to Center Camp and get an iced latte and retire to camp to read and make dinner. Dinner entertainment (other than the constant parade of costumed, naked, semi-naked, burners on all types of bikes and art vehicles) is provided by police from 3 different Nevada counties, Nevada state police, Black Rock City Rangers and the Bureau of Land Management as they arrest a couple of guys camped way down the road for selling drugs at their camp. They haul the guys, their camp and their cars away to a smattering of applause from their immediate naeighbors young & old.

A side note: The music in 2009 was 90% techno but this year it is closer to 15% techno. Jazz and first class popular vocalists is pervasive this year. Yes, you can usually hear the thumping of an unending mix somewhere and the sound of a drum circle is always audible, however distant. But the smooth sounds of Dean Martin, Billie Holliday, and others is amazingly at the forefront. My corner is decidedly different than last year. Nealy 10 of us have guitars, there is a Irish country fiddler and the classic “Neverwas Haul” (a stunning 2-storey Victorian mansion on wheels with a railroad cowcatcher on the front) has a portative pipe organ in the living room which people stop and play most of the time when it is parked at my former BRC address.

I decide to go to bed early and get up before dawn to take pictures.