Post
by drutter » Thu Jul 26, 2012 11:29 pm
Hey guys. I'll keep this short. You can see my older posts in this thread if you want more info about my situation.
Was going to be me and my girl's 5th year. It's the only time we get out of town each year - the rest other 357 days of the year are spent at college and work, and dreaming of Home, and saving pennies. Burning Man changed our lives and we're thankful for that. It's an expensive (for us anyway) trip from Canada but a fun roadtrip and of course worth every cent.
We didn't win the lottery this year. I'll spare the details but we barely made it into STEP. Was a 12:10er. Almost didn't get them but managed to accept the STEP tickets with literally 10 seconds before they expired. We were ecstatic. Tickets were far more than we'd ever spent in the past but we decided to make it work.
Then we were told the tickets couldn't be used except by my 90 year old grandmother, who allows us to use her credit card each year for this purpose, since we don't have one. Reason? Burning Man is worried about scalpers, cheaters, and bad guys. I'm not a scalper. I just want to go Home. But of course, "compute says no". Several pleading emails later we had to realize there was no way Burning Man was going to let us use the tickets we finally managed to get. We played by the book from day 1, obeyed every rule and suggestion, stayed in line when we were told, jumped through hoops, helped others in this thread and others find their way, didn't get friends with credit cards to enter the lottery on our behalf, and so on. And yet, here we are, heartbroken and unable to go Home because the ticket people "can't" edit the name on our order.
Yup, life goes on. Yup, it's all our fault. Yup, we can just come next year. I know all that. Thanks.
Still can't help but feeling a bit let down. We don't regret putting so much of ourselves into this community, only to be shut out with little more than a form-letter email saying "YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN RICHER OR MORE POPULAR BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME". We'd do it all again. Like I said, Burning Man changed our lives, in a very positive way. Thank you, Burning Man!!
I hope everybody who makes it this year has an incredible and life-enhancing experience, especially the 2 lucky STEP-children who just bought our ticket.
"Thank you for using STEP! Your ticket(s) sold and your credit card has been credited for the amount listed below."
Dusty hugs and a couple Canadian tears,
D and K
Heavy on preparations, light on expectations.
I'm an 12:21:21. I lost my mind because the queue moves so slow.
