Super excited to return this year for my 2nd burn after going for the first time in 2012. Been lurking around the boards since ticket time last year, but haven't posted too much. Hoping to change that. Last year I went with three good friends, and we camped out on 8:15 and K (the green side on the MOOP map
) It was a burn that almost didn't happen, the story is below.2013 was my first year, although I had been wanting to go for many years, probably dating back to 2005 or so. I had a college professor who went every year with other professors, and thats when I realized it wasn't just a giant "hippiefest" or "drug fueled desert orgy" or other descriptive word/expression that people who don't know like to use to describe it. I became infatuated with the culture and the community and was super excited to finally go. Fast forward to Sunday, August 25th 2013.
We had packed up all our stuff the night before and made the final touches Sunday morning. We left from San Francisco, and met up with some friends who have gone a couple years in the past. It was the first time for myself and my three other campmates. We arrived in Reno early afternoon and had stopped at the Walmart to meet up with some others and get a few last minute supplies. Around 3:00pm, we are ready to go and hit the road towards Gerlach. I had been carrying the tickets on me because I was afraid of leaving them in the car or anywhere else. We stop for gas one last time, I had put the tickets in the cup holder in plain sight. My campmate, driver of the van at some point threw the trash that was in the van away at the Chevron station on N. McCarran in Reno. We take off, super excited to finally be on our way. About 40 minutes outside of Reno, I look down at the cup holder and the tickets are gone. I freak out, check my pockets, check the van. We pull over, search the van, find nothing. We decide that my campmate must have thrown them in the trash at the Chevron station. We tell the rest of our caravan who weren't camping with us to go on, while our other two campmates waited for us 40 minutes outside of reno. The longest 40 minutes of my life, driving back to the gas station. I'm already scouring craigslist looking for tickets for sale. We finally get there, I run inside to see if anyone had turned in tickets, the clerk said no. My campmate went to the garbage can and looks, I come out, he's checking a different can. Said he didn't find them in the can where he threw the garbage. We go back to that can,dig deeper, and pull out two shiny, yet wet and stuck together tickets out of the trash. We scream, the station is full of burners, hugs, high fives, tons of excitement and probably the happiest I had been in a long time. From that moment on, I knew it was meant to be. We went on to have the best week ever, and can't wait to do it again in 9 months.
