Our first burn and the story behind why I went

[Batmoose]

Greetings!

In my other post, I mentioned that we ended up in the wrong camp for our first time. My wife and I were the "old fuddy-duddys" in camp, even though we are only 30.

HOWEVER- there were some great things for my first time and I would love to share them.

A little background-

My older brother died this year on my 30th birthday of a stress-related seizure. He was 35. He was an architect who knew David Best personally.

My brother Matt even helped build the Temple back in 1994. He was also on the Mayorial council at least once for burning Man.

This was a man who knew how to extract every erg of life out of every single moment. I loved him very much and he was a huge BM enthusiast and promoter.

His death was the motivating factor in my going to the event this year. I was able to take his picture to the temple on Wed. Night and it was a pretty heavy moment.

But I told myself that I would do this thing and I did it. I had a GREAT time getting out and meeting people.

I stopped at random at a camp with the little forest spirits from "princess Mononoke" out front and it turned out that the folks there were from my home town of Truckee. Awesome!

My evenings were a bit surreal, due to trying to keep up with a younger crowd that had better fuels available then I did.

But I had a ball on Titman's art car!! Great party man.



A few downsides.


My wife and I were very intrigued by the "first timers orgy" event listed, but we could not locate a time, nor could we find "camp carp" who was hosting the event.

This was our main issue actually. We were the nOObs who could not find what we were looking for at all. The directory of events kind of sucked. We also had a hard time finding the couples groups, but maybe there just weren't any.


A personal thanks to the Dragon Noodle bar who served my wife the best noodles ever. Thanks!


As I stated in my other post, our Camp was a problem. We didn't have a mellow base of ops to chill at when needed, like after I took my brother's pic to the Temple. We had incompatible camp mates, and some members of camp seemed to be on a mission to piss our neighbors off and insult others.

So we learned a big lesson. unfortunately, they DID have their own porta-johns and that is a pretty big incentive for us to try to camp with the same folks again, minus the trouble makers.

It was definitely a weird first burn. The man burned too soon, a man hung himself, and there was no Jiffy Lube.

But it was not so bad that I never want to go again. I want to go back and make it good, be a contributer and not just a spectator. I want to be someone who helps make the burn better for someone else.

I am starting by gathering GOOd people to take with us next year. I am sure I am forgetting a bunch of stuff I wanted to mention, but I am at work so I am scattered right now.

I will post more as I come to it, plus our camp pics and all that.

[skygod]

Four years ago I had a horrible first burn. They are getting better each year.