iceland’s coming.

but this is now….

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burning man 2009, day two.

wednesday, september 2nd.
- woke up in the rv when we were in reno.
- stop at savemart to buy water!

- pick up random dude named finn. he’s a canadian from toronto who had bussed to reno and was looking for a ride to burning man. he lost his wallet at the supermarket and basically said, “fuck it!” and went with us to burning man.

- purchased random kiddie bike for $30 from the last town before burning man, gerlach.
- got to the front gate, where andreas, finn, and i had to go to will call while the others waited with the rv in line.
- luckily, we got our will call tickets right as they were about to pull up to the ticket line.

- got quickly inspected by above man who was dressed fully in drag but said he was the only straight guy in his entire camp.
- finn couldn’t pick up his will call ticket because supposedly he bought it with his mom’s credit card and hence it was under her name.
- generally they can detain entire carloads of people if that happens, but they let us through. they being the guy who was dressed in drag, and his name was john.
- dropped off kelcey first at her camp.

- got driven to our campsite, where we met up with dani and loren, who had set us up with a nice little shade structure by spreading a tarp between their car and their carport thing. awesome! loren also lent us his tent.

- changed into a ridiculous get-up. ate a lot of pub mix (see plastic thing in my hands).

- explored on bike. exploring on bike really, really hurt my ass.





- rode into the middle of town and the “seasons” danced around me.

- tried to check registration in center camp but the computers were down, so gave up. i did get stamped by this girl in line, though, and she humped me and screamed, “you’re not a virgin anymore!” or something ridiculous like that. jeanette was meanwhile obsessed with this singer-songwriter chick.



- took a picture of my favorite freaking building thing!!! party nekkid!

- even party nekkid’s shadow was rad!



- it wasn’t a full moon but it looked like it, pretty much.

- explored with dani and loren at night… went to the cubatron! bitching about my ass hurting the entire way, of course.

- loved the shit out of the all-seeing eye car.



- went to the temple… so fucking amazing! jigsawed individual pieces with all styles of art. kinda depressing, really.

- sat there for a while, looking out and watching people… weeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

burning man 2009, day one.

tuesday, september 1st.
- planed from seattle to los angeles.
- got to airport like an hour plus early because i felt (for once in my life) that i wanted to go early.
- lucked out because i just barely missed the cut off time for united check-in (45 minutes beforehand) and there was a HUGE line but they said people who were going to los angeles could cut.
- some old guy got jacked because his flight was 15 minutes before the los angeles flight and he had been waiting patiently in line and got into the expedited line ten minutes after the “cut off time” for check-in… so they told him basically he was fucked and were SUPER freaking rude to him about it! and he’s an old guy!
- got on plane.
- met jeanette at her work via a shitload of metro transfers and crap. kinda confusing but i figured it out because i’ve used los angeles public transport a whole bunch more than the fucks that live here.
- got to her work, sat around, did some work on my laptop, then we went to the supermarket and bought some last-minute phoods and stuff.
- went back to her work and got picked up by an rv by chauntelle, one of the craigslist people we were ridesharing with to get to burning man.
- went to chauntelle’s best friend (and ex-fiance)’s house and waited around for ages for other people to show up.
- mad packing and shit, and the other people who showed up were dani — this chick who really likes cooking and bought SO much food, andreas — this gay argentinian guy, and kelsey — this younger girl who just was talking about wanting to get fucked up! at burning man.
- we were trying to attach a trailer to the rv but the hitch didn’t quite fit and needed to be turned upside-down to work, so dani’s dad (who had gone with her two years in a row to previous burning mans) had to go to the hardware store to get equipment and get stuff fixed for us… quite nice of him!

- blahblah. long ride. mostly slept and i got one of the best spots in the hizouse, woOooOooO! slept like a baby.
- all the other girls smoked out but i refrained, but they all passed out anyways.
- the rv was kinda scary and i kept waking up because shit was bumping around and it seemed like the trailer was gonna fly off or something. not that it ever did… but we did hit a side rail or something, haha, and dented the outside of the vehicle, woo!!
- was mid-sleeping and mid-texting aaron when i saw andreas and chauntelle smoke some stuff which turned out to be speed! woo! felt a little strange shortly thereafter but not sure if it was all imagined in my head or if i did get kinda high because they were smoking it right inside and i was right next to them.
- lalala.

getting caught in a singing fest.

Earlier today, I had to drop Jody off in Bellingham because the train tickets were sold out and he needed to catch a ferry to Petersburg, Alaska.

When the train tickets were sold out yesterday, he came upstairs and asked, “Hey Vivian! Want to partake in an adventure tomorrow?”

Thinking I only had this one little focus group test thing (optional, no money either), I said okay. I forgot actually that I was supposed to go to this 3:00pm show as well. OoPz. The deal was gas money and lunch… of the sushi variety. Wasabee Sushi, in fact.

So we drove up to Bellingham and got there at around 11:45am and then waited for his girlfriend’s mom to show up. Ate with her, and she was a nice / fun-ish lady. She ended up paying for lunch, and Jody just paid for tip. SCORE! Then she took him around for grocery shopping and I left to go explore Bellingham. It was alright.

I did enjoy, however, rocking the fuck out on my drive home, to Chico Fellini — to the song that’s on this front page, in fact. As you can hear, if you click on their name there, the song is fucking intense. HAHA. Usually I’m pretty wary about rocking out in traffic because people can see you and shit, but for today, I had just woken up from a half hour nap I’d taken at the rest stop and didn’t really give that much of a fuck and wasn’t that much “all there”. So I was rocking the FUCK out, with head bobs and strange vocals, and the part that I finally realized people were watching me was during the song, right after “You make it hard, hard, hard, hard, hard, hard, for me to focus! F-F-F-F-Focus!” in the first verse… lol. ~__~ There was a car full of four dudes watching me, and one of them smiled, and I smiled back, and then proceeded to be embarrassed to shit!!! Of COURSE, my window was open. And so was theirs. And of COURSE, it was during stopped traffic. FUCK!!!

Photos from the Big Rock Park in Bellingham today. There were like four different colors of Japanese maple trees right next to each other, with the sun shining on them. The pictures don’t quite capture it entirely, but it was fucking BEAUTIFUL.

death valley, day two — death valley is the SHIT!

That morning, we got up, and took FOREVER to leave which I was like BLARRGGHHHH about, especially because it became obvious that it was going to rain. Finally, we left.

(Jeanette’s picture.) Right before I was stuffed into this car…

(Jeanette’s picture.) Bye-bye tent!

we headed over to the shop and picked up some supplies. The shop lady told us that we should check with the ranger’s office about road conditions. Luckily, we did go to the ranger’s, and found out that the place I had wanted to go to most — the fucking Playa, where those rocks are that move when no one is watching — is not really accessible unless you have a 4×4 with brand new tires, blahblah. So we couldn’t make it, and the ranger said that since it was kind of raining, it wasn’t a good day to go anyways.

(Jeanette’s picture.) Moving on… first real stop: Devil’s Golf Course!

This scenery is more than words. Ferreal. Never seen anything so freaking crazy. There was also a Devil’s Corn Field, which unfortunately, we didn’t stop by, but it was really kinda cool and well-named, too.

Good ol’ salt and mud and rock!

(Jeanette’s picture.) Next stop: Badwater! Here we are, demonstrating that the water is, indeed, bad.

Cool!

(Jeanette’s picture.) So it was quite cold by this time, and we started walking and walking on this trail that was covered with salt…

We walked and walked and walked and smoked a little weed beforehand, and Matt walked back because he got cold, and Jeanette and I kept walking, but the view never really got all that super exciting, unfortunately. This was the final view. I don’t know if we shoulda kept walking or not, but yeah.

Artist’s Palette, I think. It was a drive-by shooting, this one.

Golden Canyon. Is that asphalt!?!! It sho’ looks like it, sho’ nuff.

(Jeanette’s picture.) So we were walking, and it was cool and all, but finally we see these “trails” that were created by water eroding the rocks, because… well, the rocks were super brittle kinds you can break with your hands. So, we decided to head up the mountain up these “trails”… and it was awesome. Like, a really awesome, strenuous, vertical hike!! Awesome! Matt went up a ways but then stopped, and Jeanette and I went up higher, and then the trail stopped. Because the rock was so brittle, though, there was rubble basically everywhere, and it became quite difficult to go up really high without kicking around rock. but it turned out okay. God forbid a rockslide!

(Jeanette’s picture.) We were lucky — it was raining on and off the whole time, but as we were going on this hike, it stopped!

On the way back down, Matt tried to dig out this big ass rock which was stuck between a bunch of little rocks, and I tried to stop him because that could like kill a person if it went sliding down that whole trail! He wouldn’t stop, though, but then I started walking ahead of him, and then it started raining, and finally he stopped.

After we climbed back down, there was this COOL ASS MUD!!! SO COOL. I stood there photographing it for a long ass time, and Jeanette and Matt went back to the car early and eventually pulled it around to get me. I was obsessed with the mud, really, though. More pics:

Like… seriously. How amazing is that? I’ve never seen something like that. Believe you me. I also poked the hell out of the mud. I poked the hell out of it!!!

Soon, the raindrops were affecting it.

Then we left the park. Without even seeing HALF the park, it was one of the most amazing places I’ve ever seen, with all of these different landscapes I’ve never ever seen before.

The sunshine! A beautiful view on the way back!!!

These are all drive-by shots!

(Jeanette’s picture.) Me sleeping, on the way back home, apparently a lot of the times, with my eyes open.

About halfway through our drive, it had apparently snowed in the mountains. Looks so weird!

Back in city life. Blahblah.

I ended up making this picture for Matt because he wanted a picture where he was with Tay Zonday AND jumping the awesome jump.

THE END OF CALIFORNIA!!!!!!!! I leave the next day, early ass in the morning, and my flight gets delayed like six hours. DEATH. X__X