2: Alone in the Dust

So we walk because our bikes are far away, and there's no way to have the bikes out here amid the Burn madness. Spun spit out from the whirling dervish forming around the now-bonfire, we walk across the hard playa, soft dust clinging to every molecule of air. All week we've inhaled it. After the first day out there it felt like tiny gnomes were sandpapering my nostrils and using pickaxes on my lips. I am chapped, facially, thoroughly. And we walk.

There's dome we find to chill in for a bit and it seems my companions are slightly worn. Or maybe relaxed. But not me, I'm raring to go. The twenty minutes we spend laid out in the dome are but a moment of recharge in already thoroughly charged night. There were beers and shots and delicious strips of steak back at camp as the sun went down. There was a tiny piece of paper Lu and I split, staring into one another's eyes. And now the effects are fully taking hold. I need to get out into the glowburn hotnight, and I tell them, hopping from foot to foot. They untangle, their rally slow and steady.

Back out on the playa we make our way towards the Thunderdome. Giddy and loose, I climb high on the dome, and wait for the fights to begin. I see Lu and G and Wags below me and out across the flatness I see the firey breath of the Angry Robot. Hear the chooooo of the ghostly Playa Train trundling though the darkness. Directly below me, they've given a woman the mic, and suddenly she begins to sing. A breeze of silence blows through the porous dome and tiny flecks of dust vibrate with her virbrato. She sings opera and we are all spellbound. Then comes mashing and swinging and boffo fighting between eager strangers. We shout and rattle and hoot and scream as they are strapped in and pulled back and then launched at one another down below to our raucous glee. Finally it's time to move. I climb down to regroup and we're close to our bikes.

Gathering them I give Lu another layer for her cape, that I had been wearing as a long sparkely skirt. She ties it around her neck. She and G and Wags begin to ride. I turn my bike around to follow and in that instant they are gone. The Playa Gods have swallowed them whole. They have vanished into the silt and packed earth and swirling glownight dust storm mob scene.

I'm dumbstruck, alone. I have no idea where we were heading, I was merely following. Distracted by the endless humanity and insane sights of the night playa Burn, I lost focus and was left behind. I ride up a ways calling for my wife and friends. I ride back to the spot where I lost them. I ride in circles, hoping to see them return. But they have shifted on, changed planes, moved into a different circle of night, one I know I'll never catch hold of again. I stop, deciding. Where do I go? How will I find them? Why is there no meeting spot!?

Then I know, the only thing I can do is go back to the beginning. Like Inigo in the Princess Bride, I do what Vicinni said to do when things went bad... you go back to the beginning.

Pedals beneath my feet. Goggles strapped on tight. Cape flying behind me. Gold lamay shirt glittering in the glownight, I ride back and deep and in to the only place I think Lu might be able to find me, and as I ride, wondering if this is right choice, I think of everything that has gone before to bring me to this now-broken night out here in the deep reaches of the endless playa, alone for once, I ride through the dust, back to the beginning.