7: Thieves

From the half buried blue head, we rode out into the playa. G's bike had a bell that he rang that made us crack up every time. I enjoyed riding up and then hanging right, looping around to come up behind our little foursome and then weave through the mini-pack. It was incredible to be on a bike beyond the middle of the night as the stars burned above and the world and tires spun beneath me.

Exactly like they say, you just never forget.

But somehow it seems they had forgotten where I was born. My parents told me it was at Hartford Hospital in the early 70's. But they have to be mistaken. Clearly, I was born here, on the playa. It just felt so right. My wife rolling beside me. The huge flatness around us, disruptive and captivating with it's deep distance. We were far from Curvas Peligrosas. A good forty minute bike-ride at a steady pedal. Pushing out, we were, into the places that I didn't even know existed. And that's exactly what I expected of the Burning Man, I realized as we rode hard into our first night out. I expected to see and hear and find and chase things I didn't even know existed. And I expected to use all the skills I had acquired in my thirty-one years to make sure we had the best time possible.

Ringringring went G's bell. A burst of laughter from my wife. Wags called us, "This way!" and we veered toward the light and the massive wooden structure looming before us.

I pedaled faster, racing ahead, then I looped left tight to take the world the other way and see them three coming at me. Lu wore goggles and rode the bike like she meant it; ready; steady; true. G was on a Sunday afternoon lollygag that just happened to be the playa. He grinned. Wags was one-handed, sipping a drink with the pink wig in the night as the light got brighter and we found the place she was aiming for.

It was a structure, somewhere out there. The curve of Black Rock City was far behind us, but there were many people about, out here. We ditched the bikes, balancing them together with Wags' on the ground next to ours.

Climbable art was in front of us and a fifty or sixty people were on it, near it or around it. The center structure was a large, open, curvaceous cylinder. We climbed a spiral staircase up the center. In the middle was a deck, about forty feet off the ground. At four corners, below on the ground, were smaller structures. Inside them were large wheels parallel to the ground. The wheels had spokes sticking out of them at about chest height. If a few people grabbed onto the spokes and starting turning it, pushing it along, the large wheel would turn a crank that would activate some large bands that were attached to some gears above our heads up on the deck, up where we were chilling. And if there were people in all four of the structure down below us on the ground, and if in all four of those little sheds they were turning the wheels, then the deck we were standing on forty feet above the ground would turn, steadily. We smoked a bowl up there rotating with some new friends we had just met, and we cheered the people down below as they worked to make our world spin. It was fun!

Eventually we went down to get our bikes, but there was only three of them there. Wags' bike had been stolen.

"Thieves suck," she said to us. And extremely fucking pissed off, the three of us agreed. The whole way back we were thunderstruck. It was so unbelievably sucky that someone would steal her bike.

"I can't believe it," Lu said, again.

"I know," Wags replied.

"Who does that?" I asked as I coasted, shaking my head.

"People are assholes," G finished.

"I just cannot believe someone stole your bike!"

"Assholes."

"We'll find it," said Lu, determined.

"We won't," I countered. "There's no way. There's just no way to find anything in this insanity."

"I really doubt we can find it," G agreed.

"The thing's already stripped," I replied. Wags had taken great care in crafting the style of her bike. Her boyfriend, G, had matched it, and now the black and white furry tiger fabric wrapped so loviningly around his frame, it seemed to mock the theivery we had just experienced.

"If you don't have a bike out here, you're done," Wags said as she trudged through the dust. She had refused our every offer because as it turned out, we weren't that far from camp. It just seemed like it.

The walk/ride still took a while, but we did it together. By the time we got back to camp, the sky was pinkening. We toasted the sunrise, then set up our tent. It took Lu and I five tries to find the perfect spot. But just to the side of our car, a bit behind the moving truck, near the shower, we banged in the rebar and inflated the mattress. There was only a few hours of tolerable temperatures left to sleep in.

As we tangled together and then dozed, Lu muttered to me, "I love you."

"I love you too," I replied, "but fuggin hate thieves."

"Umph-huh," she said into the pillow.

"Goonight," I replied, then slept. My dreams were filled with playa, and my restless sleep was dusty bliss.