VOLUNTEER!
Aside from a couple shifts as greeter at Supersnail, I volunteered at the Black Rock Gazette during most of the week, which allowed me to kill time during the Heinous Dust Storm on Thursday by surfing the web, and seeing what Adobe had to say about the event happening outside the Press room trailer. (However, even he didn't have photos of the blacklit Temple of Xara before it was ruinated by the dust storm. They had turf floors. It was... wow, just... you don't expect anything that well executed at Burning Man).
"Hey, that burning man thing looks cool. We should go next year" - zMan.
We're such geeks.
And I was rewarded for my addictive habit of checking out the dboards at nin.com. Another ninfan asked me to find her amicably-ex Boyfriend at CostCo Soulmate Outlet, 3 or so doors down from the Gazette in Center Camp. Sometimes the dust storm was thin enough that they were visible. I went over, found him, freaked him out because I was (1) online (2) with his ex. AND, he gave me a Marguerita.
During the Exodus, I was the first ever Food Donations Czar, attempting to
coherently organize the inevitable food donations that result from people who
would really rather Leave Trace than carry extra food and water as far as Reno.
It was... educational. But also fun. Maybe Tess and Robin, my loyal DPW volunteers,
will send me postcards from Mexico when they get there. And CostCo hit the WAYCOOL-o-meter
again when they hosted a perishable foods party for the volunteers. Even after that,
I still had a minivan full of melons to bring to the Soup Kitchen in Reno. Good thing
CostCo turned most of them into blender drinks.
Once again I was camped at Supersnail.
Supersnails included the old timers:
Julian,
Jackie,
Llyra,
Randal,
Sebbo,
Andrew
and Me.
And some uber-hip newcomers:
Spiral Girl,
Dori,
Andy,
Andrew's Girlfriend,
Quai (sp?),
Spiral's friend from Croatia,
and if I missed you, or you have a better link (the default is supersnail), lemme know.
(Greater Supersnail also including the elsewhere camped:
Molly, Jeff, Deidre, Renata, Liz & Chris, Jenny and Janus, Patrick McAvoy,
Joe Kukura, Tamara and Zena, according to our pre-burn website. I was off volunteering
in center camp often enough that I may have merely missed them all).