A week before the start of Burning Man this year, the idea of my going there was not even remotely on my mind.
I had rolled back into Colorado in late July, just in time to surprise my twin nieces on their seventh birthday. After a few nights there, I spent the next few weeks extending my "Big Loop" around the country by treating Colorado as another state along the way---an "internal vacation," if you will. This gave me an excuse to toodle around in the mountains and see some places in my home state that I hadn't seen in a while, while taking advantage of the summer to camp and hike. I also saw some old friends up in Leadville---Charles B. and Tamera---who were in the state for a month, having come back temporarily from Hong Kong.
While in Boulder, I had attempted to look up several of my old colleagues from the summer before, when I worked in Flatiron Park. I was successful in two of the three cases, and had some fun learning about the demise of the company we worked for.
Finally I wound up back in Fort Collins, resting at my folks' place. While there, the third of my three colleagues finally got back in touch with me. Okki---he is Finnish by ethnicity and Swedish by nationality---invited me down to Boulder to hang out with him for a night.
It was then that he mentioned that he was about to head off to Burning Man. He'd gone two years before, but had missed last year because he had started a new job. He was planning to hang out and camp there with friends from Aspen. He said he had an extra ticket---did I want to go? Right there it occurred to me, given my predisposition to follow the advice of Kurt Vonnegut that "peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God," that I nearly made the decision to go right then and there, over the phone. After all, I was prepped for the road, and was waiting for my next destination---all I needed was bicycle. I had no real excuses at all. It seemed the perfect thing to do. The downside was that I would have only three days to prepare before leaving, at most. Moreover, I knew that I once I headed west, I would want to stay on the West Coast for a while, so in a sense, this was a sudden launching of the next phase of my trip this year.
I told Okki that I would think about it over night, and then tell him the next evening when I saw him in Boulder. For a couple hours I was sure that I was going to go. I went online and read as many web pages about Burning Man as possible, and all the things I would need. Nothing I saw convinced me it was impossible.
But before I went to bed that evening, I suffered a collapse of confidence and decided that it was too much too fast to prepare. I felt a sudden relief and a relaxation, and slept well that evening. When I woke up in the morning (Wednesday), I was sure that I would be disappointing Okki that evening when I saw him.
I drove down to Boulder in the late afternoon, got some dinner, and then drove to Okki's place, which as last year, was a really nice trailer that he rents in a mobile home park along Boulder Creek just off the corner of 55th and Valmont Road---only a few blocks from our old work location. I pulled into his driveway and knocked on his door.
He warmly welcomed me. It was good to see him after a year. He invited me and cracked open a beer for me. He was in the midst of full-blown packing for Burning Man. Within a few minutes I gave him the bad news, that I wouldn't be able to purchase his extra ticket.
We sat around chatting. He didn't pressure me at all to change my mind. Okki's not that kind of guy. He's too upbeat and buoyant.
I did all of the convincing myself, just watching him pack and talking about the excitement of going there. Within twenty minutes I had changed my mind.
"I'm going," I said. "I'll buy that ticket from you after all."
No comments:
Post a Comment