At the gate, and the dust still raging, I rolled down my window just long enough to the ticket Okki had given me in Boulder. The ticket itself ornate graphic with this year's theme: "Fertility 2.0."
The guy at the gate said you had to drive down another mile or so to the "Welcome Center" where I'd be given additional materials directed onward. I told him about my car, and if it be ok to pull over. He wasn't enthusiastic about it, but told me if I had to, it would ok.
The whole way down to the second gate, my eyes were half-glued on the temperature gauge and half looking all around me in the dust to make sure I wasn't about to hit anything, or that anything wasn't about to hit me. I had to pull over twice, off onto the playa, when I thought it might boil over again.
In the welcome gate, the wind was raging harder than ever. There were two women standing in my lane to greet me. They were wearing skimpy bikini outfits, with their faces covered with scarves and big yellow ski goggles. They looked like Venusian Amazon warriors.
Okki had said that "virgins" like me were supposed to get out at the gate, ring the bell next to it and scream "I AM NO LONGER A VIRGIN!!" I really wasn't looking forward to it, and fortunately in the raging storm, no such demand was presented to me by the women there.
Instead, after a few minutes, I was directed forward by one of the women, who motioned with her hand as she looked away from me. I started the car and moved forward through the gate and into the plaza. Just as I began moving, she turned to me and started screaming at me angrily at the top of her lungs, that I was moving too fast, and didn't I see that car in the plaza in front of me in the dust!?
This is going to be a long week, I thought to myself.
1 comment:
Keep writing. Interesting.
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