It was hard to say good-bye to our hosts in Pierrevert. They had made us feel so welcome and relaxed. Our visit had been the perfect respite after so much traveling down through Europe and across the Alps. We were rested after a week, to be sure, but we felt we had barely scratched the surface of Provence.
Still it was time to move on. So our hosts dropped us off at the train station and we bought tickets down to Marseille on the next train. We got to St. Charles station right around dusk. Red was impressed by her first view of the city, as you come out of the front of the station, which is on bluff overlooking the Vieux Port, the old port.
We clunked our rolling bags down the steps and along the swarming evening boulevard that takes one down to the Canebière, the great massive artery of Marseille leading up from the head of the port. The sidewalks were crazy with people coming and going in the early evening rush. We were relived to find our street where our hotel was supposed to be. It was a rather seedy street, as one would expect in this part of Marseille. A prostitute stood in the doorway within sight of the main street. Our hotel was on one door further---a student dormitory, in fact, that also functions as a hotel an gets decent ratings online. It was among the cheaper options in Marseille near to where my friend was staying.
Once in our rooms, and after getting wifi, I emailed Jean and told them we had arrived. I gave him the street address. "Right on the other side of the prostitute," I told him. She seemed like a fixture, after all.
On our journey southward we stopped for a week in Provence, as the house guests of a friend that Red knew from back in Cincinnati. Her friend's husband used to work for the U.S. State Department, but now works for a large international scientific research facility nearby in Provence. They moved to a small town near Manosque a couple months back with their daughter, who is enrolled in a bilingual school.
Our week there was stunningly marvelous, and happened to overlap Thanksgiving, which we spent in the company of our hosts, as well as other expatriate and local families in the area. A splendid time was had by all.
On our fine autumn weekend afternoon Red's friend took on a drive of the famous Luberon area of Provence, towards Avignon. We met up with a local herbalist that Red knows from doing an herb class in France a couple years back. He gave us a tour of the ruins of the cliff town of Oppède, which (according to our guide) was abandoned in the 1970's as the population dwindled, but now has a smattering of residents again who have begun to open a few businesses. It reminds one of a town in the Greek isles---the long stone paths---but without any tourists to be seen.
I remarked that in twenty years, the place might be a tourist center again, and no one would believe that it was ever so depopulated. Who knows?
South of Grenoble, the train slides through the long valleys between the foothills that parallel the Alps, first upstream on the River Drac, then coming down into the massive wide valley of the Durace, which itself joins the Rhône further south as a major tributary. The foothills begin to flatten out, and the high Alps recede to the east. One begins to feel the influence of the Mediterranean climate. It is at this point that one leaves the High Rhône and enters the historical region of Provence.
Just west of Gap, at the small town of Veynes, one must change trains if one wishes to continue South into Provence proper. In Veynes, in the vicinity of the plaza by the small train station the street signs are apparently bilingual, in both French and Occitan--- lenga d'òc, aka langue d'oc---the "language of oc," so called because of the word it uses for "yes" (as opposed to the modern French oui, for example).
Occitan is distinctly not a dialect of French. It is actually much closer to Catalan, for example, than French. It is also not the same language as the historical Franco-Provençal, which is a different story. Nowadays when one says Provençal, usually one means the dialect of Occitan spoken within Provence.
It has no official status in France, although it has a dedicated following of people who wish to preserve it (and it is an official minority language in Catalonia). It is used in conversation through a wide region stretching from northern Spain to Alpine Italy, but in the later Twentieth Century the cohort of native speakers has been declining steeply and growing older. It is a common story for unofficial minority languages such as this.
Before arriving in Provence, I had read online that because Occitan is not an official language, one will search in vain to find in written form here.
I can now verify that this statement is true, although via a multilingual pun. Happy Thanksgiving!
This one is for Jean, my friend in Marseille whom I am on my way to visit current. From the Citadelle Bridge, looking downriver on the Isère.
Grenoble is a more interesting city than I thought. It is the "Door of France," and the Capital of the French Alps.
Having just come down from Chamonix through historical Savoy, one feels as if one is descending into France proper. Grenoble is still nestled in the Alps and lower ranges here, but another range of low mountains and one is at the Rhône.
Two days to explore it. Yesterday afternoon I walked down to the park, built for the hydrological exposition in the 1920s and later used for the Olympics. The stadium where Peggy Fleming won her gold medal is still in use---a brilliant quartet of hyperbolic paraboloids. On the day I visited, it was being used for a circus. Outside were cattle and two-humped camels, waiting their turn to be on stage inside.
That was the tweet I received on my iPhone as I was walking up past the northside train station, just passing under the tracks. It was from a close friend.
It was our second day in Groningen, our first full day there. We'd arrived on the late afternoon train the day before (hoo was it packed coming up from Amsterdam---we barely found a place to stand coming up from Amersfort after changing). Red had found our bus outside the train and we had hastily boarded it with our bags, after it had arrived so quickly in the hub-bub of the bus station, that was just outside the rail station and by the main canal.
It took us a jolty and jerky ride through the narrow streets of the central part of Groningen---a college town in the north of Holland, teeming with activity. We had jumped off when our smartphone maps told us we were at our hotel, although it seemed nowhere in sight in the thick commercial district, but we had soon found it.
The reception was actually inside a bistro pub. It turned out the entrance to the hotel proper was inside a courtyard of a refurbished chemical lab from the university, and was now centered on the creative arts. The hotel and bistro combo was ultra hip. The rooms didn't have televisions, but were common area. We also had fridge access in the common kitchen. It felt very Dutch.
Upon checking in, I had sent the obligatory text to my close friend, saying we had arrived. We had made a pretense of possibly getting together that first evening, but it seemed rather absurd, given the hullaballoo of getting there, and getting checked in. We'd have plenty of time to see each other, given that we planned to be in Groningen for a while, to catch a breath amidst the pace of our travels. It seemed as good a place as any, especially given that I had close friends who were staying there.
Now on the second morning, walking north past the train tracks, that curved around from the main station, I was texting while walking (and talking pictures of things in Dutch of course). The texts took me to an address on a quiet residential street of tidy small apartment buildings in brown and grey and black and white. I found the address, and the names mentioned.
They were of course not the names of my friend, but the names of their AirBnB landlords in Groningen, from whom they had rented the flat in which they were staying for a couple months that fall.
When they opened the door and I walked in, I greeted them heartily by their real names: Fergus! Audrey!
We stayed in Amsterdam but two days. Given the length of time we'd been sojourning in the cities of Scandinavia, this was quite brief. Red was intrigued by the city, as almost everyone is on their first visit, but since I'd spent time there before, I was eager to move on to the other parts of the Netherlands, which I knew were even more rewarding if one gives them a chance.
So on the third day, after Red's obligatory visit to the Van Gogh Museum (which unfortunately was partially under renovation, disallowing visits to several floors and thus destroying the continuity of the timeline of the artist's life work) we wheeled our luggage from the hotel waiting room to the tram stop and rode the vehicle through herky-jerk Amsterdam streets past the canals back to the station, using our country-wide Dutch rail passes (OV-chipkaart, it is called) to check in and check out with the automated readers (the second step is important if you don't want to get dinged with a charge for a full-zone ticket, which is assumed by the system---that indeed happened to Red once, causing her to lose a bunch of her balance on her card).
Once back at the Central Station (alas the days of shady characters hassling you at the big entrance doors is over), we read the electronic monitors and found our train.
Reading the monitors to find our track was a poignant moment. The electronic LED monitors were new since my last visit. But they were inevitable of course. Still I couldn't help feel a sense of loss from the old style of train station boards in Europe, that any old backpacker would have recognized, the old mechanical ones where the the slats in the boards made a certain unmistakable clicking sound as they flipped through the list of places, as the departing and arriving trains made their way up the board, as each one left in progression.
By watching the slats flip through the lists, one could spy out the places to which trains actually went, and the symbols on the slats that denoted different types of service, in different colors. It was like flipping through an old style encyclopedia, instead of looking something up online---if I can make a certain analogy with a different technology.
To be frank. It's a dump, the worst part of Holland. It's best known for as the place where diamond couriers working for intelligence agencies wind up floating in the canal with a knife in their back---and other sordid things like that. It's also known for its red light district. Two Japanese girls stopped me and asked if I could point them towards it.
At the time we were far away from the red light district---a couple blocks from the Anne Frank house, (the house was covered up for renovation, as are many places along theold canals like the Herrengracht). I did my best to show them where I remembered the red light being---in back of the Oude Kerk---that's where the black prostitutes were twenty years ago, at least. I pointed them towards the direction we'd come---the Nieuwe Kerk, the plaza of which had been packed full with a fall carnival and the a large crowd of people riding the rides and buying sweet and savory carnival delicacies.
They sell Belgian waffles there, so Amsterdam isn't completely bad.
I jest of course. Amsterdam is a great city, in the best sense of that word. It's just fun to rag on it a bit, especially given the tourist hordes that confront one everywhere you go in the center. Our hotel was decent enough and had a superb breakfast of fine croissants, with scrambled eggs and bacon. On our second and last night we had Indonesian food, a little place across the street where we were lucky to get a table. It was Red's first visit to the Netherlands, so Indonesian food was a must-do. We ordered the whole line-up---the little hot dishes that come on little serving table, placed in front of you. Good stuff.
Our Norwegian jetliner took us to Schipol---the big airport just outside Amsterdam. As soon as we landed I started taking snapshots of everything written in Dutch. I had to catch up to Red several times walking through the terminal, but I got distracted with my iPhone.
We navigated from the big airport terminal into the adjacent train station, modern with a massive high ceiling over a dozen escalator portals down to the trains below. We both purchased countrywide passes for the Netherlands---good for all trains within the country, as well as local trams and buses. I put a hundred euros on mine, and expected I would use it all up by the time we left.
Nevertheless we managed to screw up our first train ride. I went down the wrong escalator at first, and also managed to use my new electronic train pass to both check-in and then checkout, so that when the conductor finally came through the train, as we were approaching Amsterdam in the dark of early evening, she told him I had screwed up.
"You've certainly got enough on the card," she said, almost impressed by my purchase. A half hour we were navigating out of the central train station, in the thick of the old city.
Later (when we were in Rotterdam, in fact, and overheard a Serbian woman having a meltdown to her friend in the next room) I told Red about a time when I was twenty that I was at the same station in Amsterdam, with my old backpack. That time in order to fend off all the people approaching me and asking if I spoke English, with the intention of pitching me something, I went to the kiosk that sold international newspapers and purchased the one from Belgrade, printed in the Cyrillic of the Serbian language. I held it up in front of me, as if reading it---a defensive shield within the intense public space. Now it was full circle.
By the time we left Sweden, we had been there fifteen days. It began to feel normal to hear Swedish on the television at night in the hotel room. I had begun to have my favorite shows, including an athletic-themed reality show. In the talk shows, the hosts interviewed British and American actors in English, without translation provided.
I was to master a few basic exchanges, specifically when ordering coffee. At a coffee shop, you can say "I would like a coffee?" in Swedish, and they will answer the equivalent of "small or large." They then then ask "here-to-drink or to-with-you-take?" The trick is to be able to go with the flow of the conversation, recognize what they are saying, without forcing them to break into English, which they will readily do. Swedes like to practice English, people say. It is generally true.
For our next destination, we went out to Arlanda airport and flew on Norwegian Airlines. I was hoping to see some Norwegian on the plane, but there was none at all. All was in English.
This year was a "round number" birthday, as I told my friend Fergus. I wanted to spend it some place fun. I figured to make a spontaneous, and by the time we got to Gothenburg, it occurred to me that a splendid place to go would be Stockholm.
What a beautiful city, in a light-filled majestic way. Seeing it the first night, when we were out on the quay near our hotel in Östermalm, with a view across the water through the gap in the city islands, to the illuminated buildings on the cliff on the far shore, I was blown away by the intricate, enticing splendor of it. As I told Red, it was like a few other places that way---Manhattan at night the first time, for example. Or the playa.
Stockholm lived up to all our expectations. We had lots of fun there, and wound up staying eight days in all, in three different lodgings throughout the city. After our splendid time in the upscale Östermalm, we spent two nights in more hip and working class Södermalm, in a hotel boat moored along the foot of the cliffs. Then we switched sides of the river again and spent three more nights in Kungsholm, in a contemporary nordic long-term stay hotel, that seemed to be popular with foreign workers. The hallways were wider than many rooms in the rest of Europe. The breakfast was good, and the wi-fi worked.
The birthday idea worked well. We went to the Abba Museum, and rode a boat around the harbor.
The only negative about the entire Stockholm adventure was my leaving behind, in the first hotel, the last of my US-to-Europe plug adapters allowing me to charge my laptop and iPhone. Red had a back-up as well, but we were now down to one, from our initial collection of three.
Fortunately the woman at the boat hotel front desk gave me good advice about findings the right store in Stockholm to buy a replacement. Her suggestion---in the heart of the Stockholm shopping district on the north side---was right on the mark. I found a replacement---a more complicated device, and more expensive. It was made in Switzerland and cost 99 Swedish krona. I was extremely happy to find one hanging on the wall in the store.
Since we were now in Sweden, of course we had to pay a visit to the hometown of my friend Lars, aka Okki, aka "Okkiman" on the playa, and out in the world at large.
(side note: After quitting his steady job in Boulder, Okkiman sold most of his stuff, put the rest in storage, and is currently in SE Asia on his own epic adventure)
Gothenburg. The locals call it YOO-ti-boar-ee. It's the second largest city in Sweden. It was built on Sweden's west coast, on the fjord of the Göta River (hence the name). From the Göta, one can reach the other coast of Sweden by canals that go from one large lake to another. Gothenburg is of relatively recent vintage, dating only from the Seventeenth Century.
It is industrial. Coming into town on the railroad, around the foot of the green steep bluff, I couldn't help but be reminded of Portland.
We stayed there five days, rounding our our first week in Sweden. We ate in the train station several times, including a place that served a delicious hamburger. One could sit in a a patio inside the station and watch the folks coming and going, beneath the well-illuminated signs and video screens containing train information.
On one free afternoon, I took the commuter train out to the farflung suburb where Okki himself grew up. Stefan suggested it, as a way to see "the other Sweden."
On the second night in Malmö, we dined in an Asian themed restaurant right in the station. The food was decent and low-priced. Eating in train stations, where it is possible, is a decent way to mitigate costs in this part of Europe, if you don't have recourse to the ubiquitous shawarma take-out/sit-down places in the larger population centers. Malmö is smaller than Copenhagen, and much less of tourist center, so we ate as the local commuters and students often do.
In the morning we took the afternoon train northbound along the west coast of Sweden. In Sweden you must reserve your place on intercity trains. The trains have power outlets and wi-fi that allows at least intermittent loading of web pages. The seats are in one large open compartment, and all face the direction, as they do in Scandinavian trains.
It was a bright sunny day of late September, perfect for this kind of jaunt through the green Swedish farmland and forest countryside. It rolled beside our passenger coach in a panorama that sped in blur in its own reflection in the window. In mid-afternoon, an hour or so later, we got to our destination,
Copenhagen, where we spent a week exploring the city, while staying in a hotel near the train station.
After a week we took the train over the Øresund strait to the Scandinavian "mainland." We spent two nights in the Swedish city right on the other side, Malmö, including a sunset stroll out to the sea by the Turning Torso.
7. Friday. Our last full day in Iceland is dominated in the morning by the crossing of the expanse of the coast plains of the giant wide glacial rivers that pour out from up the canyons on the ice cap, relieving the water into the sea, at times in a volcanic cataclysm. The road is up on a causeway, the existence of which one year to the next is at the mercy of the magma and rocks, and other volcanic side-effects. When the water comes pouring down, it is merciless.
Along the sea are also bizarre standing "islands" that emerge up out of the coastal plain, stranded by the retreat of the glaciers in earlier times.
We leave enough time in the afternoon to explore the tourist areas around Reykjavik, since we'd come almost all the way around the island by now, and we coming back into the somewhat populated area, that could be taken for rural Wisconsin at times. Of course we visited Þingvellir where the first Icelandic parliaments met, in open air, a thousand years ago. It is located right at the meeting point of the crustal plates. Footpaths take one up from the river through the fissures between them. Rounding out the trio also hit Geysir and Gullfoss, the magnificent "Golden falls" that Red thought was the best falls of all. They were also submerged in a dam, due to corruption of the legal process, but were saved by a young woman who threatened to jump in the water unless they were preserved.
Gullfoss, looking here like a slice of pie. Yummy.
There was also a stop at a farm for ice cream made on the premises, by cows that one could see through a window from the place where ice cream was sold. One gets the sense that Iceland is still in a farm-estate-centered state of society, like Norman England. The signs along the road often point not to actual towns but to historic farm-estates, some with chapels, as if the nucleus of what would have become a town had it been on the continent. Iceland blows your mind that way.
We stayed the night at our third of the Icelandair hotel chains, this time at Fluðir, a small town not far from Gullfoss. It is the center of the country's greenhouse growing industry, and the hotel restaurant had a menu of locally grown produce. Outside in the courtyard were hot tubs. Iceland is quite nice.
The wi-fi at all of the hotels we stayed in was tremendous. Not a smidgen of complaint. Also Red noticed that her T-Mobile iPhone actually got higher bar levels throughout most of Iceland than she usually got in Portland.
We even tried to extend our stay, but changing the air ticket would have cost quite a bit more. So instead on Saturday morning we decamped, drove back into the outskirsts of Reykjavik---the strange re-emergence of small urbanity amidst so much sparseness, and merged onto the tiny faux Interstate for the last fifty kilometers to the airport. After gassing up the Renault once last time, and dropping it off, we lugged our rolling bags down the sidewalk into the terminal, and went through security, showing only our tickets and not our i.d. cards (btw in Iceland on domestic flights you can actually carry unloaded firearms---it would hard to imagine not allowing this).
I felt wistful to be leaving. But we were looking forward to the next stage of the trip. Besides we had got the last bit of great Indian summer weather probably, and it was a splendid time to leave. So we stood in line in the Icelandair terminal and boarded the afternoon flight for...
6. Thursday. A day of looking at ice. We leave Hof under grey low hanging clouds, the kind of weather one expects and follow the highway along the coast, over one glacial stream after another. In Icelandic, the basic word for river is á, pronounced "ow." Driving around the country, one sees it many times in the standardized signs at the bridges. It is always part of the word, at the end. A basic word for a basic concept.
The ice cap is tantalizingly close, just over the crest of the mountains. Coming around certain points on the coast reveals the sprawl of glaciers in streaked splendors emerging down into the coastal plain. But the sky is snarly---not great for pictures.
We get our fill of ice close up at the glacial lagoon of Jökulsárlón, which literally means "glacial lagoon." It is a large lake with an opening to the coast, where pieces of ice calve off from the retreating glacial. Then they float in the pond, breaking up into small pieces that have the consistency of ice sculptures, and seem via pareidolia, to at times resemble broken fragments of a heap of ancient classical sculptures.
The glaciers are retreating lately, but they are still further advanced than in the Middle Ages when Iceland was first settled. Along the southern coast are many dryland fjords where early settlements were wiped out in the centuries after the first settlers arrived, because the ice advanced.
We spend the night at a quaint small bnb run via a Latvian immigrant on a farm outside the harbor town of Vík, about as far south as one can go on the island.
5. Wednesday. After breakfast we wander around the guesthouse farmstead taking iPhone photos of cows and horses. One sees these horses throughout the island. The cows are seen in the more settled areas, such as this oasis. Much fewer than sheep.
Before leaving town, we venture into a supermarket, one of the many examples of the Bónus chain throughout the island. We go just for fun but also for snacks. One sees these supermarkets in any settled area. Seeing one of them as one comes into town, or leaves, becomes part of the road experience in Iceland, along with the similarly situated N1 gas stations and convenience stores, where we refuel the Renault daily. We patrol the many items inside just for fun, and remark and the subtle differences from an American truck stop.
Iceland reminds of the way America used to be, back in my small town youth. People were much more relaxed at casual things. In Iceland, for example, children are still mostly "feral" by American standards. And when I take pictures of things, no one seems to care. Or at least I can't imagine anyone caring, the way I used to imagine that in America---the no one cared about a guy just doing his thing.
Outside of town the road goes quickly up into the mountains, like the Colorado Rockies, and turns into gravel for a section. On the other side of the pass the road is steep with switchbacks coming down into a massive chasm leftover from recent glaciation. This is the coldest coast of the island---the southeast---where the massive ice caps come right up to the sea in places. At the bottom of the wide valley, the road skirts the placid coast weaving in and out of the fjords, close to the rock wall and the ancient farmsteads that cling there.
We stay the night in a hotel in quiet Hof, right along the coast near the edge of the massive ice cap of Vatnajökull. The hotel is in a house, and has a shared bathroom. Across the street is a lobster restaurant where we dine on bisque. The house has a pleasant dining room with a view of the sea. kitchen. We take our breakfast with a couple from Spain. The Spaniards seem to love Iceland.
3. Monday. We leave Reykjavik. A long first day's drive from up the west coast to the island to the largest fjord on the north coast, stopping at the way in Borgarnes to see an exhibit on the sagas at a heritage museum. At this subarctic latitude (65°41′N), the hay and sheep farms are lush and green, like Wyoming in late spring, but without irrigation needed. We stay in another Icelandair hotel, in Akureyri, the island's second largest city, a quaint college town where the evening breeze is still warm in mid September, even though out the fjord northwards is nothing between here and the North Pole.In the morning, I get up early and walk around quiet to see people going to work.
4. Tuesday. After breakfast in the hotel---we always have skyr, of course---we drive out of town, heading across the wasteland part of the island. We stop at Goðafoss, the mighty glacial falls where the last great pagan chieftain through his idols in the water, a thousand years ago when Iceland became Christian.. Against a volcanic landscape a bit like Death Valley, we navigate among steam plumes until we find in the Myvatn baths, where take in the warm pool amidst some Swedish tourists. Later we reach the great cascade of Dettifos, and take photos of ourselves standing next to rainbows.. From there we cut inland across the flat interior volcanic plateau, where no one lives at all, and there are no sheep to be seen for many miles. We pass through the downwind wafting of the very sulfuric plume of the eruption of Bárðarbunga, visible on the horizon to the south. In the afternoon we come down to the fjords again on the east coast, and the land is lush again with sheep. We stay the night in the historic guesthouse farmstead of Egilsstaðirr, which is now the nucleus of the largest town on the eastern coast.
We recover from jet lag at the Icelandair Hotel, which is located at the old city airport, that is still used for domestic flights. The exterior is classic 1960's High Travel Era (TWA, Pan Am, etc.), the era that my grandparents traveled in. It was comforting in a jet age kind of way. The interior has a contemporary Nordic design, and is quite cozy. The first evening we eat the Laundromat Cafe, a hip pub-like place that is a spin-off of a place in Copenhagen by the same name. On the second day, somewhat rested we make the obligatory visit to the Hallgrímskirkja, and of course to Bæjarins beztu pylsur (the famous hot dog stand that locals love). We shop for wool hats and gloves at the many shops in the center of town, and partake of a whipped coffee drink in the local version of the famous American coffee shop chain, a local franchise of which does not exist here. Even though the high summer has passed, we find the city to be lovely, and furthermore to be remarkably similar to the image of it presented in this video made by locals (note the way the young woman wears her hair).
Out in the parking lot, under a foul autumn North Atlantic sky, we find our car---a Renault. The last Renault I drove was 25 years ago. This one is more modern. We put our bags in the back hatch. Across the steering wheel is a paper map showing the regions of the island where one is not allowed to drive the car, under penalty of fine. Fortunately none of the areas on our agenda are in the exlcuded area. I double check.
The electronic key confounds me for a moment. Then we are underway. It is still early morning Iceland time. We drive on the side roads out through several small towns, all the way to the tip of the peninsula that the airport is on. We drive down onto the fishing docks, which are still and without person in sight at the moment. I get used to the road signs as we go in and out of several times.
We head south along the coast of the peninsula, towards the meeting plate between the North American Plate and the European Plate, where the jagged edges come up out of the sea. Much ofthe land is new here, with only clumps of grass at times. I remark that it is much like the coast of the Big Island of Hawaii, especially along the south edge of the island, which is all new volcanic terrain as well.
After a couple hours of this, we are at the hour of the morning where we are supposedly guaranteed check in to our hotel is Reykjavik. We start heading back, on the back roads past the famous open air hot springs pond called the Blue Lagoon (with an Icelandic name as well, which is on the road signs). We decide not to go to the pool for now. A few miles later, we find ourselves on the only bit of highway on the island resembling an Interstate. It takes us into the suburbs of Reykjavik, the nice ones near where the Prime Minister lives, and then into the heart of the city proper. We find our exit, and merge onto a divided boulevard heading west into the urban center.
I recognize the surroundings. I have never been here before but I saw it on Google Maps Street View, while navigating the area around our hotel. I easily find the turn off towards the hotel, and follow the uncanny curve of memory in real three-dimensional space until I see the hotel itself.
Þykkmjólk. A very viscous yogurt drink with chunks fruit. Red gets the apricot version from the dairy case in the nearby convenience store in the terminal. Difficult to drink from a carton, but delicious as we share the carton. Our first great find in country.
We head over to the rental counter. There are a few folks in line, and it takes forever. The kid and the counter is diligent but somehow over his head with some issue. In the counter next to us, a young woman with a rather typical Icelandic female visage sits on a chair mostly staring off into space and listening to music on ear buds. Her hair is up in a small bun on the very top of her head. It's the
typical and distinct way young Icelandic women wear their hair---up on
top of their head.
Later in the trip Red tries wearing her hair that way, to be Icelandic. It works. She is mistaken for a native by other Icelanders, just in her appearance.
Day One: Keflavik Airport. Very early morning. Wheeling luggage down the narrow terminal pas the lines for departing flight. We get our checked bags. We wheel them through the internatioal lanes and around several corners of the maze they always make you go through. Then a hall and several lines, for EU nationals and others. I get in a line and wait. I approach the booth and offer up my passport. A grarled old man of sturdy frame takes it through the window and looks down at it.
"Góðan daginn," I say, having rehearsed the phrase for many months. Actually it my first words of Icelandic spoken to a real Icelander.
Without looking up, and in crisp booming tones of a unique sing song, the old man repeats my greeting back to me. He was, I felt, teaching me the true way that ones says it while pssing a neighbor on a Sunday morning.
On the other side of the big door onto into the commercial area of the main terminal, we see through the big glass windows to the grey imposing sky. We watch as other passengers come through the doors behind us. There is a television crew of some sort, with lights and a small crowd. We look from off to the side, just savoring the feeling of arrival.
For the second time in the span of several weeks, I find myself sitting at an airport, looking up at the national flag of Iceland.
Only this time the airport is not the impromptu one at Black Rock City in the Nevada Desert, and the flag is not the one I had hung in the inside of the rental trailer. Instead I am in the main terminal at Keflavík International Airport (63°59′06″N22°36′20″W), about thirty miles outside Reykjavik, near the tip of a short volcanic peninsula jutting out into the North Atlantic. The flag is a decal on the side of a window for a shop selling locally made wool sweaters and other winter garb.
Our trip here had been marvelous---everything we had hoped for. Indeed, for all the preparation we had done, the months of research and planning, and the playing at being Icelanders at Burning Man, we had somehow succeeded. Arriving here for the first time it had felt like home to both us.
The idea had begun as a whimsy last spring, when deciding where we should go in the fall after Red had taken her boards. She wanted to travel for a couple months until she began her formal career as a physician. Similarly I had wanted at last to take my road-work lifestyle abroad, as I had been talking about for some time.
I had been cautious about taking this step until the the time had been right. I had wanted to perfect it in the U.S., where I felt comfortable.
In my perfectionist logistic way, I had wanted the arrival here to go smoothly, like a rehearsed routine. But it had turned out to be quite hectic, mostly because of all the events leading up to it, not the least of which was the enormous time, money, and energy spent on Burning Man this year.
Even arriving back in Portland from Reno our work had not been over. We had only nine days until our flight from Seattle on Icelandair was due to depart. The days were crammed not only with the usual slog of cleaning up our clothes and gear, but with the daunting task of packing up Red's apartment in preparation for all of our possessions into storage.
During this time, most of my possessions were out on the porch where I surveyed them and rearranged them.
"For someone who came up here with only a car trunk full of gear, I sure have wound up with a lot of stuff," I told Red. "But it seems ninety percent of it is for Burning Man."
It wasn't until the night before our flight, when all of our things were finally in secure storage down on the Portland waterfront that I could begin the task of arranging the things I would take overseas into the plum-colored Rick Steeves rolling carry-on that I had recently ordered. It had arrived from the warehouse in Seattle only a day before our departure for Reno. Seattle was a recurring theme for this trip, which seemed appropriate since I had spent my last birthday there. I enjoy that kind of subtle continuity in life.
Even at that point we faced a small crisis when our plans for long-term storage of Red's car near Sea-Tac fell through at the last minute. She scrambled and found an alternative. We drove up there the day before our flight, and after a night at the Hampton near the airport, we dropped her car off with a friendly retired couple who tended the storage facility, and rolled our carry-ons to the shuttle they provided.
As we waited for our flight in the lounge I practiced some of the phrases of Icelandic that I had been learning over the summer. Then like a true Icelander, I broke out my Kindle and read a bit from my download of Independent People (Sjálfstætt fólk) by Halldór Laxness. I had been working my through it for a over a month, savoring each chapter.
The novel is considered the "national story" of Iceland by many folks there, the characters and theme reflective of the way Icelanders see themselves. One finds prominent copies of it, both in Icelandic and English, displayed in bookstores all over the country.
Then they called our flight and we boarded. The captain and the head attendant gave us our instructions in both Icelandic and English. We took off over the North Cascades on a bright sunny afternoon and headed across the Canadian border on a great circle route that would take us over Hudson Bay and Greenland. At last we were on our way home.
Burning Man had been a rousing success, and lots of fun, but when it was time to pull up stakes from Camp Eurotrash at 6:45 and H and say good-bye to camp mates, our work was hardly over.
We managed to get out on Sunday afternoon, allowing us to beat much of the massive traffic from the "Exodus." We had to wait only an hour a the gate until we were "pulsed" onto the highway. Heading back on Route 447, we stopped twice---once for delicious "Indian tacos" (served by the locals from the Pyramid Lake Reservation), and another time to get the truck washed at one of the impromptu car washes. It felt nice to contribute to the local economy.
Back in Reno, we picked up Red's car from the friend's house where she had left it and then headed to the Atlantis Casino Hotel, where we checked in and took the glass elevator up to the 18th floor. for a couple day's of splendid comfortable rest.
Well, relaxation was the plan at least.
Much of the time during the next morning and afternoon was spent trying to get our dirty and dusty possessions from the rental truck back into Red's Ford Focus. It felt like the work just never ended.
As the rental deadline approached, it was clear that there would be no time left to clean out the interior of the truck. We would have to bring it back dusty and pay whatever fee they would charge us. When the guy at the rental place came out to inspect it, and after opening the back door, he stated solemnly "that's going to be a hundred dollar cleaning fee."
My relief and resignation upon hearing that caught him off guard. He said almost everyone else argues it over the fee. I told him with a wave of my hand that I was happy to pay for someone else to do it at this point. Because of this, we instantly made friends. He encouraged me to reserve for next year. Last I checked, he hadn't even charged me the fee (although if he does, I really can't complain).
The next day, Labor Day, we dropped by to see my 89-year-old great-uncle, the former B-17 gunner from World War II and Reno resident since 1956. As we drop up, he was sitting on the front porch, looking so much like my late grandmother, his sister. We sat out there in the late afternoon glow of the holiday. He made sure to sit next to Red. It was great fun.
"You still driving that old BMW?" I told him I was, although it had been in storage since April.
He made a noise of disgust. "You gotta get rid of that thing and get a new car," he told me.
He still has a keen mind and memory. He remembered how last year when I visited him I had cooked up the idea to build an art car with my sculptor friend Howard, along with cooperation from my camp members. I told him it hadn't happened.
"I knew you weren't going to do it," he said, with a smile.
"Well, some plans are multi-year," I said, somewhat defending myself. "It was worth it to get things started right away. The best time to plan for the next Burning Man is right after the last one finishes, because your mind is so full of ideas."
"That was Plan A," I said. "When all was said and done, I was up to Plan Q, I think. But I never would have gotten there without starting on that first one."
My great-uncle was in good health, although he regretted that his hip pain no longer allowed him to hike as he once did. He mentioned how his own father (my great-grandfather) had lived to 94,
and that he himself was hoping not to live that long. Humorously he had kept the beers I had left
there a year ago when I visited him. He insisted that we take them, as
he had no need of them.
The next day we made the long drive back to Portland through Klamath Falls, retracing our route over the Cascades and down the Willamette to Eugene. We got into town in the late evening and collapsed from exhaustion.
I told Red that in contrast to last year, when I had spent a week in the hotel in Reno cooking up the extravagant plan for the next Burning Man, that next year I basically wanted to do "exactly the same thing as this year," even including renting the same kind of truck from the same place.
"If it changes from that, so be it, but that's the starting point I'm going with."
As for the theme next, given the uncanny prescience of the Casbah idea from last year, we both agreed after our stay at the Atlantis that something along those lines would make an excellent idea for 2015.
Or perhaps something involving pink bunnies, of course.
After the weird fiasco of the downpour and of our being trapped at the Black Rock City, one might be tempted to say that the rest of the week was almost anti-climactic. That might be true if it were anything but Burning Man. Instead, once we got into the groove of things, and could unpack "for reals" (as the kids say). it was just plain lots of fun.
When I came gliding back into camp with the truck, I felt like the Grinch coming back with the presents to Whoville. All was well and good. Out at the airport, I decided to scrap much of my plans for the arrangement of our truck and shelter, and simply backed the truck up into the circle of the shelters of our camp, using it as an elevated and shaded room in which we took refuge. It turned out to be a stroke of genius on my part. Withour Iceland flag up there, we were now part of the Eurotrash circle officially.
"It's the closest part of Europe to North America," as I explained to folks.
Life was good, albeit a bit muddy. In due course, during the rest of the day, Camp Eurotrash filled up with the usual suspects from Aspen, minus a few folks, and with the addition of a few more.
A couple marriages had broken up, as it happens, making life a little bit awkward for some of the participants. But we weathered through it, and all of us had a good time.
The next evening we put on our tutus for Tutu Tuesday. On Wednesday night (White night) we did our usual thing of starting the evening off at the Apres Ski Party hosted by a camp from Vancouver that sets up a real snow machine. I managed to use up a good portion of the costumes I had brought, including the fur vest I had ordered at the last minute, and all the "sheik" adornments I had purchased since last year.
Ironically the Sheik persona I had adopted last year turned out to be weirdly prophetic, given the theme of this year's burn (which was about the ancient Silk Road, and which wasn't decided upon until later). As I told my friend Howard, an artist and veteran Burner, the entire scheme that he and I cooked up for a "Psychedelic Casbah" art car project for my camp was essentially everywhere this year.
"It was the Land of 10,000 Sheiks," I told him later in an email. "So weird."
But if I had to pick one fashion trend from this week, it was certainly the explosion in the use of Indian war bonnets. They were everywhere. Part of this was because the ban on feathers on the playa had been lifted (previously they had been deemed to likely to become "Moop" (that is, matter out of place, or in other words, litter).
But partly I thought it was a reaction against the hue and cry of poltical correctness (mostly from white folks) who have decided that wearing such things is "cultural appropriation" and therefore outside acceptable behavior. For the sake of some of my readers, I'm going to withhold my opinion on this, but rest assured that I do indeed have one. You can probably guess what my comments might be.
Red certainly had a great time, as I'd hoped she would. "These people are really professional partiers," she said with awe at one point, looking out over the Aspenites preparing for the evening. Everyone in camp took a liking to here. Like I said, we all had a great time. For me, the best part by far is just getting to see a bunch of folks I've really come to love, none of whom I knew before three years ago. It's funny to think how a shitty software job in Boulder led to all this (that's how I met Okki---we started at the same time).
The whole effort---renting the truck and getting everything out there and back---left me a bit exhausted to be be sure, but there's no way I wouldn't do it again. I'm confident that we represented Iceland well on the playa. Of course we looked for Icelanders there (and I went so far as to mount an Icelandic flag on my bike to attract notice) but found none. Okki got into the spirit of this quite well, and went so far as to call me his "Icelandic brother."
Quite a hit, especially when I broke out the Brennivin I had stashed in the ice chest (I had ordered it over the Internet from Iceland a month earlier. The name actually means "Burning Wine" in Icelandic, which seemed all to perfect). True to the report, it does actually taste somewhat like liquid rye bread. The Swedes loved it.
Of course we were absolutely delighted about the bizarre coincidence of the threatened eruption of Bárðarbunga, which Red was following very closely. It had cropped up only in the last few weeks. The first lava actually started spewing out on the Thursday of Burning Man.
If I had to pick one highlight of the week, and I'm sure Red would agree with me on this, I was surely on early Saturday morning. We had gone to bed early and (after what Michele called a "disco nap") we arose under starlight and joined Okki, Stefan, Kevin, Adrian and a few others to head out onto the playa to find the Robot Heart art car, which has in recent years become the focus of the out-on-the-playa dance party in the hours leading up to dawn. Kevin had been doing this for years, so we all followed him out there. It was still dark when we arrived, and we danced there until well past sunrise (there was a great cheer as the sun rose). Red absolutely loved it.
Being that it was quite chilly, I had decided to wear the furry pink rabbit hat that Red had purchased for her garb. This and the other garb I was wearing turned me into a Disco Bunny, as Red called me. I decided that would be by new evolved playa personality, building upon the Sheik from last year.
It turns out that a professional photographer was out there that morning as well, and had stationed himself in the DJ booth of Robot Heart taking pictures of the crowd. He later published his very nice photos (of the entire week) at this site. I recommend them for anyone who wants to see what this year was like (especially the burning of the Embrace sculpture).
But if you look partway down the page, you'll see this photo of the crowd which I've taken the liberty of duplicating here. Perhaps you can locate a small group of figures in the crowd near the top of the photo, just the left of center. There you'll see a guy wearing a bright pink furry hat (that would be Stefan) and just to left of him is a female figure in a white furry hat (that would be Red), and just to the right of him is a guy wearing a big furry pale pink bunny hood. That would of course be the Disco Bunny. See you next year on the playa!
My initial plan upon biking out tot he BRC airport had been to find Tommy and get the truck back (which seemed impossible at this point), and failing that, if possible to bring back a few clothes and supplies. But the latter course of action also seemed untenable, given how hard it was to get there in the mud on Okki's bike.
I had nothing else to do but wait for the clouds to fully disperse and for the playa to dry out. So I relaxed in my chair next to the trappings of "Little Iceland" that we had brought: including our large Icelandic flag hanging inside the truck, the many bottles of Icelandic glacier water acquired at Whole Foods, and the cooler full of Icelandic and other Scandinavian types of booze. At least I had plenty to eat and drink with me. Hopefully Red had found the same back at camp in my absence.
Peeking out at the sky, and wishing for cloudless blue to reappear, I found myself singing an Icelandic children's song I had learned online:
Sól sól skín á mig ský ský burt með þig gott er í sólinni að gleðja sig sól sól skín á mig.
which roughly translates as
Sun, sun shine on me Cloud, cloud away with thee Good it is in the sun to cheer oneself up, Sun, sun shine on me
How long would it take until I could drive the truck? No one knew for certain, of course, and my lack
of experience with this situation had me completely at sea. Perhaps I
would be stuck there until the next day. But at least I was inside the
city, unlike the folks stuck outside the gate on the entrance road.
I had assumed that I needed to find Tommy to get the keys back, but soon discovered that Tommy had left the keys on the front seat of the truck. Thus it occurred to me that the best course of action would be to wait out the mud until it dried, and then drive the truck back myself.
While in my chair, I soon began to be thankful for the entire turn of events. Being removed from camp that way, and being by myself with all our stuff, somehow allowed me a second-chance at entering camp and setting up. I began to re-evaluate my initial plan to set up a monkey with the tarp and pvc I had bought, and to use the truck simply as storage. I thought: "why not use the truck itself as a room?"
I couldn't help but feel that this little adventure was a gift---my first intense strange experience at this year's Burn.
While contemplating all this in forced leisure and laziness, I soon received a few visitors at my lodging, both of them from Airport, which is the name of the official camp that surrounds the airport itself, full of the folks who run and maintain the facility.
The first was a burly guy who introduced himself and told me he was in charge of the radio-controlled aircraft there. He had walked over to tell me, in a somewhat scolding tone, that I was not allowed to drive at that point, since all the the traffic in the city was shut down by official order. I tried to ask about when the traffic would be allowed to move again within the city. He told me straight out that I would know it was OK to drive once the traffic at the entrance gate started moving (one couldn't see this traffic from the airport, but the BRC radio would announce it).
Would they allow traffic within the city before that? I asked him. He brushed off my question and told me that I should read the Burning Man Survival Guide. Of course I had read that, long ago, and I tried to joke that "my copy had been in the truck," but that only made him more brusque, and he scolded me back like I was a virgin needed to be schooled.
Nevertheless, despite his attitude, he invited me to camp at Airport with the rest of the folks there. I told him "my girlfriend is back at my other camp," but he kept repeating his invitation. It seemed they needed more folks out here, and the fact that I had a big new gas generator and spare gasoline sitting on the bed of the truck next to where he was standing might have helped juice the idea.
As he left I asked him if he knew "Scottish Tommy," and he said no. It seemed I was on my own for now.
My second visitor was a thinner and more congenial fellow, who billed himself as Blaze and told me he was the "Mayor of Airport." He had a relaxed feeling of being in charge, so I believed him of course. He essentially repeated the same information as the first fellow (as well as the same invitation to camp), but in a much nicer manner.
I explained to him that it was not my trailer at all, and that I had lent someone my truck.
He was sympathetic to my plight. After about another half hour he
returned and told me that he had received the official announcement.
He told me, however, that once the traffic started moving that I would need to move the truck and trailer right away, since its current location smack in front of the gate to the airfield was completely unacceptable. For now, however, I had to stay put. He explained that "no one was allowed to move" and that all plane flights in and out of the city were cancelled.
"We've been turning away everyone," he said, somewhat proudly. "Even helicopters and private jets," he said, implying that there were very wealthy people quite angry that they were not allowed to land.
After our pleasant interaction, he returned about half an hour later to announce that he had just heard on the radio the official confirmation that traffic within the city was allowed to move again. On the one hand I rejoiced, but this also meant I needed to move the trailer immediately.
I explained to him that I had never moved such a thing, and I had only rented such a large truck for the first time. He was sympathetic to this as well and told me he would help me. He said we could park the truck on the other side of camp, and that he would do it for me if I wished. I gratefully accepted his offer and gave him the keys.
With my help, he circled the truck around and guided the trailer to a spot next to the nearby latrines, in a such a way as to obscure them from the road for visual effect. I sensed he was somewhat disgusted by the situation regarding Tommy's trailer, in particular the lack of certain items needed to secure it decently. As such he put the trailer in such a manner so that the side door was right next to the latrine doors, so that somewhat might go inside the trailer by mistake, he said, somewhat wryly.
As he handed me back the keys, I expressed my deep thanks for his help and told him that I had actually had quite a bit of fun through this entire adventure.
"It usually takes me the entire week to get to this level," I told him.
And rain it did. The sky grew dark in the middle of the day. It became a torrent on the top of the tent. One would have thought the entire annual rainfall was happening over the course of an hour. It was excellent for sleeping, after a long night. It was certainly cool. But whenever I woke up I would think of the truck, certainly now trapped out wherever it was, in the impassable mud.
When the rain stopped, and the clouds started to fracture enough to let in a bit of light, the playa started drying up quickly enough to allow a bit of walking, albeit with mud. But all our food and water, and our changes of clothes, etc., were out in Black Rock City somewhere. I couldn't help but laugh at myself, and the irony, that after a year's planning, and all the effort, I had wound up with only a tent and an air mattress, the same as last year.
Kevin came back at some point, and said that Tommy was still out at the Airport with the truck. All internal traffic was shut down by order of the DPW. The Gate was shut down as well, meaning that thousands of folks were trapped out on the entrance road waiting to allowed into the City. I was thankful that my problems seemed small.
By mid afternoon the sun gradually started to dominate the sky again. The playa was now a series of big mushy puddles, but solid ground was reemerging. The downside was that it was getting hot. Red was sitting in her sandals on the air mattress, her feet just inside the tent. Not comfortable, especially on one's first day ever at Burning Man, but she was a trooper about it in the best way.
When another hour went by, without Tommy showing up, I decided I had to take matters into my own hands. Okki lent me his bicycle (since ours were still in the truck), and I started piloting my way towards the 5:00 road, which is the access road to the Black Rock City Airport.
Hardly anyone was moving. Moreover the outer edge of the city was denuded of population as of yet, even on Monday afternoon, since so many folk were stuck at the Gate entrance. The state troopers had been turning people back at Reno and Wadsworth.
Despite being careful, I managed to get plenty of mud on Okki's tires while riding his bike to the airport. I easily found the truck, which was still connected to Tommy's trailer, and parked smack at the gate entrance to the airfield---probably the worst possible place for it to be.
Tommy was nowhere to be seen, neither in the truck, nor the open air tents of the camp around the airport, as well as the giant tent for the waiting lounge.
There was nothing to be done in the meantime. The truck was going nowhere. So I opened up the back of the truck (I had left it completely unlocked), and finding all things in order, I set up the new outdoor folding chair I had bought at Costco and sat down in it inside the truck, looking out over the camp around the airport.
An accidental situation, to be sure. But these kinds of twists and turns, and the exploration of them, I come to realize, are the very reason that I enjoy the whole thing so much.
And the rain did come. Just a few drops at first, on my arms then visible in dark round blotches on the playa floor. It seemed harmless at first. We barely altered our gait. We were only a few blocks on the grid from camp, in any case.
We were naive. My inaugural (over three visits) experience with rain at Burning Man quickly taught us both a hard lesson. Get off the playa quickly when it starts coming down. The dust is insta-mix lake floor mud, from the end of the last Ice Age. Just add water---a little bit of it---and you get sludgy slime that sticks to bottom of your shoes. Back at camp, Ash was doing "moon boots" outside his tent, from just the light sprinkling we had gotten by then. I had not even had a chance to swap to my "playa shoes" that morning, and the ones I had been wearing were now slathered in tan goo.
Thankfully things dry out quickly as well. In mid morning, amid the restructuring of the Camp Eurotrash layout, it was decided that Scottish Tommy (who had come by ultralight) should take his airplane trailer out to the Black Rock City Airport, where his plane was (his trailer had been towed by Kevin). He asked me if he could borrow my truck to do it. It had a tow hitch on it, of course, so I happily said yes and gave him the keys.
Red and I stayed behind in the tent, which was the only thing I had gotten a chance to set up. Tommy left with Kevin with the truck and trailer, and then a little after that, when they were still out at the Airport, the heaves opened up and it really started to pour.
It was well past dark before the traffic cop outside the little town of Empire finally waved us through on our traffic pulse. After that we wound our way along the highway, through Gerlach---the last chance of civilization---and out into the desert, which was dark except for the glow of hovering lights above the horizon that marked the location of destination.
We made pretty good time on the entrance road, moving at 10mph in the one of the eight access lines, but then finally hit the end of the line. After that it was stop and go for the next four hours. Okki had the most experience with the wait, and he guessed the wait time almost exactly. When we finally got the gate, the ticket person insisted on our checking the back of our truck for stowaways, as in standard practice. She insisted that as the passenger, Red, must be the one to open the back up. "Trust me, it's faster," the greeter said. It wasn't. Red reported that she had checked inside our 80 gallon cooler for unreported passengers.
Then it was on to the official greeters. In was well into the small hours of the morning by now. We were all dog tired. Ahead of us, Kathy, a Burning Man "virgin," insisted on telling the greeters about this fact, and was mandated to get out of her car and wallow in the playa dust, doing a "dust angel." The thought of it made my skin crawl and told Red flat out to lie and tell them it wasn't her first time. Plenty of time for dust later. Red was happy to comply.
Our little caravan finally made it to the site of 2014 Camp Eurotrash about four in the morning. It was all I could do to stay awake long enough to set up the REI Kingdom 6 tent for the two of us, and then fire up the gas generator to inflate the air mattress inside. As soon as that was open, we collapsed with exhaustion.
But not for long. Sleep is never for long at Burning Man. For one thing, without our shade structure set up, we would fry in the tent come sunrise. Our sleep would be short. But who wants to sleep, really.
When it was light out, and still feeling as if I hadn't slept at all, I crawled out of the tent and saw Okki milling about. He suggested that the two of us go on a stroll to get acquainted with this year's city. I was more than happy to oblige, and very eager to get things going. I was tired, but on a definite high from having conquered the entrance road and successfully arrived at our camp.
We decided to forgo the bikes for now. Ours were still stashed in the truck. Instead we just walked along the quiet streets, still filling up with arrivals. We walked down to the edge of the playa, and around the esplanade to check out some art. The Center Camp was not yet open and operating, but we peeked inside to see some of the art there.
We ran into a Jewish-American virgin from the East Coast was on some kind of substance. He was looking at an art piece near Center Camp and ranting about Palestinians, in some way that spoke of deep conflict and guilt. It was obvious he was overwhelmed by his experience there. He almost tried to write messages on the skulls. Thankfully we didn't have to stop him.
On our way back to camp, we stopped to admire an art piece called Barbie Apocalypse, that featured, among other things, hundreds of Barbies crucified like the scene from the movie Spartacus.
"Wow, that's hard core," said Okki.
All was quiet and serene, except for the raving Jewish guy. The city was still half built and half empty on a Monday morning. It was a perfect start to Burning Man. I didn't even care about the lack of sleep. I was ready to start enjoying myself.
And just at that moment, we started to feel the raindrops...
Of course by the time Okki and I embraced in the dirt lot beside the Wal-Mart in Fernley, Burning Man had indeed officially started, but not for us.
The gates had opened officially at 10 AM---an unprecedented early start for recent years at least. Okki had wanted to shoot for being at the gates then, of course, but their stopover in Evanston had put them behind schedule. I think it's insane to drive straight through anyway, so I was glad they had stopped. It had made our morning in Reno more relaxed, among other things.
We would get there when we got there. There was no rush. After one last raid on Wal-Mart, including a stop in the little liquor store in the front (Nevada is nice for this kind of stocking up), we made our way to a local Black Bear Diner where we gorged one last time on the bounty of civilization. The portions will so ample, none of us could finish the whole plates. The service was very nice.
Kathy had come with them. I had met her in Boulder last New Year's Eve at Ash's place. She was driving her own Prius (Okki and Ash were trading off the driving of Ash's hallowed minivan). Kathy's little car was packed with her own things.
After our last meal, we formed a mini caravan with yours truly in the lead, cutting under the interstate on the two-lane blacktop into the little town of Wadsworth, where the cops sit and wait for anyone to break the speed limits. There is even a 15 mph school zone. I had told them we would drive one mph under the limit at all times, and we made it through without issue. Likewise in the little Indian town of Nixon, just north of there on the Pyramid Lake reservation, we eased passed the patrol car that is always parked right by the bridge over the Truckee, and also on the south edge of town, near the civic center building that would, after the Burn, become temporary car wash service, one quite lucrative for the locals this time of year.
North of there is open country. One gets an awesome view of the lake itself for a few miles, climbing up out of the marshy delta of the Truckee onto the hillside. Then the road cuts over to the other side of mountains in to the parched valley of the dry bed of ancient Lake Winnemucca, like its extant sister Pyramid, a remnant of the giant Lake Lahontan that covered much of northern Nevada at the end of the last Ice Age.
The road there is straight as it goes up and down low hills, past Indian taco stands every few miles. We were making good time towards sunset, but then the traffic came to a sudden stop in the middle of nowhere. According to Okki, they were pulsing the traffic into Gerlach this year. We waited quite a while there, moving ahead slowly in staggering pulses. In the van in front of us, a man in a kilt would sortie at each stop. We would consider it to be an official "stoppage" whenever he finally got out to explore the countryside around the line of cars in the desert.
Of course it was not really the start of Burning Man, at least the official event. As it happens, three full days of stressful hate awaited us in Reno for our last stage of preparations. Much of the stress was simply the uncertainty of being able to pull off the plan---picking up the rental truck, and then doing so much last-minute acquisitions at the big box retails of greater Reno, the things we couldn't yet acquire without the truck in hand.
Driving it around Reno was no piece of cake. It was my first time at the wheel of such a large vehicle. Changing lanes in busy traffic was often a matter of pure faith. But we managed to make it through out list, culminating in a last-minute visit to the Costco just next to our motel (quite near the place I stayed in near the airport while recovering from last year's event).
Finally after dropping off Red's car the last evening, we checked out and climbed up onto the freeway in the truck and started heading eastward on I-80. In a forty minutes we were parked in the small dirt lot along the road, next to the giant Wal-Mart supercenter in the little town of Fernley, along the Interstate. It's the last output of civilization to some respect. It even has a Starbucks where I had previously worked, two years ago.
After making one last visit into the Wal-Mart, I had the back door of the truck open, and had sat in a folding chair. It was a good place to get away from the sun. A couple other RVs were parked nearby, obviously heading to the same place as us.
While we waited there, I took the opportunity to use a couple bungee balls to affix the large nylon Iceland flag up just inside the back of the truck. I also put up the old mangled string of little plastic Swedish flags that I had used for several events running now.
It was barely ten minutes after I had finished hanging them, and while sitting in the chair inside the truck and looking out at traffic, that a pair of familiar figures rounded the back of the truck and came into view.
"Good day good day," said a familiar voice, in a convoluted Swedish-Finnish accent.
It was Okki, wearing dark shades, and next to him---Ash. They had just arrived from their own long trek westward on the Interstate across Nevada. They had stayed the night before at a Motel 6 in Evanston, Wyoming after leaving Boulder in the afternoon.
We had arranged our meeting place in Fernley via text. In fact my text message box was swamped with multiple group messages from numbers in the Aspen 970 area code, belonging to people I may or may not know, updated various other group members as to their whereabouts on the way to the event.
One was even coming by ultralight aircraft. We had spotted another group member in Winnemucca before flying onward to land in a ranch field near the little desert town of Empire, about seventy miles north of where we were in Fernley.
"What the hey," said Okki. "This is going to be the best burn ever,"
A couple hours outside Eugene, on the eastern side of the Cascades, coming up on the little town of Chemult which sits along both sides of the road enticing travelers with amenities for a temporary stop.
"I can't believe we aren't even half way there yet," Red laments. We
have reservations in Reno for that evening. We have many hours yet to
go.
"How about I take over driving?" I ask Red. She agrees. She's driven all the way from Portland and I can tell she needs a break.
I point to a ramshackle old cafe and convenience store ahead on our right. "Let's stop there," I said. "I could use a cup of coffee."
Improbably the sign on the exterior of the burger joint offers espresso. Inside I immediately regret my decision to stop here. The place looks vintage mid Twentieth Century. Often I like this kind of place, just for the atmosphere, but wanting coffee, I am dubious about the quality. I can see the stale pot of afternoon coffee on the machine. I'm hoping they can come through on the espresso, because no way I'm drinking a cup of the stuff I see.
Most of the store is empty. We head over to the window of the little grill inside the restaurant. Red heads off to use to restroom, which later turn out to be filthy, as she reports. Not promising.
An older middle aged couple is tending the grill. I order an americano. Red gets a milk shake. The folks behind the counter take their time making it, but we are patient.
In the meantime, as we wait, a group of young folks come into the store, two young men and two young women. They are in their early twenties, lithe and tan, as if they have spent much time in the outdoors. They have loose and little clothing on.
We had been wondering when we might see our first Burners, heading towards the same location as us. We had passed a few vehicles outside Eugene that might have contained fellow participants, but it was hard to tell if they were Burners. Now it seemed we had certainly found our first true candidates.
From their accents, I can discern they are Australian (one of the young women actually looks part aboriginal, with her curly hair) but when they order, I get the impression that they are trying to hide their accents. They are trying to sound American. When one of the young women orders, she mentions she is a vegetarian. I look at Red and she snickers a little, without being observed by the Australians.
We take our beverages and head back to the car, passing the large old van that the Australian kids are traveling in. It has British Columbia license plates. On the exterior is graffiti and on the top are affixed bicycles. Yup, Burners for sure, I think to myself.
I get behind the wheel of the car and we start to drive away, passing behind the Australian's van. I take one last look and notice the hand-lettered cardboard sign: "Burning Man. Got a ticket? We need one."
I immediately pressed the brake and stop the car. One of the Australian guys is standing beside the van. I motion for Red to roll down the window. I call out to the guy by the van.
"You looking for a ticket?" I ask him.
"Yeah," he laments. "One of our group doesn't have one yet. We went last year but this year we didn't get enough tickets. We're desperate."
"Wel,l I've got an extra one to sell," I say matter-of-factly.
His face breaks out in a huge smile. He seems incredulous. I assure him that I am not kidding. He hurriedly tells his friends and all four of them come over the car. He ask me how much the ticket is, and I tell him face value---380 bucks.
It turns on the guy who needs the ticket doesn't have the cash, but he runs over to the gas station to find an ATM. In the meantime we chat with the other Australians. By now the facade of the non-accent is vanished. We exchange names and hugs with all of them, as if we are already on the playa.
The other guy comes running back with his money. He counts out the twenties and hands them to me. I give him the spare ticket in my possession.
They can't believe their luck. All of them are overjoyed that they can all go this year.
"Well, now I get to cross off something from my to-do list in Reno, " I tell them.
They tell me their camp location, using the Burning Man city coordinates. I tell them I will look for them on the playa, since I know what their van looks like. I tell them to look for our Icelandic flag. They don't know what it looks like, so I take it out of the car to show them.
We drive away, leaving them very happy. t's as if Burning Man has just started this year, improbably in Chemult. I had been wondering who that extra ticket would go to. Now I know.
The voice can to me from across the churchyard to where I was sitting on a stone bench, reading a book. Beside me were a wall of names of deceased and interred former church members and loved owns. The slabs were plain, with only names and dates. A few of the slabs had gold flowers wedge into them by recent visitors.
I looked up from my book. It was brilliantly sunny, and quite hot and humid. I could tell the voice had come from Red. She was walking towards to place beside the church where the photographer was taking pictures after the wedding ceremony, which had ended about fifteen minutes earlier in the chapel indoors. When I looked up at her she waved and smiled. Everyone was having a good time.
I knew that it would take a while, so I had brought a book, The Emperor of All Maladies, a paperback copy of which I had picked up in Colorado the day before my flight. When I told Red that I had bought it, I fumbled on the title, calling it The Emperor's New Malady.
By then we had been in Hickory three fulls days, after landing at Charlotte Douglas, and having been picked up at the airport by one of her family members.
One the first day we drove up to the Blue Ridge Parkway, and to the top of Mount Mitchell. In the late afternoon we followed the parkway down the switchbacks into Asheville. As we looked for a place to park, I told Red a little of the history of the town, especially as a location for tuberculosis sanitariums and hospitals, back in the day when that disease had been a terrible ravager of the people. I'd learned some of the history when I had taken the Thomas Wolfe tour in 2009. Wolfe had grown in the boarding house that his brother operated for TB patients and other convalescing folk. His father had fittingly carved cemetery ornaments.
Back in Hickory we stayed at the very comfortable Hampton Inn by the freeway, along with most of the rest of the visiting family members. Red isn't big on the powdered eggs that they serve at the Hampton's breakfast, so we instead ate our early meal at the Waffle House (first time since Tucson) and even at the Cracker Barrel (my first time since Binghampton, NY five years ago).
Except for the time we spent in the airport (alas CDL is an abysmal experience), the entire trip was one exquisite and fun experience. Our last evening featured a catered dance with an open bar. I taught Red the steps to the jitterbug during what was billed by the locals as the Carolina shag dance.
After the event was over, before getting on the freeway towards the airport or far-flung land destinations in other states, of of Red's family stopped and ate at the Mellow Mushroom, the local version of which is among the newer franchises of this 60's remnant Atlanta-based pizza chain. To reach our table, we passed a tall sculptures of the blissed out corporate mascot, as wells ones in and other 60's era counterculture iconography.
I ordered the Shiitake special, which comes with an olive oil base. Red got one that had a gluten free crust. As we waited for our order, I chatted with a fellow across the table. He lives in Los Angeles and does animation for a major studio. I knew he was originally from Buffalo so I brought up that city.
"Millard Fillmore," I said. He laughed at the mention of the name, and that it would be the first thing I would recollect from my visit there ten years ago.
"Buffalo is the birthplace of the modern American hospitality industry," I told him. The idea was completely new to him. I proceeded to explain why.
There is nothing quite like good conversation over pizza.
