1. Flying into Reno and using the Burner Express Bus to Black Rock City
This utterly rocked---going both directions. The Burner Express Bus completely delivered on its promise to allow passengers to bypass the entire lines in both directions. Coming in, I almost arrived too soon, if that is possible. My bags and I were plopped down on the playa floor on Sunday even before the gates officially opened at 6 pm. I had plenty of daylight to sit around in daylight and watch the city fill up on Sunday evening. But it sure was nice---with Will Call right in Gerlach, and our tickets checked on the bus at the entrance. But the most dramatic moment was leaving. We all whopped as we sped across the dark playa past the line of headlights that snaked five miles long just to get to the county road.
2. Packing fairly lightly
Done mostly right. I didn't think through the exact supplies I would need during the supposed one-hour stop at the Save Mart in Reno on the way in. For example, I spent forty-five mintues without a cart, barging through the store, trying to grab water (!). I was in a bind---I knew almost certainly that my friends would arrive with an abundance of water, but on the other hand, it was my obligation to make sure I had my own, just in case, at least to last a couple of days until I could find another source. The water turned out to be the heaviest thing in my bags as I tried to carry and drag them the few blocks from the Burner Express drop off point to the corner of 7:00 and Holy, where I spent Sunday evening waiting for Okki and Ash to arrive.
3. Going with the Captain theme initially
Even though the captain's hat I bought in the costume store in Portland the day before my flight was a standard prop, one that I saw not infrequently on the playa, worn by both sexes, I doubt that any of them got as much mileage and fun out of it as I did, especially in regard to being treated as "captain." Young men especially enjoyed treating me as a wise elder. And it allowed me to slip into the mode of group navigator on the playa both during our day and night excursions by bicycle. The was especially true after I wrapped a double strain of yellow LED wire around the hat, allowing me to become the easy beacon of the group to follow at night.
4. Pimping out my bicycle in multiple colors of LED wire
This is such an easy thing to do, and really makes you feel part of the gaiety of the event like nothing else except your costume itself. Just with three LED colors, on two of the frame posts and across the handlebars, I was able to make a bike more colorful that 90% of the other ones on the playa. At night you almost feel like your own art car, and of course it makes it much easier to locate your bike in the dark in the sea of other bikes outside a popular club on the esplanade.
5. Renting my bike from Playa Bicycle Repair
This fit very well with my light-and-seamless theme this year, although it meant I didn't have a bike for the first night I was there, until the PBR camp opened on Monday. The cost wasn't cheap---I paid fifty bucks more because I rented at the last minute online, but I got there early enough to pick out a decent bike that served me well the entire run. It suffered only one malfunction the entire week, at that was very late on Sunday night, during my last cruise before I dropped it off. Even then, it was a broken seat belt---the bike still functioned. Moreover, it was fixed (somewhat) on the spot by a member of the gallant Public Works Department (14-burn veteran Bustin' Dustin at the PBR drop off point), using a seat from the Yellow Bicycle Project. It kept me going the rest of that night, until I finally left it outside the PBR camp at about 4 a.m. on Sunday morning, two hours before my bus was set to leave.
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