my wife went to the playa and all i got was this dirty t-shirt

how was going out to the playa for the wedding?

pretty great.

not easy, but pretty great. let’s skip the whole nightmare drama on saturday morning, for which a large part i blame hertz for being an hour and a half too slow to put my rental contract in my car. what’s the purpose of gold club if i have to wait in line and fuck my already tight schedule up?

we didn’t leave oakland until about 1pm (not our fault! we were relatively on time, for once) and after all the miscellanous stops as well as the horrific weekend outbound traffic, we arrived on the playa at antlerville at about 8:30 pm. god bless those handheld gps units.

fantastic things i forgot about being on the playa:

1. it’s just a crazy ass place. so wide and open, and yet almost so alien. there was a big lake on the west side of the playa, so people had to watch out for getting stuck in the mud, thus forcing an eastern approach to the camp.
   
2. in a lot of ways, it’s much better than at burning man. during bm you are always making judgements about what to do and to try and see, knowing that there’s ALWAYS TOO MUCH TO DO and that you’re missing something RIGHT NOW no matter what. here, there’s not that much to do, and not a lot going on except chilling, relaxing, and…
   
3. hot springs. since it’s not fenced off like bm, you’re free to drive around to the hot springs. i can’t even tell you how wonderful it feels to dip yourself in water after just a day in the desert.
   
4. my god, it’s full of stars. you forget how wonderful and beautiful and fantastic the sky looks when you can actually SEE it. not only the milky way, but how the galaxy twists and curls around in intricate little details, and of course the amazing constant twinkling of thousands of stars, shimmying back and forth. it’s just sublime.
   
5. crazy freeze dried food. we tried some of those meal-in-a-pouch things where you pour in some boiling water, stir, and then ten minutes later, voila! chicken enchilada! actually, surprisingly not bad. pretty damn tasty for food out on the playa.

less fantastic things about the playa:

1. oh, that damned sun. frying our tent such that it’s too hot to sleep by 9am.
   
2. oh, that damned wind. it was lovely and warm at night, but the winds kicked up something fierce. the first night was ok, but on the second day we tried to move around our shade structure (which we picked up from jank city. perhaps you’re familiar with it, out on the highway off of loser lane?), which consisted of a tarp set up diagonally off of the freestanding shade we had, and that worked well during the daytime, but in the late afternoon the shade structure turned into a surprisingly effective tent squasher, despite our attempts to slash it into oblivion (manual? they don’t provide manuals at jank city!). meanwhile, everyone who had bought a legitimate carport type structure from home depot remained annoyingly unmoved by the wind.
   
3. oh, that crazy aggro dog lady. sure, whoever the hell it was who kept pooping incorrectly into her portaloo was just wrong, but that still doesn’t excuse her fightiness.

the wedding itself was quite wonderful. christopher ended up in a nice looking tux complete with cummerbund and jaunty hat, and betty wore this cool crazy tulle type thing decorated with EL wire, which later turned out to be both furry on the inside and reversible. they performed it underneath the art piece that had precipitated their original meeting, and you had to walk through a simple labyrinth to enter, which provided a nice way of holding the space. very simple and lovely, really.

later in the evening, we drove over to camp dismal, which had teamed up with a couple of other camps to buy something like 900lb of fireworks. they had constructed this large faux wild west shootout, with complete fake buildings, and this huge arcade-style duck shoot, with ducks that glided by. with what? well, they gave you wooden rifle stocks, and then loaded them with roman candles, and you SHOT FIREWORKS at the ducks, and if you hit it, you lit a huge firework that went off upwards and then exploded straight down on top of everyone. fucking awesome.

this morning we got up, ate a little, hung out a little, soaked a bit at the springs, and then raced home in only 5 1/2 hours (much better without traffic).

was it worth it all? in itself, definitely. with all of the drama/trauma, still probably. am i glad we went? i think so, yes. much thanks and love to wanda for making things easier in so many ways.

Posted at July 3, 2006 10:21 PM