Hello Reality

I'm definitely very much back in the default world. And it's not all that bad, possibly because I was already expecting a festival come-down x 10 and was prepared for it.

As I've said in my last post, there weren't any major epiphanies while on the Playa. For me, Burning Man changes come over time, sometimes I don't even notice that something inside me has changed until I catch myself doing stuff I would not have done before or think thoughts that would never have crossed my mind previous to the event.

One change that has materialized already is that I've started to look deeper into EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique). I've attended two workshops by Sonya Sophia at Burning Man because I wanted to check out what it was all about. The subjects she covered weren't too close to what I was looking for but it was a great introduction into tapping on subjects you're dealing with. I really liked that you don't have to actually believe in EFT for it to work, although it probably helps, which appealed to the skeptic in me. I started out tapping for my inflamed shoulder joint (my body has the tendency to randomly fall apart without warning which is kinda annoying) last weekend and I'm not sure if it was the EFT or the fast application of pain killers, but the pain subsided much faster than expected and I only had to take diclofenac for a day or to. It usually takes 5 days for stuff like that to go away. I'm now exploring tapping into other things I want to change in my life. It won't do any harm and who knows, it actually might work.

I also seem to be happier and more relaxed, less fazed by stuff that would normally drive me up the wall. This obviously could just be because I had 2 1/2 weeks off work, but I'm hoping it's something that'll stay with me for longer than just post holiday glow. And there's enough going on that has the potential to get to me. Work's busy as usual but no major drama at the moment. The flat, however, keeps causing problems. Don't get me wrong, I'm not insanely unhappy - I like the place and I like where I live and who I live with. It's the bathroom, in particular our shower, that's a source of never-ending issues. This is mainly due to our landlord being a cheapskate and always looking for the cheapest option. He also, unfortunately, has absolutely no clue on how to fix things. What happened is that our shower has stopped working again, it was just dead on Monday morning. Not exactly what you want to wake up to. It got fixed the same day, but now the temperature regulation, which was not great in the first place, is even more fucked than ever. I know why we've got these issues (combi boiler & power shower aren't a good match) and I've got a vague clue what could be done about it (thanks to the interwebs & my inquisitive nature) but I don't think we can expect our landlord to do anything about it because it costs money. He'd rather rock up ever week or so and pay a useless handyman £35 to temporarily fix it.

What he'd need to do is sort out the dodgy plumbing in our bath once and for all. Yes, it'll cost him a few hundred pounds but once it's done he won't get bothered by his tenants anymore (and I can assure you that his tenants would be delighted to not bother him).

That aside we're really rather happy with the place.

Apart from getting on my landlord's nerves, there's a party coming up this weekend. I'm actually feeling way too lazy to go out, but I want to see my friends and still have all winter to hole up and hide underneath a blanket & watch TV. That's my reasoning, anyway. I also really should get myself back into the yoga studio and a sugar detox has been on the cards for a while now. I'm without flatmate for the next 3 weeks so this might be the right time to do it.

Upwards & onwards. Maybe a bit sideways. Here we go!

You can get the girl out of the playa, but you can't get the playa out of the girl*

* quite literally, unfortunately, I'm pretty sure there's particles of playa permanently logged in my lungs...


I'm very pleased to report that Burning Man & our little road-trip were a great success. Getting an RV instead of staying in a tent was awesome, although driving that thing took a bit of getting used to. Thank God American streets are wide and usually pretty empty outside of cities.

But let's start from the beginning...

The last few days of work before my holiday were kinda hectic, loads of stuff to do and things to put into place as I didn't want to leave a big mess for my boss who had to take care of it all while I was away. By the time I finally got away I was rather stressed. Which continued into my packing as I had to discover that BA had scrapped their 2 bag policy and were now only allowing 1 checked-in bag weighing 23kg. Panic ensued. In the end I bought myself an extra bag and was slightly less stressed. Still, I think I've never packed that badly in my life.

The rest of the travel process went much more smoothly and I arrived safe but pretty tired in Las Vegas. Got myself a taxi to the hotel (Super 8 Las Vegas Strip - classy as fuck), checked-in and, after a very thorough inspection of the room and the bed (I'd read reports about bedbug attacks in that particular establishment), collapsed into bed.

The next morning brought the discovery that it was still boiling hot (a pleasant 40 degrees or so) and that the hotel was not quite as close to the Strip as it claimed to be. Found myself some breakfast in the nearby casino and then braved the treck to the Strip, where I explored the shopping options (there are many).

Headed back to the motel in the afternoon to meet Frani and chill for a bit before heading back to where the action was to have dinner.

The next morning, after breakfast and some more explorations, we folded ourselves into a cab and went to pick up the RV. An hour or so later I had the pleasure to be the first driver of the vehicle and to try and get us to the nearest Walmart. About four hours of almost non-stop shopping later we had most of our supplies and made our way to the RV park.

If I can give you any advice, it's don't stay in an RV in Las Vegas. Well, not if that particular RV has the noisiest A/C you can imagine (it made the whole car vibrate whenever it came on). We didn't get much sleep that night, which didn't make the long, long drive ahead of us any more appealing. A short stop at Whole Foods later we were on the road, coordinates on the TomTom set to Playa. We didn't get all that far that day, but we made it to Fallon before it got dark and after our previous experiences with the A/C booked ourselves into the Motel 6.

A good sleep and an even better sleep later we got back on the road. There was breakfast, a long drive, a long wait for petrol at the petrol station in Empire (which never arrived) and an even longer wait to finally fill up the tank in Gerlach. Oh, and a 5 hour wait to get onto the playa. We arrived in camp around midnight, parked our RV and went to bed.

The following days were made of dust, lovely people, interesting talks and pure awesomeness. Around Thursday morning it dawned on me that I was home, where I belonged, with people I wanted to be with. Obviously not all can be hunky-dory, even in a place like this. The camp's take on vegan/vegetarian food was rather hazy and someone stole my poi out of the lost & found box in our camp (I have to admit I'd left them out for a fellow campmate to play with who then abandoned them, which was foolish, but they got placed in lost & found and disappeared from there, which hints to someone purposefully removing them). But the food was tasty nevertheless and hey, I kinda wanted new poi anyway (actually, Crafty gave me some she'd made herself, yay!).

My second Burn didn't change my life, I didn't have any major epiphanies, but I very much enjoyed myself and that's all that counts, really.

Exodus on Monday came with another 5 hour wait in queue, not made any better by two campmates who'd hitched a ride with us and turned out to be sparkle ponies (i.e. annoying freeloaders who didn't even offer petrol money but munched their way to our food instead). We abandoned these individuals in the parking lot of our Reno hotel, checked in and had the longest and most satisfying showers EVER.

The next day featured a rather scenic drive out to Lake Tahoe, where we checked into a motel and got on our (playafied) bikes for exploration. Said bikes were left unlocked in the parking lot of the Marina later that day and I very much hope they've found new owners that gave the a bit of TLC. They deserve it, they were awesome bikes.

I can definitely recommend a stay at the lake, it's quiet and pretty and for us it was just the ticket to relax and decompress.

On the following day we hit the road again and caned it all the way to Vegas. It was a long drive on a very boring road...

Back in Vegas we hit the Motel 6 (which might go down in history as one of the more depressing of it's kind), cooked some food in the RV and then retreated to our air-conditioned room.

We managed to return the RV on time, despite getting a bit lost in search of the petrol station, and without any problems (we spent 3 hours cleaning the inside of the RV in Lake Tahoe, it was cleaner than it was when we picked it up). El Monte even operates a shuttle back to the Strip as it's quite far out, so we didn't even have to pay to get to the MGM.

The rest of the day was spent lounging at the pool. Frani had to leave early the next morning and retreated to the room after dinner, while I had bought myself a ticket to see the Blue Man Group. It was a cheap ticket ($70) which should have been a seat in towards the side in the middle - for some reason I ended up center third row and in the 'splash' zone. I didn't get dirty (they give you plastic raincoats) but bumped into some campmates that had the same marvelous idea but slightly better seats. Great coincidence, wasn't it? We had drinks afterwards and I made it back to the hotel around 2am.

My flight only left in the evening the next day, which meant I had another full day of shopping and pool lounging before I had to go to the airport. Didn't buy much, but it was a good ending to a great holiday.

The flight back was ok, BA really aren't great on long-haul flights, the leg-room is abysmally bad even if you're as short as I am and they seem to have no concept of vegan food. I did manage to catch up on movies I'd missed (although I fell asleep halfway through 'Bridesmaids', which probably wasn't much of a loss).

I'm already making plans for my next holiday, Toronto's looking quite likely as I now seem to know loads of people who live there. I'll follow up on that plan once my bank account stops hyperventilating...