Burn Night

Saturday night is burn night, the big Man burn, and so Sarah and I headed back to camp (she'd come with me to Max's for dinner and I'm glad she was there to hug me when my tears were overwhelming and Max wasn't there to hold me) and got ourselves ready for the evening.

This particular burn night, that meant more layers.  It wasn't warm!  Go figure, eh?  I was pretty stoked by this fact, but also amused that I had on tights and pants and a shirt (that Max gave me to be warm in, awwww!  And he sprayed it with some of his cologne, so I could still smell him, AWWW!!!!) and a giant fluffy jacket and I was finally wearing more than barely nothing at Burning Man, hurray!!!!

We weren't sure where Connor was and were just about to head out to find a spot for the burn when he biked up.  CONNOR!  (a la Norm from Cheers) And so the crew was together again and off we headed.

We left our bikes by a glowy thing (which... yeah) and found a spot near-ish the front to sit.  I'd forgotten my extra sitting cushion thing and found the ground quite chilly, which worried me for my health situation but hey, you do what you have to do to watch the amazing spectacle that is the Man burn!  Love it.

We sat and we enjoyed and we cheered and once he'd fallen, we got up and realized just how cold it was!

I can't remember quite how it went but at a certain point we were heading back towards camp and Connor went that way and Sarah and I headed back out into the playa.  We found some fire art and warmed ourselves and biked around a bit more before Sarah called it a night.

I stayed out for a while, biking around from art piece to art car to fire making, noise making, people dancing places.  I found the Mayan Warrior (which has an amazing sound system) and stood at the edge of the crowd and felt the bass thrum in my chest.  I found Max's camp's art piece and smiled as I watched them dancing and having fun together.

Max had told me I was welcome to join them but I didn't want to be there without him, and burn night has always been a quiet, solo one for me so I just kept biking.

My hands got cold though and I laughed that this was the first year I'd not bothered to pack my warm, fuzzy pjs.  Because it was cold!  This from a Canadian, eh?  (I checked the weather once I got off playa and it had gotten down to 1 degree Celsius that night, so yes, cold, actually!)  I slowly made my way back to my camp... not sure what time it was by then, but I got back to camp, dusted off my gear as best I could, and settled into my own, dusty tent.

Where I was freezing!

I guess I've never checked the weather rating on my sleeping bag but I'm starting to think it's not winter rated after all, brrr!

I curled up into as small a ball as possible and tried not to think about how much warmer it would be if a certain someone was there to keep me company, but like I said I was fine.  I'd had a good burn night, I'd been ok and enjoyed myself.

And I'd come up with a name for the freezing cold evening.

"Canada Burn."

Because, cold!