We settle in on a driving rotation of roughly 90 minutes or 100 miles. It is a Sunday evening and traffic is light. We blow through more WA cities with funny names and reach the Oregon border in short order so we decide to get fuel for both us and the car in Portland. Let me tell you about Portland. The highway does a funny split thing and it is easy to get onto a spur that takes you on a road that slows down your progress to Nevada. Not that that happened or anything. Just telling you that it is possible. In a completely unrelated story, we find ourselves at a somewhat remote gas station in the corner of Portland. We pull up to the pump and from out of nowhere comes a random guy with a reflector vest who lurks around the car. Violette asks what he wants and he turns out to be the gas attendant. After a moment of awkeward confusion I recall something about a law that in Oregon you can't pump your own gas...which is a good idea...for thousands of minimum wage workers throughout Oregon. He tops off our tanks and we are on our way, right back onto the main highway that we were on the entire time, not that funny spur that takes drivers over to the zoo or wherever it leads, not that I would know where it leads. I decide that from here on out it would be best to avoid stopping in big cities and do touch and go pit stops at small towns where a gas station and off-ramp are both clearly visible from the highway.
As we head into the night the temperature drops and Violette keeps the air conditioning working so I dig around the back to add a layer of clothes to compensate. With the bike rack mounted on the back of the car preventing access to the trunk I made sure to pack camping gear back behind the pass-through area and keep the stuff useful for the road trip, like groceries and clothes, sitting in the front part of the cargo area on top of the fold down seats. Despite my best efforts to organize, my clothes seem to have migrated away from their intended position and I have to dig through the duffle bags and suitcases to find warm clothing. I finally get suited up and also grab one of the pillows out of inventory to make the reclined car seat more comfortable.
When it's my turn to drive I don't want to attract the attention of any state troopers but by the time we are in central Oregon it is the middle of the night, the roads are pretty much empty, and civilization is sparse. I'm not a lead foot but I do find that I'm passing cars with a certain degree of regularity. I'm not recklessly speeding or anything...just driving with purpose. Wish I could just dial in a comfortable pace on the cruise control but it is unreasonable to expect that feature on a car with window cranks. When I make more careful observations on the highway and at mini-marts, it occurs to me that pretty much the only other drivers going in our direction at this hour are other burners. The Burning Man logo made with masking tape on trailers, cars filled up to the windows with gear, and multiple bicycles hanging off the vehicles are dead giveaways that they too are on the pilgrimage to Black Rock City, home of Burning Man. This becomes clear to others as well and as we all converge on our destination we exchange that casual head nod to each other acknowledging that we are all burners on our trek.
Later when I wake up from my stint of sleeping in the shotgun seat I find that we are weaving through a mountain pass. After a while, I realize that there have been no other cars in either direction for miles and miles. With the dashboard thermometer indicating that it is below freezing outside I figure we're at elevation as well and I am now more sure than ever that renting a car was the correct decision. Breaking down in the remote Oregon forest and waiting for an expensive tow truck ride to a small town garage that will likely need to order in Acura parts just sounds like a real inconvenient, expensive, time consuming exercise. Good call. Maybe leaving behind schedule will actually work to our advantage for avoiding waiting in line because a little after midnight I get an email from the camp with the following report: "Right now it is beautiful and warm. It is 12:00 am and they have just begun letting the cars in. There are already 10,000 or so in… several thousand in “D” lot waiting for 12:01 and 8000 in line from Gerlach. Wow. The playa tonight looks like it did on Wednesday previous years." Burning man has started and we are still a few hours away but making good time.
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2 comments:
Thought you would appreciate this photo.
I'll give you a $1 if you find yourself in there, smiling up at the satellite in the sky.
Thanks Mr. Loblaw. I had seen that post in BB and am all over it. Rest assured that the image will be incorporated into the blog this week. Thanks for the link and thanks for reading!
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