I gathered up a small posse around noon, and we tried to find the Prescription Burn pancake breakfast, really we did. We rode all up and down Hummer Street, asked around, showed off the temp tatoo, tried to find the good docs. But nobody seemed to know anything. It was a bit frustrating -- there was a pinky swear involved, people! -- but a good Burning Man lesson. Things don't necessarily play out as planned, but that doesn't mean you can't have fun along the way! En route back to camp, we were beckoned to come visit Juicy Moosey's and had a lovely shot of JD to start the day off right. Breakfast of champions!

For most of the rest of the day, I just hung around camp and let the circus come to me. I found this to be a nice perk of our camp location, just two blocks off the Esplanade: lots of traffic from interesting people and fabulous art cars. I didn't even have to venture outside GBOF camp to witness all sorts of innnnnnnnteresting stuff.

A few of today's highlights:

* Seattle Heather brings her 16-year-old daughter by for a foot massage, but instead winds up taking her next door to get teabagged for science. (Mother of The Year, I tells ya!)

* Snap into a Slim Jim!

* Codrin is soooooo drunk... and why are my hands green?

* Lee peruses the Constitution.

* Bitchezz gets a yoga adjustment (and an earful of yackety-yack) from a crazy random Aussie. Maybe that'll teach him to stop offering bike assistance to hot damsels in distress. Probably not.

* "T" from The Motel stops by to shock us with tales of debauchery, and we wind up warping his fragile little mind instead.

Evening. The air finally started to cool down a bit. Time to attend a wedding! I didn't know much more about this affair, other than it involved two DC-based friends of GBOF, and it was supposed to happen at sunset on the Esplanade. Ehm, OK, but what time is sunset? Nobody really knew. We aimed for about 7:30, and got cleaned up as best we could, and tried to herd the cats. Ah, another Burning Man lesson! It's only ever possible to get a maximum of three people coordinated at any one place at any one time. The corollary to this theory is that you'll always be missing *one* person, even if ten others seem to be ready to go. Accordingly, by the time we had a quorum, and rode down to where the nuptials were supposed to be, we'd missed it. Oh well. We did manage to enjoy some champagne and cake at the reception, so it's allllll good.

The main event for the night was a "white" party at the Opulent Temple, a large scale art & sound camp on the far reaches of the Esplanade. (Keep in mind that GBOF camp is at 8:00, and the Opulent Temple is at 2:00, so it's just about as far away as it could possibly be.) The Opulent Temple is a collaboration of some folks from the SF underground community, and consistently draws top DJs like Tiesto and Oakenfold. So we knew it'd be worth the trek, and we were right!

Despite losing Bitchezz at one point, and almost picking up some random whiskey-swigging aggro-girl, we all managed to make the journey across the open Playa, with Lunar leading the way. Taking a short cut across the Playa, rather than following the slightly smoother path around the Esplanade, was certainly the quickest way to get there. But it was definitely a challenge. Without warning, smooth patches of Playa yielded to huge sand dunes or deep ruts. It's hard enough to avoid these in the daytime, but at night it was near impossible. After skidding horizontally off my bike for the third time (you should see the lovely technicolor bruise on my right shin! now that's art) I decided it was time to walk the damn thing. Playa One, Sonia Zero. 

Miraculously, we all managed to meet back up at the dance party, Bitchezz included. (How in the world did Mama Love find him? Must be some kind of homing beacon.) Even on the outskirts, it was a thunderously loud mass of about a thousand white-clad, glowstick-twirling ravers, with a DJ spinning tunes in a booth that periodically shot out huge flames from between enormous projection screens. A flimsy-looking platform rocked and thumped about 20 feet above it all, with more dancers and twirlers and bubble-blowers, and flames blasting from the corner pillars. One hell of a party!

Pringles and I climbed up the rickety platform and sat on the edge, taking in the view for a good while. It was a great vantage point to people-watch, and the fear of imminent doom only heightened the experience. Fire-spinners and twirlers of various glowy items did their thing off to one side while the crowd danced before the DJ and projection screens. Just beyond the perimeter of the party, enormous art cars rolled by blasting their own tunes. And beyond that, stood the Man, hundreds of flickering theme camps behind him. It was a pretty amazing sight. And another "life doesn't suck" moment!