On Friday we had sort of a slow start to the day because of our late night the night before, but eventually I got myself together to go bike over to Center Camp to fetch us the ice we never got the day before. It was the first time there that I’d ridden my new beater bike (bought specifically for Burning Man), and it was pretty fun just cruising along the Esplanade with everyone else. The day was still relatively cool and it wasn’t particularly dusty, so riding was pleasant and I liked the feeling that I was getting to know my way around and recognize certain landmarks, as well as the people-watching.
As I was locking up my bike in the giant bike racks outside of Center Camp, a woman with a little cooler approached me and asked if I’d like a popsicle. Well of course I wanted a popsicle, even though truthfully it wasn’t all that hot yet. I like popsicles pretty much any time, but it especially made me happy to receive such a pleasant gift right at that moment. So I sauntered over to Arctica (where they sold the ice) while sucking on my popsicle, and yay there was no line so I just breezed in and out. Everyone at Arctica smiled at me because I was clearly in such a great mood. 
Then I went over to Center Camp to get iced coffee (once you start it’s hard to stop) for both me and Isis. I drank mine down pretty quickly and then I went and got my bike and rode back to SSV while carefully balancing a shopping bag full of ice on one shoulder while holding a full travel mug of iced coffee in the other. I made it back safely and deposited the ice in the cooler and the coffee in Isis’ paws, then headed over to the SSV office for a shift as an office coordinator.
The office shift was quiet and mostly uneventful, although there was pretty much always a trickle of people to talk to (and Isis came by towards the end of it to keep me company). I organized the space a little bit, took some random pictures of myself, trained the guy who was after me, and then I was free. Isis and I grabbed our backpacks and I grabbed my bag of freak flags and freak flag-personalization supplies (sharpies & newspaper) and we headed out. 
We loosely agreed that we would aim for Center Camp so that I could hand out my freak flags and have a place for people to personalize them, but first we wanted to walk a little bit in the other direction down the Esplanade, because we hadn’t really gone that way yet and Isis wanted to find some friends at the Deep Heaven camp.
We did make it to Deep Heaven, but no one was home. We wandered a bit more, but Isis was feeling tired and starting to despair about walking back, so we hooked up with an art car that had stopped nearby. It was a converted VW van painted in sort of a blue camouflage pattern, and it had open sides, a platform on the top, and four sky chairs suspended at each corner of the van from big wooden beams. We asked if we could have a ride, and if they might eventually be going to Center Camp, and they said yes, but that they were going cruising first. So we jumped on for an adventure. Isis sat inside with all our stuff and I got to sit in one of the front sky chairs, and off we went into the playa, grooving to some dance music and checking out whatever art caught the drivers’ eye. 
It was really a peak experience: I was sitting so comfortably and feeling so fine, swinging along with my butt just a few inches off the playa and my feet up in the sky chair foot sling, and mostly even in the shade since the car was between me and the sun (at least at first). People gave me lots of thumbs up and “nice!” and “oh yeah” as we rolled by. At one point I was tapping on the side of the passenger door of the van along with the music, and the guy sitting in the passenger seat was thumping the top of the door in syncopation with what I was doing. It was really fun, and satisfied at least a little of that drumming urge.
We stopped at the Temple at one point, beside another art car that was built on a semi-truck chassis, but which was all painted up to look like a giant VW van (albeit one with gargantuan steer horns). 
People took pictures of the two cars next to each other, and we listened to someone on top of the horned car read a poem about the Temple into a microphone so that everyone could hear it. (They were apparently doing some sort of mobile spoken word performance.) We eventually got going again and cruised by some more cool art, which I attempted to take artsy pictures of as we went by. Eventually we wound up somewhat near Center Camp, so we bid farewell to our ride and the other passengers (and I gave them all freak flags) and got off to go walk over to Center Camp.
At Center Camp, we got ourselves another iced coffee (because really, how can you resist?) 
and then found a good place to set up the coloring station for the freak flag giveaway. This was a nervous moment for me, because I really wanted to put my little baby project out in the world and yet I was a little afraid that no one would really care much about it. But I screwed my courage to the sticking point and took a bunch of flags and started approaching people to ask if they would like a freak flag...and almost all the people said yes! I invited people to personalize them too, and quite a few people took me up on it. At one point I had a small group of people all standing around at the same time, coloring and chatting and laughing and appreciating what they were doing, and I felt so great, like this project really was having an effect on people in a positive way, just like I had hoped. 
I was having fun waving all the flags around, they were having fun playing and drawing, everybody was happy. If only I had brought another 40 flags, I could have easily given them all away...and next time I will! I asked a few of them if I could take pictures of them with their freak flags, and you can see the results over on the official Fly Your Freak Flag High website.
After all that freaky fun, we were ready to go back to SSV. On our way out, we saw the lamplighters in their beautiful white-with-fire-trim robes lined up in their solemn rows ready to bring fire from the eternal flame around to light various street lamps. We tried to find another art car to ride, and we did, but they only took us one block so we wound up walking most of the way back anyway. One highlight which I had to take a picture of was passing the circus camp (I forget their official name) and seeing a convocation of stilt people all walking around, and bellying up to the stilt bar (you could only reach it if you were a tall stilt-walker).
After dinner at SSV (which I haven’t really been mentioning in detail but I will say it was all vegetarian and mostly delicious and it was great to have someone else do the meal prep) I finally screwed up my resolve and went to go take a shower in our camp showers—not an easy thing to do at all. I had already filled my portable shower bag with water earlier that day, and it was still relatively warm from being left out in the heat. I had to figure out where to put my clothes (the dirty ones I took off and the clean ones I wanted to put on), what to do with the lantern, and how to hook up the bag to the pulley inside the shower stall (I mostly failed at this and wound up taking a squatting shower, which wasn’t easy). 
Then I had to figure out how to soap up my hair and body with the minimum amount of soap and rinse with the minimum amount of water from the shower bag hose, and then get my clean clothes on without getting immediately dirty again. 
Then I had to empty the bucket of gray water into an enormous gray water box outside the showers, and finally I was done. It was really a pain in the butt, but I must admit that after I had showered off nearly 4 days of playa dust, I felt a whole lot better.
After the shower, we changed up our outfits yet again--I went for a comfy sparkly purple-trimmed wizard robe over jeans and a warm sweatshirt while Isis wore her blue furry kitty outfit. Then we headed out to hunt down another art car for night-time playa cruising. We did manage to find another art car, this one a bizarre sort of seahorse-looking creature. 
It was full of drunk party people who all seemed to know each other, but we squeezed ourselves in a corner and mostly ignored everyone else while enjoying the tunes and cruising around the nighttime playa. One sour note (and there really weren’t many of these during the week, so I mention it here just for flavor) was that at one point when we stopped for a break, I stumbled over my wizard robe in climbing down from the car and fell and whacked the hell out of my thigh, ribs and shoulder/collarbone. I was able to shake it off though, and surprisingly enough, the next morning I could feel where the bruises were but it really didn’t hurt anywhere near as much as I’d feared it would. After getting on and off a couple of times and cruising around the playa, we eventually wound up at the Trojan Horse, along with practically every other art car and half of Black Rock City, because it was going to burn.
(A lot of the big art pieces are intended to be burned, but apparently there’s often one big one that gets its own big burn party, and the Trojan Horse was this year’s big one.)
The Trojan Horse was pretty much exactly what it sounds like—a giant wooden horse on wheels, big enough for an army to fit inside (but at this moment it was all packed with fireworks and explosives). We’d heard that earlier in the day it had been dragged by hundreds of people (whoever wanted to help, showed up) out from its camp to the open playa, and then supposedly it was going to be lit on fire by people firing flaming arrows at it from some distance away. We couldn’t see the arrows from where we were, all packed in with all the other people and art cars, but we did see the moment it caught on fire and the fireworks began to go off.
It was an enormous fire, bigger than anything else I’d seen so far (but of course not as big as the burning of the Man). Every time something big happened, like the crumbling of the horse’s limbs or a big bunch of fireworks, the crowd cheered like crazy and people celebrated. It was wild and fun and beautiful. I kept marveling at how I’d never seen so much fire in one place before, nor would I probably ever see that much in any other place without being in fear for my life. Fire is so satisfying on a primitive level. It moves with such mystery and grace and deadly power—it is mesmerizing even in small amounts, and let me tell you it was even more so in such vast quantity.
After the horse had crumbled to a relatively low bed of small flames and coals, our art car took off again, cruising around the playa. 
We got off at one point to go visit the Temple again, and spent some quiet time listening to the bells again and walking around, reading what people had written and just generally soaking up the sacred energy of the place. I found a ballpoint pen someone had left behind and used it to write “I WILL RELEASE FEAR—I WILL BE A SUPERNOVA!” I liked the idea that the giant fire of the Temple’s burning would burn away the bindings of fear and anxiety that were keeping me small so I could be big and bright.
We were prepared to walk back to our camp from the Temple (which would have been a pretty long walk, but doable) when we saw the same seahorse art car we’d been riding earlier parked on the outskirts of the Temple. We scampered over to it and there was still room, and even better, they said they were heading home for the night—and their home was right next to our camp. So we rode all the way back home in style, and after a good wipe-down, it was sleepy time for Supernova.
[To Be Continued in Part 6...]
[To see more or full sized pictures, click here for the whole set on Flickr]