Sarah’s been singing, “I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bicycle. Bii-cycle! Bii-cycle!” all afternoon while we’ve been setting up camp. Now, I can’t get it out of my head now and I too would very much like to go out and see what’s out there. Finally, we get to go. ******************** This place…this thing…it’s freaking amazing. The expanse of it all. The creativity of the people with their camps and art cars, their costumes. I couldn’t explain Burning Man before I got here and now that I’m here, I can explain it even less. Then there’s the night time. Oh my god. It’s even more…

I can’t believe I’m here. I can’t believe I’m at Burning Man. Me. Little Amy Chan. The one who I feel is labeled as sweet and innocent by many – which often drives me nuts. Obviously, that’s by those who don’t know me very well or haven’t yet met Shamy. Granted, for all intents and purposes…I guess I do portray that side to many so I can’t really blame them when it feels like they treat me with kid gloves. Anyway…I’m here and the amazement is creeping in from all angles. I’m slowly spinning around, looking at the scenery around me. All I see is this dusty plain of nothingness;…

Upon entering BRC, you must show your tickets, prove you have enough water to last you the week, meet a Greeter and be subjected to some hazing. Depending on which Greeter you get will dictate the severity of the hazing. Our guy was very tame. We must have shown faces of calm because he guessed we were veteran burners. He really only picked on Tim, the only male in our car. A couple of push ups and a bit of rolling on the playa. Oh yes, he did smack some ass (Heather’s) to welcome her in with a playa handprint on her posterior. Then we were allowed to gong a…

I can’t let it go. I have to find out more. How in the heck do residents of Gerlach support themselves? Granted, there are only 499 of them. Maybe they’re up to 540 now with the present average population growth rate of 1.1% a year. But what do they do all year long? Does the work related to the 8-day BM festival actually sustain them? What else are they doing? Back to the trusty Wikipedia, which tells me that gypsum mining, tourism from BRC and hunting are the economies that support this settlement. Tourism…got it; hunting…explains the taxidermists; but gypsum mining…what’s that? The contributors to Wikipedia are going to town…

We’d been in the car since 1:00am, starting our journey when it was dark and cold. It was now about 11 o’clock or noon and the sun we’d get to know better was introducing itself and making itself well known. We got to the little town of Gerlach off Hwy 447, the last stop before Black Rock City which is a mere 12 miles away. Calling it a town might be a stretch. Wikipedia says the combined population of the Gerlach-Empire area was 499 people in the 2000 census. There are more active MiPLers than that. There was one main road that had a gas station with the last flushing…