Cell service here is about as shaky as my van at 75, so I can only afford a brief travelogue to bridge to next week whence comes a full download on the spectacle witnessed herein.
After Central City, we — The Royal “we”, me and Mike — hit a pitstop in Salt Lake where I saw two high school friends, one of whom I lived with summer of ’91 when we got tattoos (before they became passé) and the other I hadn’t seen since we walked the stage in 1989. Their mamas didn’t let ‘em grow up to be cowboys, instead they became doctors-and-architects-’n-such. Amid the downfall, I lost the number to one but the other I managed to get on Instagram, a channel which I use to pump up subscriptions.
By this and that magic we three pulled together a heartwarming reunion in the good pediatrician’s basement. Therein he has built a full-blown English pub, flown in piece by piece from a shuttered one in UK, and reassembled perfectly in his cellar. An interesting reflection of our choices, I don’t have a pub in my basement, I live in a car, but I once lived in London. Amazing to see both, and, refreshingly, none had regrets as to where they landed some 35 years later. The ambitious have become successful and “we“ - The Royal “we” - the once successful, have become less ambitious and more adventurous. Awesome.
Northeast Nevada, just beyond Wendover, a state line casino town serving the sin-starved Utah citizenry a place to wild out, is the most rural place in America outside South Dakota. One can drive 90 minutes on “the loneliest highway in America,” US Route 50, without seeing a car. Now unemployed, and devoid obligations other than writing this and loving Mike, my free time is more abundant, but, not chomping at the bit for seven days of Burning Man, we had time to kill and hooked a left at a truck stop 150 miles short of Elko upon seeing a sign for Great Basin National Park. Two hours later, we were in the land time forgot.
McGill is the real Lonesome Dove, not Montana. No Los Angelenos here in pristine $95,000 ranch trucks. And, please, if you do crave witnessing such tomfoolery as San Francisco orthodontists dressed up for Montana as though cosplaying Judge Roy Bean, follow Hipsters of Bozeman.
Not a Chick-fil-A or Taco Bell within 200 miles, these little mining towns – McGill, Ely and White Pine – each have more saloons than church mice, a general store, a community park and Post Offices only open half days. I sent post cards from McGill to my friends with jobs telling them to get a life. A sign of visitor traffic, Great Basin National Park does not charge an entry fee; the only expense is the most scenic drive in America.
We stayed at the cheapest campsite yet, also the nicest, hosted by a delightfully enthusiastic outsider, Rudy Herndon, who dropped his life as a journalist and moved to the outback to launch a shoegaze music festival – Schellraiser – on the property where I stayed.
I plan to attend next year to try to wedge myself into journalism by way of my travels through the outback. In the middle of nowhere, his business is called “In the Middle of Everywhere.”
After guiltily dropping Mike at a rural doggie day care, I made my way to Burning Man.
Arriving to a one-hour entry queue Thursday morning, I missed the dust storm, the rainstorm, the mud storm, and the 21 hour wait suffered by early arrivals storming the gate. Three days of Burning Man is all I could take, anyway. I miss Mike.
Of all the memorials posted at the temple commemorating lost revelers, lost family, lost pets and lost souls - which they, of course, also, burn - the only one that made me cry was for Zeus, the dog.
ZEUS, I MISS YOU EVERYDAY
Then, I saw my man from Goldman, the legend, here among the hoard, traveling with the famous and fabulous.
At last, I found my people among the pill-poppers dancing to DJs trancing.
Tonight 36,600 board feet of wood, equivalent of two single family homes, will be set ablaze to the delight of the masses obsessed with sustainability and climate change. Then I get my dog back.
I have 19 months today, which is to say, I survived Burning Man without a hiccup. In fact, if anything, it has reinforced my sobriety. One final irony: I am the only one locking my bike, because I have the nicest one, and the only one not locking my RV, because I have the shittiest one.
