So I have 321 photos of Burning Man 2009, which is kind of shocking because I think I took the same amount of photos during the two hours I was at Gay Pride this year. However, Burning Man poses some unique challenges to any photographer, much less a photographer with an old Canon A610 who wants to enjoy her Burning Man. Taking photos at night is difficult, so is taking photos during a dust/wind storm, and who wants to stop every 2 seconds while on a bike to take photos, hmmm?

With that in mind, I am going to post many photos, but I decided this morning to post them chronologically and “sprinkle” them throughout the week, so you’ll have to WAIT and WAIT for the erm, “good” ones.

Here we go!

First photo of the actual desert. On Sunday we drove for 12 hours and stopped in a little town very close to Burning Man to spend the night in a hotel, but evidently everyone else had that idea too, because all the hotels were booked. We ended up paying 5 bucks to set up a tent at a trailer park. Good times. Nice thing was, we got some dust-free sleep before making our final short trek to the playa.

We were all pretty damn excited. I took photos of each of us in the car, “Before BM” and “After BM” to compare and contrast levels of filthiness/excitement. Why Corinne is covering her tits here, I have no idea.

The Boy did ALL the driving on this trip, ALL OF IT. Damn, I love him.

My tongue is orange here, maybe from orange Tic Tacs? Who knows, but I didn’t lose any weight on this trip, that’s for sure. I had three Kosher hot dogs this week, and they were fabulous. Fucking fabulous. Why did I stop eating meat again?

First sign of arrival! Then we spent an hour or so driving in the looooong line up to the greeting station, where the Boy got to ring the “First Timers” bell. Unfortunately, he did it so quickly that I didn’t even have time to pull out my camera, much less take a photo.

This was a “misting” camp right next to us, with a platform you could stand on and have your entire body misted with water. Fabulous on the really hot days.

Our camp shade structure. We performed the “spa treatments” under this each morning, from 9 to 11 a.m. Amazing how many people showed up that early in the morning! My job was to paint finger nails and toe nails–on both sexes, which was fun. The Boy had his finger nails painted with blue glitter.

The big metal “chicken” in the center of our plaza was a great landmark for locating our camp each day. You always want to have landmarks to find your camp–of course, those change at night, but someone was smart enough to shine a massive green laser down our street at night. I never had any trouble finding my way back home.

Can you make out the giant spider? There were two huge spider art cars at BM this year (that I saw, anyway–could have been more). The legs all “walked” independently. Fantastic.

The first day was spent setting up our tents and shade structure–at night Massive Dust/White-out Storm Number 1 hit–Corinne and I slept in our tents and didn’t even go out that night. The Boy went out with a few of our camp mates–brave man.

Now, dear blog reader, you’ll have to stay tuned for the rest! Today I am picking the rogs up from Doggie Jail and damn I am excited to see their furry faces. I’m also going to start moving shit over to the New House. Our camp mates with the trailer were nice enough to let us borrow it this month while we move into the New House–we might not even need to rent a U-haul.

This year’s “Decompression” has been about a million times easier than previous years–I don’t know if it’s because I am happier, or because I don’t drink anymore, or what–but the transition back to “real life” has been painless. And that is a very very good thing.