We arrived at Lake Mead the next day, we ate breakfast with the intention of meeting up with an instructor who would take us wake boarding for the day, so obviously I was quite stoked about this day my first opportunity to get back in the water after being inland for such a long time. Unfortunately the guy Mitch couldn’t provide prove of any qualifications, so after hours of ringing back and forth to London and Phil having a chat with me about whether we would let it would happen in the UK if someone could potentially be unqualified. Finally coming to the decision that this activity would not be covered under the insurance so we would give it a miss. In the mean time though Bop Mitch and I were taking it out on the scooters. 180’s soon became 360’s and the pace we were attempting these tricks picked up until my ankle collapsed underneath me on a landing. Fortunately this was covered by the insurance and Sarah began making plans to get me to a hospital. In the mean time I was stuck on the bus with my foot in an icebox. We got to know Mitch quite well that day and he expressed his interest in the burning man so as this was our next stop we invited him along. He packed in his job for the rest of the season a decided to go straight home after the festival. As we set off, Bills teddies soon went everywhere when he realised there was an extra person on the bus and again this wasn’t covered by the insurance. It was a long hall over to the Nevada desert. We drove for 16 hours and arrived at a place 2 hrs away from the burn in Black Rock City.
We spent most of the day in Wal Mart stocking up for the next few days in the desert. It had already been decided what we were buying as the girls had made their paranoia list. I don’t think we’ll fit back on the bus though with the fifty litres of water we bought and sleeping bags, tents, food, sun cream even sunglasses for everyone. I think the missed the fact that we had a huge air-conditioned bus to live on. But we weren’t bothered it gave us a good chance to look at guns and golf clubs and boys stuff which didn’t go down to well as the girls were storming around buying the so called essentials. I had a good excuse though, everyone had got bored of piggy backing me around so I had blagged a granny cart to go round the supermarket so I couldn’t keep up. The next morning I woke to find my ankle wasn’t in pain in pain but now half of my foot had now turned purple so we collectively decided we should go to the hospital. After Joel and Bop had had their fun pushing me around the hospital in a wheel chair and I had filled in my insurance details I saw a doctor, had an ex-ray and was told it could be a fracture or could even be broken so to the doctors amusement as I told him I did it on a kiddies scooter he put a splint on half my leg and gave me a set of crutches. I would only be on them for them for the next five days at least I’d only gone and spoilt my hole burning man experience…on a scooter. We arrived at burning man around 8 o’clock. On the way in we were boarded by dressed up people who made everyone get off place their hands on the bus, drop their trousers and have stickers slapped on their arses. Pretty pointless I know that’s why I told them I wasn’t allowed to move with my poorly leg and everything. We found our pitch and although we were all tired after seeing a glimpse of what was going on we had to go explore. It was a strange situation, everyone would just come up and start talking to you like you’d known them for years and I was getting the sympathy vote with my leg in cast. I could see that my broken ankle might not be so bad after all. We started our bartering skills and managed to get everyone a drink. We didn’t know what it was but it had alcohol in it so we didn’t care much. We walked a little further then turned in, we had plenty of time to explore the three-mile wide camp over the next few days. The next day the girls went out and the boys decided to do the manly thing and set up the tents back at the camp then we got straight into our stash of vodka and headed out to see the beaver eating competition we had heard about earlier that day. I don’t think I need to explain what the competition entailed. As we wouldn’t leave the beaver eating competition straight away Phil sent Richard in to fetch us cos they weren’t allowed to film in the event and they were all getting quite pissed off. Well Phil started to kick off and wound me up almost to the point of hitting him. To cut along story short everyone walked off in our separate ways and there would be no filming for the rest of the night, as there wasn’t one person not affected by the tension. I walked around with Bex and freakishly bumped into Paul and Rory, had a song with a random girl and then later Boppa and Mitch so we went to the centre camp where there was a large tent or marquee that had sofas and coffee, so we chilled out for the evening and listened to the music whilst looking at bare boobies. I was still finding it difficult to walk with those crap American crutches that dig into your armpits and cut off the blood running to the arms. So I didn’t go very far during the day, the lads went off though; I think they felt sorry for me so without me knowing went on a mission to find me some wheels. They returned with a wheel chair, shopping trolley hybrid. Not speedy but defiantly better than attempting to walk everywhere. Phil had come on the bus and apologised for the night before but it was obvious with the way he tried to make a joke about it that he was only doing it cos they had decided that it would be the best way to dance for them. We started the evening the same as the night before so we could use the footage and wore the same clothes as well. Tonight we would trek to the other side of the Playa to see Paul Oakenfold so we were all pretty fired up about that and the mood was lifted. When we finally got over there it was cold, wet and Oakenfold didn’t fancy coming out to speak to us. But still we had a little jig and messed around there for a bit and made the hour long walk back to our side of the camp. The desert had turned into a swamp and it was hard to push but Phil seemed to volunteer quite quickly, which was surprising after the night previous. Maybe he felt a little guilty. I had it made everyone else was pissed and couldn’t be arsed to walk back in the rain and I just lay back in my shopping trolley and enjoyed the ride.
It was the art project day, the girls pissed off early to do the poster body painting thing while we made out we had stuff to do and we would catch up with them later…as if…there was really no reason to actually do it. We were in. the organisers would hardly come and find us wondering why we weren’t doing arty stuff. We did have a little think about doing something art, we got our wood out we had nicked from Oklahoma but the best thing we could think of was getting random’s, blind folding them and getting them to walk our plank. Mind you with all the drugs flying around I think we proved more popular than what the girls were up to. “The Plank” from Oklahoma. We rocked a few people’s world that morning. After two people had walked the plank complete with commentary we figured we had filled our quota of art and decided to go for a walk to find the place was buzzing, most people were naked which was good either that or painted, which was good. After we got bored of looking at peoples inventions that they must have spent all year creating and climbing up the massive man on hundreds of hay bales that was to be burnt that night, we thought we better show our faces in centre camp and see how the body painting was going on, and it seemed to going well so we left to get shit faced in time for the burning of the man. The rest arrived shortly and we headed over to the centre of the Playa and experienced the biggest bonfire I have ever seen, we slowly walked back and managed to lose Rebecca, although with the use of technology realised that she was wearing a radio mic, after taking it in turns listening to the noise where she was and matching it with what we could hear we walked straight to her and found her blubbering away. She soon revealed what she had earned painting some women. Chocolates with essence of mushrooms. She shared them around and they soon began to take effect. I spent the rest of the evening not really caring what the crew were up to, in a sort of happy stoned mood, laughing at anything and everything. Especially the extent which they had affected Bex. We all seemed to be drawn to lights and music and everyone else soon got tired and flaked on us so Mitch and I decided to do a lap of the inner circle of the camp while the mushrooms wore off. Neither of us wanted to go to bed thinking we may have missed something that night. We walked until around 4:30 and went to bed around 5:00.
We were leaving today so after being woken up by all the moaning about how messy the bus was I got up around 10:00 and spent an hour pulling all the acrylic paint out of my hair, after that I took down the tent and cleared up outside while the girls continued to clean the inside of the bus. We said our goodbyes to Mitch for the sake of the cameras then he walked around the block and came back help us pack up. But we had got the filming out of the way. We made our way to Fallon where Bills brother lives to spend the night. Watched a video and slept ready for the day journey to Vegas tomorrow. We got up pretty early. After a quick shower and a Mac Donald’s and Bill drove us to Wal Mart where me and Boppa bought our paintball guns and let me tell you, plenty of accessories for just $160, a bargain you’ll agree. We made a quick stop for Joel and Boppa to clean the bus to earn a few extra pennies of Bill. I had an argument with Sheryl, I couldn’t tell you what about though, I really wasn’t listening. Then, on the road.
More 80 Raves
“Around the world in 80 Raves” Chapter One – The proposal
“Around the world in 80 Raves” Chapter Two – Ready for the off!
“Around the world in 80 Raves” Chapter Three – Miami
“Around the world in 80 Raves” Chapter Four – Daytona Beach
“Around the world in 80 Raves” Chapter Five – Myrtle Beach
“Around the world in 80 Raves” Chapter Six – Atlanta
“Around the world in 80 Raves” Chapter Seven – Woodstock
“Around the world in 80 Raves” Chapter Nine – Niagra
“Around the world in 80 Raves” Chapter Ten – Detroit
“Around the world in 80 Raves” Chapter Eleven – Sandusky
“Around the World in 80 Raves” – Chapter Twelve – Rose Lawn, Wisconsin
“Around the World in 80 Raves” – Chapter Thirteen – Chicago
“Around the World in 80 Raves” – Chapter Fourteen – Nashville
“Around the World in 80 Raves” – Chapter Fifteen – Memphis
“Around the World in 80 Raves” – Chapter Sixteen – Oklahoma
“Around the World in 80 Raves” – Chapter Seventeen – Albuquerque
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