This Song Has No Title

Our khussamobiles were the most successful project we did this year, hands down. They looked fantastic, day or night. They were much loved and brought us a lot of positive interaction with everyone on the playa, including the DMV (Department of Mutant Vehicles), who are notorious for being strict about their licensing criteria.

As soon as we were done with our dome construction, Luke and George bolted the frames onto the go-karts, and we began the process of whip-stitching the covers to the frames. I had sewn the pieces together (with massive help with the basting from many people), so Vanessa and Mickey did the stitching. We woke up Tuesday morning and finished a few seams and drove them to the DMV as a group.

We received high praise from the licensing crew, and even got a few cold beers while we were out there waiting to be inspected. Since the karts were so basic, they only required a cursory glance before they were licensed, and they even gave us the same license number, appending ‘L’ and ‘R’ to distinguish right from left.

We drove them all around, and even played a new game “Sholo!” (Polo with shoes instead of ponies!) A huge hit, indeed.

The Khussamobile, glowing at nght.

Khussamobile parked.

A cool snack before we head out.

A passenger seat point of view.

A long time ago, an old girlfriend gave Luke a gold ring. Not as long ago, he started bringing that ring to Burning Man, intending to place it somewhere on the Man structure, so that it could be consumed in the flames during the Burn. He brought it every year he went, but for one reason or another, it never made it to the Man.

One sunny day during this year’s festival, we took our bikes and headed out to the Man to hang out with him, and Luke brought the ring. He took it out of his pocket and looked at it for a while, looked around for a good place to put it, but in the end, he said that he wasn’t sure it deserved to be wasted, and that he felt there was another life for it somewhere.

I told him to pay attention to what he felt, and go with it.

We went back to camp, and he took out his dremel tool and started cutting. He cut the ring in half the long way, so he had two thin rings made from the one thick one. When he had buffed out the rough edges, he said that he hoped the chance would come along where he would see two people who were meant to have the rings for themselves. He asked me to help him find the right people to give them to.

On Friday night we were out on the open playa, enjoying art cars and fireworks shows, and not thinking about rings much at all. We saw the Dragon Egg fire show, shared drinks with the people at the Cheshire Cat art car. (I was in my Alice costume, so that was fun.)

We finally headed through the dark, wide-open spaces toward camp, ready for bed. As we walked along, I saw two women in a long embrace in the distance, and even in the low glow of the surrounding festivities, I saw that both were wearing white wedding dresses. I caught up with Luke and pointed them out. He wondered aloud whether they had actually gotten married, or if they were just wearing wedding dresses and on a lot of drugs. Either just as likely at Burning Man, so I told him that if he wanted to know, he’d have to ask! But I had a good feeling about it.

So our group made a beeline to them, and Luke asked if they had just been married. The women broke their embrace and smiled, and one said, “Yes, we’ve known each other for 26 years! We have been friends since we were 10, and have been through everything (including divorcing our ex-husbands) together, and we are so in love. We finally got married today!” They had rings on, but in the dark I could only see that they were giant toy-sized trinkets used as tokens for the day.

Luke told the story of the rings and offered them to the happy couple. Their eyes lit up like the stars above us, and they were touched and thrilled to accept them from him. They told us to keep each other close and take good care of each other, and that now their wedding felt complete.

We hugged them tight and made our way back to camp for a good night’s sleep.