the journey begins

Our original plan had been to leave by 11am on the 25th, drive to Portland and pick up the rest of our camp, then drive to Dunsmuir (right outside of Shasta, CA). We would crash for the night and then drive out to Pyramid Lake in Nevada, about an hour and a half outside of Reno. After camping there for the night, we would drive into Black Rock City and begin our adventure. Sounds good right? Well...there's a reason why an idiom exists about best laid plans. That first day, after getting all of our gear together and packing up the vehicles, we ended up leaving Seattle at about 4pm. Our caravan consisted of 1 SUV/2 passengers, 1 mini-van pulling a trailer/2 passengers, 1 car/2 passengers, 1 RV/4 passengers. It was quite the struggle getting down to Portland. The van and trailer blew a tire before making it out of city limits, the RV kept breaking down, and we were stuck in rush-hour traffic. We didn't make it to Portland until 10 pm, where we hooked up with the rest of our caravan 1 SUV pulling a trailer/3 passengers and 1 VW/1 passenger. We took a vote and decided to stay in Portland for the night. 12 of us camped out in one of the apartments of our Portland crew. Then the next day we woke up and went to a battery shop to check out the RV. It turned out that Starla, as she was christened, needed a new alternator. So while we waited for that to get done, we all went off and ran some errands, mine involved coffee and a jaunt to the Goodwill to get more playa-worthy clothes, including the most beautifully horrendous velveteen and lace jacket. By 1pm we were ready to mount up and head to Shasta-where we had originally intended to be the night before. We drove and drove and finally got there, although my ride buddy and I decided to stop pretty early on to get lunch and then go to Old Navy. We made it to Dunsmuir and then couldn't find the house we were supposed to find because mapquest gave us the most craptastic directions with streets that didn't even exist. We FINALLY found the house and lo-n-behold, it was a teeny tiny studio apartment that thirteen of us end up sleeping in. We broke out all of the aerobeds we had among us and had an unavoidable massive pre-funk cuddle party. Sunday arrived and we headed to Reno. I ended up in a strange game of musical car chairs and got shuttled from one car to another and ended up staying in Dunsmuir while the RV got worked on again, apparently it hadn't been the alternator at all. We rode out and drove for a while, passing by many In N Out Burgers that I didn't get to stop out and lamented via text message that I was very sad to be passing them by since I was riding with a bunch of vegetarian hippies. We got to Reno at about 9pm, where the rest of our camp had been toiling away getting our supplies for the next week. We had originally decided to go to Pyramid Lake, but all of us playa-virgins were getting antsy and we wanted to head straight for Black Rock City. We decided to drive most of the way there and take a vote when we got to the split in the road between the Lake and the playa. Needless to say, when we got there, we voted for the playa. There were a few more small setbacks along the way but we made it to Black Rock City and drove onto the playa just as the sun started rising.