written 9/8/08
before i tell of my burning man tales, let me say that today is the day. my nephew leaves for the army today, to go to meps and do some more medical stuff and then he's off to basic training. i told him i loved him this morning, i gave him money yesterday to get his stuff because his mom wasn't available. i told him i believed in him, that i knew he could succeed at anything he put his mind to. I hope he knows that and remembers it. i think he will do fine, but this is something i wish he didn't think he had to do. at the same time, i feel guilty because now i will get my office room back. whatever he doesn't take, it goes in his mom's storage or in the trash. i can't say I am sorry about that. i went grocery shopping yesterday and thought about how i didn't have to buy the stuff he likes. i've not sent off one of my kids to the military before. it's scary.
now, to burning man....it was an eventful year, and one that more than anything else, forced me to count my blessings and realize all the things that i need to be grateful for in life. i went out early, a full week before the event started this year, and my husband was to follow on thursday, because of a stupid army thing. follow he did, and i am so glad he decided to wait for our campmate to caravan out with her! he had thought about leaving the evening before, but decided to go ahead and wait for her. he thought he would be there by noon. i was eating lunch in the commissary when i got a radio call to come back to the office immediately. i told them i would be there as soon as i finished lunch and they basically said "no, now." this annoyed me because i couldn't think of what could be so important as to force me to scarf my lunch down.
when i got to the office, there was my campmate, saying these words about my husband having crashed the motor home. he blew the passenger side tire and cascaded down the embankment, totalling our playa home in the process. i think the only words that registered at this point were "but he's okay, he was out walking around and surveying the damage." now, i don't talk a lot about what i do out at burning man, but i am a ranger. we are community members who use skills we are given in training to help people in black rock city. it's like any cohesive group of people, they talk about being family, brothers and sisters, and like any large family, it's dysfunctional at times and has it's share of drama. never have i been more glad to be a part of this group of people than i was at the moment i found out my husband had crashed the motor home! within half an hour of having been told of what happened, we were on our way out of the city with six pickup trucks full of rangers (man power) and empty truck beds, all had just said "of course" and made it happen to retrieve all our belongings from the side of the road. i swear, driving those 37 miles to get to him was the longest 37 miles anyone has driven EVER. every rolling hill we went down, i kept thinking to myself "we have to be there soon, i can't stand this!" finally, we crested a hill and off to the far side, i saw the motor home. at first site, i thought "oh, it's not that bad..." but after walking around the front to see the door mostly torn off, the battery hanging by two wires and obviously cracked, and the miscellaneous wreckage all about, my conclusion was, "okay, maybe not".
the bottom line, however, is that aside from some deep bruising on his tummy from a close encounter with the steering wheel, my honey seems to be fine. have i mentioned how blessed i feel at this news? we rushed back to the event so that we could get him checked out. all of us were very worried about him, what with how adrenalin can mask injuries and such, and especially with his having a bad back. i think the emotional aspect of the accident, however, will take him a long time to get over. he beat himself up over wrecking the motor home pretty often during the event, even though he was quiet about it, but i kept reminding him how herculean an effort it must have been just to keep the damn thing vertical. all the time, going out to or coming back from the event, we hear of fatalities on that two lane road, of serious injury from people encountering the same thing, but flipping the motor home, changing their lives forever.
i will write more about the rest of the event later, if at all. it seems right and appropriate to put the accident in it's own entry. it cost us $720 to tow the motor home 37 miles because of the amount of time that it took to winch it up the embankment and get it towable. we had to tear the door the rest of the way off, and one of the gas tanks had been torn completely off, among other things. i am actually surprised it didn't take a flatbed to tow it away. i am sure that would have cost more. i don't remember off hand if i just got liability insurance on the thing or if we had rv insurance on it. i owe money to my campmates now because they helped us out with cash and credit to pay for that after we'd already tapped out to get to the playa.
i will say, though, that we didn't let it ruin our event. we hadn't planned on tent camping, but that's what we did. it was dusty, and gross sometimes, and we added a daily ritual of shaking out our bed things of the dust. it took a long time to organize everything, i am still not sure that's done =) hubby says he doesn't want to own another motor home. we didn't realize how much shit we had stored in there until we had to take it all out and try to figure out where to put it when you had another vehicle and then it's just gone.
we still had a great time, and a great year. i feel like i accomplished a lot this year, got to experience some new things, and made a difference to the rangers. i am not sure i can ever pay them back for what they did for me this year. and they did it just to be nice, because i am one of them. truly warms the cockles of my cold, dead, heart =)
enough gushing for now! i am back, and have a bunch of reading to do to catch up!
No comments:
Post a Comment