Art Tour on 1st Day

After I bought the RV, I emailed my 40 year old daughter telling her I was going to BM. She called me as soon as she had googled this "Burning Man Thing". "Mom! EVERYone there is naked!" she told me. I tried to assure her they were not, but that is what a lot of people like to take photos of. Also, lots of Burners are older than me, or even me, but somehow the young & pretty turn up in more than their shareof photos. In my heart, I worried that she was right and did I really belong in Black Rock City? After months of designing and making rag-dress costumes out of old tee shirts, I worried about strap lines. Lunches on our deck now involved baring my shoulders and legs to the sun. I made sure to sign up for the guided tour of the largest art projects out on the playa. Over 100 of us piled into the two decorated buses. The tour lasted three hours and just gave us an idea of the vastness of this city of 50,000 that rises our of the Black Rock dust and disappears a week later. I carried water to drink, a spritzer to cool off, a camera, a purse with a mask & goggles, and finally, a quart of my homemade pickles. Halfway through the tour I opened the pickles and offered them to the other old ladies sitting downstairs. "No, thank you!" they all said as if I was a crazy woman. I tottered up the ladder with my open pickes. Most of the people upstairs were standing in the open air or sitting on the floor. "Jalepeno Garlic Pickles?" I shouted. Hands waved in the air...topless youngsters of both sexes crowded me. When I handed out the last wedge, those left unpickled begged for the pickled garlic & jalepeno left in the jar. A young man in a thong & goggles asked if I wanted my photo. I gave him the camera slung over my shoulder and posed witht he empty jar and I knew this week was going to be just fine.