Adventure Reading- Books and Burning Man

I'm pretty well known for taking a book everywhere I go. My number one requirement for a purse is that it is large enough to carry a hardback book- you never know when I'm going to pull one out (that's what she said). I have been known to read in the middle of a party, in the line at the grocery store... Just about everywhere.

Sometimes, this does not always have a happy ending for the book. When I went on my honeymoon to Burning Man in 2007, I took a copy of The Davinci Code by Dan Brown. I don't have any pictures of me reading the book, but here is what happened to it.

So Burning Man is a festival in the middle of the Black Rock Desert. They give out multiple pamphlets that tell Burners not to go off-roading on the way to Black Rock. 1) People are traveling through Indian reservations, and they do not like people trespassing 2) there is no cell phone service 3) the sand will eat things. But I was young and stupid, and there was a beautiful lake, so I ignored all of this advice and did it anyway. The road that we were traveling abruptly dropped into what was essentially quicksand, and our little Yaris rental car was trapped in sand half way up the wheel.

We spent hours trying to get the car out. We were out of view of the highway, there was no cell service, and we had no emergency gear. My husband thought that sticking the book under the wheel might help get the car out of the sand.... So I sacrificed The Davinci Code in the name of getting out of Satan's Wasteland. It did not fair well for the book.

You can see the large piece of wood we hauled from the lake to put under the tires that actually ended up getting us out. Also there are little bitty nettles in the sand, so it was NOT a good idea to go barefoot. Definitely one of the most inhospitable places we've been to.

Eventually we got to Burning Man- and suddenly it was all worth it.

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