In 2004 I got a free bike off of craigslist and took it to Burning Man in Nevada. Wow what an experience. Lots and lots of fun. If you dont know what it is then check out the website
www.burningman.com and look at the gallery. Basically, its an art festival that takes place on the Nevada salt flats for 1 week where there is a carfree city built. 40,000 plus people and no one is allowed to drive to get around the HUGE city! It was great, I loved the sociability of riding my bike to and from places and just meeting tons of people along the way, why cant "real" life be like this? For a long time I didnt understand exactly what it was that made the people at Burning Man so friendly, such a great place to spend a week, despite the horrible climate! I threw away the bike right after that first burn because it was trashed and covered in Playa dust. Lol what an idiot right?
in 2007 I began research for an honors thesis in sociocultural anthropology and decided to do the project on Burning Man. Back to craigslist for a new free bike and.... back to the desert. I had been haunting this thread for a few weeks just before the event and suddenly I knew why I and everyone else were so social and outgoing in the desert. NO CAGES! This is not the topic of the thesis just an interesting observation. When I got back I invested in what I thought was a "real" bike and all the other things I thought I "needed." Spent way too much money....
At first I was just interested in riding the bike more but it soon consumed me. My friends noticed that all I did was talk about the benefits of bike riding for like 6 months. Im kinda OCD when I get a new idea into my head. After about a year, when I went to renew my car registration I realized that I had put only 5k on my car. The previous year I had done well over 27k! That was it for me. Car is gone for good!
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