The recommendation was "no bikes near the man". With 50.000 people around they were bound to cause problems. I didn't take my bike with me, so it was something of a hike to get there. I went with a bunch of my favorite people from Green Tortoise Camp. We found good spots and waited for the burn to begin. The fire art parade that preceded the burn was just a little too far off to really enjoy, but I'd stick up the camera and take a picture every now and then to see what I was missing. I guess I was using the camera as a periscope.

  

        

        

    

Just before the fireworks started this woman put these transdimensional glasses over my goggles. The effect was to add rainbow trails to every flash. I'm not sure what happened to those glasses, but they were great at the time.

     

     

     

   

   

   

   

     

Once the burning started going in earnest there weren't any more fireworks. The fire burned for a while. Maybe one of his arms fell off or something like that. Then the whole pile just fell instantly. It looked more like a controlled demolition than the fall of the twin towers, if that's possible. The crowd surged forward. Soon after that there were streams of people going the other way smelling strongly of ash. I moved forward until I could feel strong heat and then I backed off.

I wandered around people watching for a while. I ended up in this bar comparing pictures with a blue haired woman. Her angle on the burn was a bit different, but she had stopped taking pictures at about the same time I did. Then they closed the bar, leaving me in my chair with half a beer in the dark. I sat for a bit longer, finished the beer and decided it was time to go to bed.