After driving all night from Los Angeles with the kids sacked out in back, there we arrived at the gates to Black Rock City around 9:30 a.m. Monday – and immediately hit traffic.

It took a good three hours to wade through it. After a quick greeting at the gate (and the customary warnings about driving under 5mph and not at all during whiteouts) we plunked ourselves down in Kidsville at 5:30 and Florence and set to work pitching camp …

This happy photo beneath our shelter took place after a stiff 25-knot dust vortex, mind followed by a 20-degree drop in temperature, and a sudden scramble thanks to some able-bodied virgins who helped us pitch our reliable Costco carport.

There then ensued much stomping about in the sticky instant playa mud …

… which tends to ball up beneath your feet, turning sneakers into roly-poly moon-shoes and making it hazardous to walk.

This was followed by an utterly stunning double rainbow …

… and our first sudden xylophonists.

We finished the business of unloading the roof …

… for which your roof-monkey really needs to put on his scariest dust mask …

… and then began setting up XyloVan by lowering Keyboards 2 and 3 (as above in the rainbow picture).

After a dinner of fried cajun catfish (thanks to Trader Joe’s) and a Hallmark sunset …

we biked off onto the open playa with what little wakefulness was left. We traveled out to The Man to make our customary greeting (which usually goes something like, “Hey, there he is. Yep. Cool, green neon! He’s awful tall this year. That platform will go up like a bomb. Cool. …”

… and proceeded to enjoy as much art as we could manage before crashing gratefully in our tents for an extremely cold (read: 40 Fahrenheit) night of sleep.

Much work left to be done.