Sunday started out nicely enough – then quickly deteriorated to a headlong death march as the wind picked up over 25 mph and brought half the playa with it in dust-cloud form.

Biomass was a tremendous help playing roof-monkey – we pulled in all the rigging and began loading up the bikes and lashing them down.

Hitgirl – not yet possessed of a proper playa work ethic at age 9, despite this being her fourth burn – supplied attitude and hijinks. Not much help to the rest of us.

Before too long we had the carport stripped to a skeleton, then broken down to bones and skin and packed away for travel.

What I didn’t take pictures of was the rest of the evening. We had planned to head out to the temple burn, but the dust was pretty much unrelenting, the crew was contrary, pissy and cold, and in the end we just hunkered in center camp, sharing a cooler-emptying smorgasbord with a family of Boston-to-CarsonCity transplants (and 17-time burners) and a fellow in a thoroughly gorgeous jester’s outfit who spoke in a twee fancy voice and devoured all our pickles.

Perfect end to an epic burn.

Exodus was 2 hours, and we were back in L.A. by mid-day Monday, the maiden voyage a ripping success.

Except for having murdered Hitgirl’s bike on Tuesday with the van. Fail.