Tues, Aug 30

After work, I picked up the rental car around 6:30pm at Fox Rent a Car at SFO. The rental guys asked me if I was gonna use the car for burning man. I obviously said no. He clearly didn’t believe me, because he then added “well, if you are going to burning man, there is this declaration I have to read you, which says you have to pay $500 if there is sand in the car”. I still stuck to my original story, and off I went (I was in a bit of a hurry to leave since I needed to pick up my parking transponder at 7pm in the city. Also, I had 5% of battery life, so I had to be super conservative about my cell phone usage).

I ended up getting home around 7:50pm, where Sam was still packing and I had a few minor things to pack. Loading the car took around an hour, mainly because of the bikes (sam’s bike wasn’t mounting properly, so we had to compensate).

We left San Francisco around 11pm and headed for Reno. During our trip, I was texting Jordan, who kept emphasizing the fact to not consent to a search if we get pulled over. He also told me he got pulled over last year because their license plate was being obstructed by their bikes (he also mentioned if they may threaten about having dogs sniffing if you don’t consent – which he said was a lie). Obviously our license plate was obstructed. We didn’t worry about it at the time, but we definitely took a mental note.

Nothing else interesting really happened along the way. We saw a sign that said “Secret Town Road”, but that’s about it.

  
We arrived at Reno around 3am. We stayed at the Silverlight something hotel. It’s the first time I’ve actually been to downtown Reno. It definitely looks like a crappier version of Vegas. They even had circus circus.