CLEVELAND — After three months of rain fell in just hours Friday, turning the Nevada desert into a muddy mess, the mass exodus continued Tuesday as thousands of people who attended the Burning Man Festival looked to make their way home.
"I would say probably 3/4s of the people have left," said Bryan Freeman of Berea, who was still at the festival Tuesday. He said two days after the last rain on Sunday, parts were still a mess.
But Bryan Freeman of Berea is clearly not yet one of them. He posted these videos to his TikTok of the sloppy conditions he and other Burning Man Festival goers have had to deal with. Even two days after the last rain, he says it's still a mess.
"There was no riding bikes til basically this morning, maybe last night, and that's the main way you get around is on bikes here."
Freeman enjoyed several days of nice weather at the festival before he said things turned midday Friday.
“All of a sudden, it just started getting really cold. I started making my way back to camp, I actually made a stop just to warm up for a second. I got back to camp around 3 p.m. and then it just rained all day Friday. It was literally up until the middle of the night Friday that it rained.
“There's no rain out here, and you talk about Cleveland being prepared for snow — the desert isn't prepared for rain, and especially this ground out here. It's like a clay, a very thick clay. When it gets wet and it sticks to your shoes. Every step is like you're in quicksand.”
Freeman is director of operations at Cleveland's Rock and Roll City Studios. He and the company's owner, Mark Soberay, are Burning Man veterans and were lifesavers for many this year, because one of the principles of Burning Man is gifting. So last year they brought little things to give away, "but this year we're like we're going to go big time, and we brought in this StarLink internet, and we offer it to everybody around us."
Little did they know how big of a gift satellite internet would be, giving those festival goers a chance to reach loved ones back home and let them know, yes it's a mess, but they are OK.
"We were one of the few private camps with WiFi," he said. "We almost became a meeting spot where people are calling home because, at that point, everyone at home was getting all of this misinformation about ebola, and we heard something about an active shooter."
"We could set up our little camp as like this little community spot where people came in and reached out to the people back home, and it was great because then all of a sudden, like the real bonding started, you started meeting people from all over the world, and you know, just helping them, and that's tremendous."
Much like what we'd see happen in Northeast Ohio during a winter storm — neighbor helping neighbor.
"That's a great analogy, and it's the first time somebody's mentioned it, but yeah it's the exact same thing. You see somebody struggling out front, you go help; that's what we do, and that's what this place is about."
That's why he says he'll be back.
“Someone asked me, would I ask for a refund, and my very honest answer is I got my money's worth in the first day. There's nothing else like this in the world. So just Sunday and Monday alone, the price of the ticket was easily recuperated, and everything else was just bonus time.”
His hope for now is this line dies down by Tuesday night so he can drive out to L.A. with hopefully a flight back to Cleveland not long after.
"And then my fantasy is to get home in time for the Browns game on Sunday." But does he have tickets? "Oh no, no, no," he said. "I am going to watch it from the comfort of my house. You know, probably take about five showers that day," he said with a laugh.
