 Let's begin this morning with the chaotic scene in the remote Black Rock Desert of Nevada. The rain turned the annual desert retreat into a thick, pasty mud pit. Meanwhile, they're moving cell phone trailers into the area and providing Wi-Fi so people can communicate. Hello, my friends. It is Tuesday, September 5th, and I got back from Burning Man last night, and I woke up today thinking, you know what, Ryan, you should make a video about what really happened out there, or at least what really happened in my experience with my community and my friends. You know, once I got cell phone reception yesterday, I started reading all the crazy articles and what the news media was saying about what was going on out there, and they're pretty bonkers, pretty weird. I mean, Burning Man is weird, no doubt. Any year of Burning Man is weird, but it was not as weird as they were saying. There was definitely no cannibalism or disease outbreaks. So this was my eighth time going to Burning Man, and I keep going back every year because I truly love it. I love it with all of my heart. I love the art. I love the passion that all the artists put into their art and their sculptures. I love the desert out there. I love the landscape. I love the sunrises and sunsets and the stars at night. And I love just how goofy the event is. I have a smile on my face all day, every day, interacting with wonderful goofballs from all over the planet. And I love sharing these experiences with people I love. And this year was extra special because I was with my little brother Ethan and my friend Michael. Ethan is getting his ass buffed. Oh, yeah. That's my little brother. And I also love the Burning Man Ultra Marathon. 3, 2, 1, go! Yes, there is a 31-mile race at Burning Man. And I love it. I've been doing it since 2013. It was actually the very first Ultra that I ever participated in, and it was that race that sparked my love for Ultra running in general. Now I've done tons of Ultra races, but it's the Burning Man one that holds a very special place in my heart. My first ever dust storm during the Ultra. Here we go. So that's really the only video I was planning on making was about the Burning Man Ultra. But then something weird happened on Friday afternoon. And I'd always been warned throughout all of my other burns that if it ever rained at Burning Man, things would go south very quickly. But you're like, it's so hot here. How would it ever rain? It's just dry and you just don't even think about it. But it did happen. And it started raining and pitter pattering Friday afternoon and I was like, oh, wow. This is weird. It was also a very cool day. Usually Burning Man is very hot. Last year's burn was over 100 degrees for all seven days of the burn. So it was a cool day. Then it started pitter pattering. And so we walked back to our camp. I didn't have any cell phone connection, so I couldn't look at the forecast. But we could look in the sky and see what was coming. And it was just coming down hard. Because when it gets wet out there, the mud essentially turns to like cement, peanut butter. Here's the situation near the porta-potties. There's the line of porta-potties. I just want to show you in here. This is the urinal. Oh, it's slippery. Don't fall in. They're getting full because the porta-potties are not being serviced. So my living situation at Burning Man is pretty simple. And most of my friends are always horrified by my setup. I just bring a little backpacking tent. And I've been doing that for the eight years that I've been there. A lot of my friends have yurts or big tents or RVs. But you know what? I like the minimalist life. And I go in with one bag and I'm all good. And I was just hoping that the water level wasn't going to get so high that it was going to flood our tents. But luckily, our tents held up. They were pretty awesome. They kept all the rain out of the tents. They got a little bit wet in there. But other than that, we were good to go. So the rain started on Friday at about 2.30 p.m. and kept getting harder and harder and harder. And we were really hoping that it was going to calm down because we knew the consequences of all this. The situation was about to get really messy. Look at that. Look at this. Would you look at that? That is not LED lights. That is Mother Nature putting on the best show here at Burning Man. Wow. But you know what? This is when I started seeing the best of humanity come out at Burning Man. And I often say, I see the best of humanity at Burning Man just on a regular year. But I think people's brains started clicking, okay, we got to make sure everybody's safe and warm and dry. And our neighbors, the Agave Lounge, which was a giant dome of the world, had a party. They were having a party anyway that day, and they just extended it into the night. And they were creating a safe place for people. They were cooking up food for everybody, which is something they would normally do. But they went on overdrive and made sure they had more food. They have a whole bunch of couches and pillows, and it was dry in there. They had music. People were dancing. People were having a great time. And there was a guy that kept getting on the microphone saying, hey, we got to look out for one another. This is a serious situation. If you see anybody that needs anything, bring them to us. We have food, and we have water, and we are going to make sure that everybody is safe. And we went to bed that night, still raining at about 12.30 a.m. And I was really just hoping that I wasn't going to wake up with my air mattress floating in a puddle. The day after the storm. The next morning, Saturday, I woke up kind of early and started wandering around just to get a lay of the land. It actually, it felt kind of like a snow day, you know, when the whole world shuts down. You have this kind of free feeling like, ooh, this isn't normal, but it's kind of fun at the same time. So it's the morning after the rainstorm, and it just started to rain again. And as you can see, this whole area is a mess, and I'm wearing my socks. I figured out that wearing the shoes is no good, because they get caked in mud and super heavy, so it's best to walk around in socks, and I mean, look at this. It's like a refugee village, and it's starting to rain again. We need sunshine, we need dry. There's our hope right there, there's some sun. There's my camp, Funky Town, it has seen drier days, that's the dance floor right there. And the sky is still looking threatening, and there is the open playa. Abandoned bicycle right there, I bet we're going to see a lot of that. I'm out now on the open playa, and it's actually easier to walk here, because it's not all rutted out from footprints. Feels good to breathe some fresh air and see a little bit of sunlight, a little bit of blue sky. I don't know what's going to happen here, and this is a mess. There's 80,000 people in there, and we're all stuck. No cars can move, no vehicles. You can't ride bikes, I mean, you can barely walk, but sometimes in these moments you see the beauty of life, the magic of life out here. This is so surreal. Usually there are thousands of people all over the place, even at sunrise. Last night when I walked over to the bathrooms, I was like, wow, it's like Burning Man just shut down. I mean, you can still hear some stereo. There's still some parties happening, but for the most part, everybody's just hunkering down. I'm walking around out here, and it smells incredible actually. It smells like sage, and there's no plants anywhere near where I'm at, but I know there's just all these hills are covered with desert scrub and sage, and I think the rain has released the scent. It's so good. It almost smells like a bunch of Christmas trees or something. Incredible. It's the little things that, you know, keep a smile on your face when things are looking a little grim. Oh, the sun came out full blast. Woo! We need you, sun. We need you. Come on. Dry this plaita off. I'm just laughing to myself because the situation is so ridiculous. What are you doing? We're moving. I'm trying to channel the water away from my front door. Good luck. There was a lake by my front door. It's a nice Saturday morning in Black Rock City. Let's go to the temple. And this is when we started thinking, okay, when are we going to be able to get out of here? This was Saturday afternoon. It wasn't sunny, but it also wasn't raining. Things weren't drying out that much. And we know that if it's wet and muddy, nobody is going anywhere. And I think this is where some of the national media was creating stories that were apocalyptic. Like, oh, everybody is stuck and they don't have food and resources and the toilets are going to overflow. What are they going to do? You know, and I can kind of understand that. On the ground, nobody was freaking out. Everybody was in a good mood. Mud swinging. Were the mud swingers? And really, this is when I started seeing some serious leadership happen. There were a lot of camps that were specifically reaching out to help people who maybe didn't have enough food or maybe didn't have enough clothing and just making sure that everybody was well taken care of. And that really is the Burning Man spirit. Even on a normal year, people are there to help other humans. And that's why I'm so attracted to this event. You got it. Push them hard. Yeah. Put the back into it. Here you go. Oh, yeah. On Sunday morning, I wake up early again and head out to the open playa and I see the sun. There it is. Thank you, son. Thank you. It's time to dry us off so we can go home. I'm ready. I've had a great time. I've had my ups and downs like every Burning Man. I love it out here. I'll be back, but I am ready to get the hell out of here. And this gives me hope. Okay, we're going to dry out today. It is now Sunday afternoon and I was hoping I wouldn't hear rain, bitter pattering, but it is. We'll see. We'll see how much it actually rains. If it rains a lot, we are totally screwed again. Okay, the afternoon rainstorm just ended and all the progress we made drying out has kind of been erased. We're sloppy again. The ground is all full of puddles again. My feet are obviously full of mud and we're hoping this is it. We don't want any more rain. Well, gracias. Well, I start thinking, okay, Ethan, my brother, we're going to get on our bikes. We're going to put our duffel bags on our backs and we're just going to ride out of here and then we're going to hitchhike or something. And that's what was going through my mind. And we start calculating if it's possible, if we should do this, if it's safe, if it's not, and we decided, no, we're going to stick with the original plan. And then, of course, it starts raining like crazy on Sunday again. It's raining again? Really? Again? I've been to Burning Man eight times. I've ever seen rain once. At least we got a good vibe going here. Hey, Ethan. It's raining again, but we're dancing under a tarp. Oh, yeah. Burning Man looks like a full-on refugee village. Full of tech bros. Slop, slop, slop. Now it's really slippery again because of the wet. Again. The wet rain. We keep on thinking, oh, we're going to dry out. This is great. We're all going to go home. Nope. Mother nature's like, nope, not today. We can't even walk through here. I don't know how cars can drive through here. This is just such a crazy scene. Look at this. Look at that nuts. That nutsness. Look at this. We're a little bit bummed because the man burn didn't happen on Saturday. That's usually a huge event for everybody. And then they burned the temple on Sunday. That was also not going to happen. So it was just a different experience. That's okay. You know, it's an adventure. You never know what you're going to get. You might have high hopes and aspirations for something that you've planned for months. And maybe it doesn't turn out the way you want, but it's all about how you react to it and your attitude. And just continuing to enjoy the people that you're with. We wake up really early Monday morning to get on the bus, the Burner Express that takes people to the airport or to San Francisco. We get to the bus depot at about 6 30 a.m. And it turns out our bus was going to be four hours delayed. The people that work in there said that the Bureau of Land Management weren't letting the buses in to stage. So everything was delayed a bit and they weren't letting the buses in because of the state of the ground and the mud and, you know, they didn't want more damage to be done to the area. So my brother and I decided, okay, we're going to hitchhike. We see plenty of people driving out of Burning Man. And we're thinking, all right, we're just going to jump in one of these people's cars and hopefully they'll drive us to the airport. And within minutes of hitchhiking, we found a nice couple who drove us to the Reno airport. I'm here with my new boy, Eli. What's up? We're getting out. We are getting out of Black Rock City. There's a long line of cars. Whoa, yeah. Going to do some mud here on our way out. We made it to the airport. Ethan's scraping the last bits of mud off his shoes. We're dirty. We're stanky. But we're here and we're psyched. And we got home last night dirty and crusty with mud, but happy and hearts full. Definitely just, you know, I'm sitting here thinking about this, talking about this out loud right now. I'm processing this in real time. You know, and it was a magical experience. It really was. I mean, the first few days of Burning Man were pretty normal. You know, as normal as Burning Man can be. Actually, we had a dust storm during the Burning Man Ultra for the very first time ever. That was new and exciting. Maybe that was a sign of things to come. I don't know. But it was fun. You know, I lived my life like this. I go on adventures all the time where things don't go as planned. Almost never do they go as planned. So I was ready for it and I cherish those experiences because when you're pushed to the limit, I think that's when the magic happens. I think that's when the good stuff happens. You see leaders emerge in the community to help one another. And you just see humans coming together. And that's really what was happening out there. And maybe there was some bad stuff happening. I don't know. I didn't see any of that. You know, reading some of the articles about Burning Man that the, you know, national news media was putting out are pretty humorous. I'm still reading a lot of them now. And they're just, they're so off. But we live in a world of clickbait titles where this, you know, this sells. Of course, people want to like make fun of all these stupid tech bros and hippies at Burning Man and how they're stuck in the mud. And they're like, yeah, serves you right suckers. But when it comes down to it, it's a beautiful event with lots of beautiful people. And I'm not just talking about physically beautiful. I'm talking about on the inside. There's a lot of wonderful humans at Burning Man. And I will keep going back as long as I can pull it off. I truly love it. So thank you for watching this video. I know it's pretty different than my typical videos. I will make a video of the entire Burning Man ultra experience. And yeah, thank you all for checking it out. And I'm safe. Thank you all for checking in on me. I got texts from people all over the world wondering what the heck was going on at Burning Man. And I'm good. We're good. And I think, you know, we all learn something in the process. And that's a good thing. Any day you can learn something new about yourself and fellow humans is a very good day. And it builds your faith in humanity.