Danica Patrick, the former NASCAR star, experienced the epic dumpster fire that was this year’s Burning Man festival due to severe weather that transformed the desert site into a “swamp.”
Danica Patrick at Daytona International Speedway in 2017 Photo Credit: Zach Catanzareti, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Patrick shared on her Instagram Story, which was later reported by The New York Post, that she was stuck three times and took four hours to reach pavement.
Even though the difficult weather at this year’s corporate sponsored hippie collective in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, Patrick noted that the adversity united attendees due to their common struggle to get the heck out of Burning Man.
She shared that the challenges revealed attendees’ genuine nature to assist one another however, emphasizing the event’s unique culture of giving without monetary exchange, which you’d think would happen to people abandoned in the desert with a bunch of drugs anyway. Patrick remarked, “It’s one magical week in the desert. Or swamp this year.”
Patrick shared another video last week of her post-Burning Man cleanup process, highlighting the three pairs of boots she took to the event. While two pairs looked surprisingly clean after the muddy desert experience, the third was caked with enough dried mud that anyone with obsessive-compulsive disorder would go crazy.
View this post on Instagram
“Time to power wash off Burning Man,” Patrick commented on her Instagram story, adding, “Oh my god, they’re already making a mess.”
Festival-goers at Burning Man were informed by organizers via X, previously known as Twitter, that exits and entries at Black Rock City were closed, allowing only emergency vehicles.
Other notable attendees of the festival, traditionally organized to protest the rich and corporate interests, were Diplo and Chris Rock. Read that again if nothing processed.
Diplo tweeted about walking 5 miles through the mud before being picked up by a fan and shared a video of their truck ride through the desert, which obviously must have been the highlight of that dude’s experience.
There was one tragedy however, it and wasn’t Patrick’s disgusting boots. A 32-year-old attendee, Leon Reece, was found unresponsive by emergency personnel and later pronounced dead. The cause of his death remains undetermined after preliminary investigations, according to Pershing County Sheriff Jerry Allen.
The lesson of the day is, keep doing what you’re doing and never go to Burning Man.
Follow Remso at @HeyRemso on X