Around 2005, I decided to help my best friend move from the East Coast to Portland, OR. I had moved to Olympia, Washington about a year earlier, so I had already made the trip in a box truck, pulling my car on a flatbed, and I generally knew what to expect, other than being a grower Had experience with large trucks and trailers up on a farm. I’m flying back east and my buddy has already packed the U-Haul, so the next morning all we have to do is put his car in the bed and hit the road. Everything goes smoothly until we reach Missouri (I think it was April or May), about the same time a tornado hits and shakes the lower half of the state. Semi-trucks are knocked over, highways are closed, so we try to find the nearest hotel as quickly as possible to wait it out, but everything is fully booked. We finally find a small trucker motel that I’m sure was only used for prostitution. For fear of catching crabs or something similar, we sleep in our clothes and just want to get some sleep and get back on the road at the earliest opportunity. Morning comes, the weather has cleared up and we set off. There is a lot of traffic due to the many overturned semi-trailers, so we are already more than a day behind schedule. Shit, I’m driving all night and most of the next day, which was more comfortable for me anyway since I’m 6’2″ and my buddy is 5’6″ at best, so I don’t have my knees caught in the dash, if he has to adjust the single seat to drive.
We are finally approaching Cheyenne, Wyoming when another weather event occurs. This time it’s a freak snowstorm with high winds, so the highways are closed again and it’s incredibly difficult to find a hotel. We finally get a room in a small motor shack attached to a run-down bar and restaurant. Not ideal, but at least we can grab some drinks and stuff our bellies with cooked food made by a real person. Now this particular bar and restaurant was apparently the favorite hangout of the local bullies, and as soon as we walked in we became hyper-aware that we didn’t fit in. Imagine the kind of place portrayed in a Coen Brothers movie, where the jukebox jumps and everyone stares when outsiders come in. Just that kind of vibe. We sit at the counter, order beer and food, and do our best to become invisible and mind our own business. This went wrong when the two local shitkickers at the table behind us decided to entertain themselves by asking us the same questions over and over again in a less friendly manner. “Where are you from?” “What are you doing here?” “You drive a truck? Is the little one sitting on your lap?” We are doing our best to defuse the situation, but it is clear that conflict could be imminent. At some point words are exchanged, threats are made and we just want to get out peacefully. We settle in and head for the door, but our attackers follow us. The next thing I know, my buddy gets hit in the eye, the other guy tries to attack me with a beer bottle when I intervene, and now we’re having a full-blown fight in the parking lot. I don’t know if a police officer was nearby or if someone called, but within a few minutes we’re all illuminated by lights and sirens and told to line up against the wall with our hands over our heads. Each of us is tied up, patted down and put in two different sleeping cars so that each couple can show their side. Apparently we were portrayed as the instigators by the two townspeople. Cleverly, the cops weren’t exactly buying it, so they simply released everyone before warning us to leave the city as soon as the roads were clear, which we eagerly did the next afternoon.
I basically yada-yada the rest because this is already too long. Not only did my buddy have a busted and swollen eye and a few broken fingers, but he also got food poisoning from a Subway rest stop in Utah and kept shitting on the side of the road all the way through Idaho before we finally got to Oregon about 3 days later than expected.