My First Post.

Hi There, 

Thank you for joining me on my journey through the United States. I left my semi-cozy, semi-ghetto apartment, packed a few bag and set out on the road with my boyfriend in a 24ft. RV named Dolly in February 2010. 

So far we've gone through

*New Mexico

*Arizona

*Nevada

*California

*Oregon

*Idaho

*Utah

*Wyoming

*Colorado

*Texas

*Arkansas

*Tennessee

*Georgia

*Alabama

*Mississippi

*Louisiana

And now we're back in Texas. I probably should have started this blog sooner because about 1 million things have happened since starting and to catch you up would be a ridiculous feat, but through the course of telling  all future events I'm sure the older stories will be brought up again. 

The first night back in Texas I was in the RV with the boyfriend, a friend we met at a queer artist commune in middle Tennessee and a man from Costa Rica that we found on Craigslist. It was about 11pm, we had been driving for about 14 hours and we found ourselves getting pulled over. 

Minutes later the four of us were sitting on the side of the highway having been mistaken for drug runners and the entire RV was being tossed by two Texas cops. 

Some highlights:

Cop: Do you have any weapons?

Me: On me or in the RV?

Cop: On you! Do you have any guns or hand grenades?

Me: (laughing) No, no hand grenades here. 

Cop: (angered at my laughter, had nothing to say)

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Other cop: (clearly excited about his find) What's this?

fellow traveler: It's a smudge stick

Cop: A what?

traveler: A smudge stick, you know, made of sage. Used for purification and... 

Cop: (smells it) oh.

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A list of things that made us seems sketchy:

-When asked what we do for work we all replied "odd jobs"

-When asked where we live, we all replied "we're traveling"

-When asked to provide an address, none of us had one.

-Each of us has a different name that we use than the one on our licenses and we didn't know each others legal names so we referred to each other as if we didn't know each others names.  For example, I called my boyfriend "the driver" and my good friend "the one in the green sweatshirt" or simply "green sweatshirt"

-When asked how we met, the stories were very long and convoluted, because most stories of meeting someone are, but by the time we were done telling the stories of how the four of us ended up together on the side of the highway in the middle of the night, well, it seemed very drug-runneresque.

There were 5 squad cars on scene and each one of them was very disappointed at having found nothing of black market street value in the RV. It seems like they could have at least thanked us for bringing them an adrenaline rush or something, but instead they "let us off" with a warning. The ticket said that it was because they ran the license plate it came back as not registered, but it really should have warned us against being out after dark with bored cops in rural Texas. Why isn't that an optional check box on the citation?

I guess that pretty well concludes my first post. Stay tuned for more exciting adventures as I, Zia Sophia take on the open road.