Wyoming by Way of Utah Part Two- Rolling with the Punches
Grand Junction Early Morning
You can’t solve all of the problems at once, and I had solved as many as I could think of. I knew I was young. I knew I couldn’t think of everything. I had to trust myself to handle what came at me. I also had to second-guess myself enough to keep me from having to go back “home.”
It was 2 or 3 am when we pulled into Grand Junction. I remember we had a little difficulty navigating, but we were calm about it, and more curious than anything. We found a gas station, and A jumped out to get gas. When he got back in I was panicked.
It hit me that the next steps would be finding jobs, which had been in this “later” category in my brain. I panicked because we didn’t have any addresses. He was pretty panicked about that too, once I pointed it out.
I had no experience with public services, community resources, or anything of the like. My family took a lot of pride in never needing a hand out, and never asking for help. They were adamantly opposed to welfare, and had horrible things to say about the people who used food stamps or Medicaid. I was taught to believe that these people were lazy con artists that were screwing over the country.
It never even occurred to me to seek anything. If I couldn’t do it on my own I didn’t deserve it.
Thinking about it now, that got in the way of quite a bit actually.
Panic Faded
Once we were calmer, A kindly asked me not to freak out again. He said he could handle just about anything with me, but he felt that if I was freaking out we must really be in trouble.
We didn’t waste too much time freaking out. I had brought my planner with me, which I also used as a wallet and address book. In the time before smartphones it was pretty comprehensive and I loved it. It was the perfect size, and was actually organized into useful spaces. Good planners are so hard to find.
My address book yielded our next plan, and we took off in the wee hours of the morning for Salt Lake City, Utah, where Reticence had moved a couple years before. We tried calling, but there was no answer. I was happy to put more distance between me and “home.”
If you recall, Reticence had dated Mr. E. She had actually been a really good friend who had a patience with me that others didn’t. She was an upper classman who had been understanding of me. Sometimes I clearly still got on her nerves, but only when we were around other people. She taught me how to do step aerobics and we listened to old Dan Seals music together. She could talk even more than I could.
I missed her, and I really wanted to see her.
We stopped at a rest stop somewhere in the night before dawn. K, who had been riding with C, had taken some Vivrin and was now dangerously awake. She had a really rapid heart rate, and was trying to hyperventilate while C was freaking out about it. Seriously?
I was not thrilled. They felt bad. I had K sit on the tailgate, and pushed fluids while I tried to calm her. Part of it was the Vivarin. Part of it was that they had worked each other up. Seriously?
After she was calmed down, I had to walk around and get some air.
We all used the facilities, and I tried calling Reticence, again with no answer.
I issued stern warnings, and we loaded back up, cranked the music up, and continued on our way. There’s something truly cathartic to singing with your whole heart at the top of your lungs in the presence of anybody else who is doing the same.
I don’t even know what town we rolled into next, but we needed gas. We pulled into the station, and C let us know that he’d really been struggling to keep the window clear with his heater being jinky and having a big hole in the floorboard and all. We figured we’d get gas, then get a few hours sleep in the vehicles before moving on. I went back to the truck so I could go in and prepay.
My planner wasn’t there. I had kept it in the same spot the whole time. I had actually been really good about it, because I was paranoid because it had ALL OF THE MONEY. It also had Reticence’s phone number.
I expressed myself using choice expletives.
K had brought a bag of pennies, and it seemed like this was the time to use it. We put $1.86 in A’s tank, leaving C and K there with C’s car. A and I headed back to find that rest stop. We were nervous, but didn’t want to predefeat ourselves, so we turned on the music and played it cool.
Although it had been clear when we came through the first time, we were now in a snow storm. Visibility was not great. We drove until we were sure we must have passed the rest stop. We exited and got back on heading West again. We got most of the way back to C and K before realizing that we had just wasted that gas and time.
Instead of going all the way back, we decided to make one more pass making sure to go farther back this time. At least the snow was letting up. It was a sudden and intense storm that blew over quickly.
The rest area was not too much farther than our first turn-around. We got out, looked in the stalls, by the sinks, on the floors, on the trash cans, in the trash cans, out in the lawn, on the payphone, and we walked up and down all of the sidewalks.
We tore the truck apart, to make sure I hadn’t somehow just missed it in there.
We checked ALL of these places again.
Nobody was blaming me, but they didn’t have to. This was all my fault. The whole endeavor was on me. Losing the planner was on me. I couldn’t believe I had already screwed it all up.
We got back in the car, and didn’t say anything. He started the car, and we turned the music off, just sitting in silence. We drove around the parking area scanning just in case, but didn’t see anything. So, we headed back for the others.
The rest area had an extremely long on ramp to get back on the road. I stared off at the yellow line stretching into the darkness. We had been driving for a minute when I spotted the planner on the shoulder of the highway.
I announced my find and A slowed the truck down a bit too quickly for my liking, but it was in character. We reversed back to the planner, and everything was still in it.
We had money again.
We had contacts again.
We had this.
We threw in Alabama’s Greatest Hits and jammed Dixieland Delight on our victorious return trip.
We got there, and filled them in. They laid the seats down in the car, and A and I crawled into the half-filled bed of his truck. It was not comfortable, but he was warm, and comfortable. There may have been some heavy petting that night in celebration, but there certainly wasn’t room for anything else.
Survivor Literacy 
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