from easy bliss to complicated mess
Drive from Jackson to Riverton, Oct 5, nighttime: Wyoming is awesome on the west side - yellowstone, grand teton, jackson. but once we started heading east, things got a little funky. and i don't mean the good funky soul tunes, or the delicious funky cheese funk, but funky as in weird, haywire, bizarre. hours of long windy roads with no phone service or GPS. darkness and animals dashing across the highway on a whim. sad dead bunny beneath a hot rubber tire. snow blowing from a side angle, trippy visuals. maybe we're too tired to be driving. we will make a stop somewhere in the middle of Wyoming to sleep.
 Perhaps our intuition was onto something…
7am-we wake up in a parking lot of a hotel in Riverton, WY. We’re excited and weirded out that it’s snowing. Snow! I didn’t sleep well all night. It was our first time sleeping in a random place—not a campground, not a friend’s house—and every sound woke me up during the night. I had an eerie feeling. Ran over a bunny the night before, it was not happy. We get up and want to get an early start to get to MT rushmore midday, South Dakota is calling our name.
 7:57am-After an hour of “Oh”ing and “ah”ing at the beauty of the snowy landscape, the roads are suddenly icy, maybe we went up in elevation. We start gliding over the road, black ice. “hana, hana, oh my god, hana!” Left, right, left, right, slide to the right, back fishtails out, we fly off the road and suddenly it’s as if we’re in a washing machine, tumbling around, we flip what feels like 2 or 3 times. We lock eyes in terror, mid air, can’t understand, land on poor Bonita’s all four tires, windows missing, shit everywhere. Her engine still purrs as we find ourselves in a winter wonderland, staring out of where her windshield once was, our feathers and beads that hang from the rear view mirror blowing back and forth in the crisp breeze.
 8am-We open the doors and step into the snow; Hana forgets that she isn’t wearing boots, a car stops to see if we’re okay, Hana runs to them to call 9-1-1, they thought we were dead. I get out, find our rubber soul Beatles tape in the snow, incense, phone, god we had a lot of shit on our dash, I turn around and see what Bonita looks like, I start crying, in shock, what? NO! She’s become a part of us, our home, my heart n soul, this is shit. Two hunter men in a truck stop, they help us, we can’t feel our bodies, can’t think straight, they ask us “where are your coats? Where are your shoes? Do you have a beanie? You have to stay warm. Look me in the eye. What’s your name? Are you hurt? Are you in pain?” They are sweet. We cry and minutes feel like hours and then medical arrives.
 8:45am-“hi, come with us, we’ll take you to the hospital.” No! we’re not hurt, we’re fine, we’re not going anywhere, we need to stay here, we’re fine. We get a “trauma examination” whatever that means, squeeze the man’s fingers as hard as we can, blood pressure, heart rate, can’t answer questions, almost forget my birthday. Sign refusal forms and medical leaves. A Wyoming cop, officer Jackson arrives on the scene. In all seriousness “I need to get your registration, insurance, or else miss Lurie’s license will be suspended by the state of Wyoming.” Jeezuz, give us two seconds. Hana gets interrogated by the cop, he puts her in the back in the cage, like a criminal, he’s an asshole. I climb into Bonita, gotta distract myself while we wait for the tow truck. I start organizing the clusterfuck that once was our organized home, eggs broken, French press broken, ibuprofen and other toiletries sprawled around. My mind feels clear suddenly, I start packing a bag full of necessities. Passports, computers, chargers, cameras, change of clothes.
 9:15 am-Officer Jackson tell us we should come sit in his car so that we stay warm while we wait for the tow truck. We don’t like him. He is serious and scary and so unlike everyone else that has assisted us. “yep, it happens all the time on these roads. See those little white hearts along this road? That’s where everyone has died.” “Excuse me sir, but we just got into a car accident, and we don’t want to hear that story.”
10:30am-the tow truck is here. a wordless man climbs out, a sunken in raisin face, he’s up to our belly buttons, his facial features are in a hole, a gray beard touches his little chest. He says nothing, we say hi, he says nothing. We ask him if we’re hitching a ride 80 miles back into the nearest town with him, he grumbles “ye…” and we take it as a yes. We put our valuables up into the cabin of the truck and stare at each other in disbelief when we hear the celebratory moans of Gretchen Wilson blaring from his speakers. What a contrast to our state of being. He attaches the chains to Bonita’s applebum, and starts attempting to drag her up onto the ramp of his truck. She’s not at a good angle, he mumbles, few teeth missing, and tells one of us to get behind the wheel to assist him. We’re stuck in the snowy mud, turning one way then the other, having to start the car and drive forward down the hill to realign, it feels terrifying and unsafe, like we are going to topple over again. Tow truck driver doesn’t seem to sympathize, we feel lost. Bonita finally on the back we climb in to his truck, apologizing that our boots are so dirty, he replies “I dun cur, itsa truck.”
 10:50am-We’re not quite sure how safe this tow truck ride will be. Mr. tow man seems to have recovered, potentially, from a rough drugged out past, and twitches and tweaks every time he shifts gears—knees in the air, right hand flailing. He still hasn’t said a word. We look at each other for confirmation that this situation is okay, but figure triple A has our backs in sending this man to our rescue. We start trying to figure out our next step, and mr. tow man listens intently to our conversation. We ask him for his name. “Bob.” Hi bob. He tells us that he works at a shop in Lander, WY, 20 miles past Riverton, the nearest town that we woke up in that morning. He recommended us a motel nearby, and offered to take Bonita back to his shop to check out. He seemed genuinely concerned about our well being, and considering our situation, in the middle of nowhere, we needed all the help and guidance we could get.
12:30pm-We arrive at the auto shop. Or, to be more precise: “Kummers Auto shop” located on Mortimer lane, Lander, WY. Now imagine saying that out loud to your insurance agent. The place looks like a salvage yard, centered around a garage and a trailer in which Bob lives with his girlfriend. As we pull up, a woman and a tiny dog greet us, cigarette in toothless mouth, bleached hair, extreme amount of eye liner, knuckles complete with tattoos. “Is that your girlfriend bob?” “Nah, thas her sister.”
Earlier, Bob mentioned he had a lender car for us to use, we figured it would be a rental. But when he points us to a black impala, opens the back door, and removes his hanging collared shirts, we realize he is lending us one of his personal cars for free. We start talking to the bleached hair lady, she introduces herself as Pam. “yeah, Uncle Bob is a real good guy, I call him uncle cause I met him at a friend house, his name’s Bob too, so I was like how we gonna do this, so he’s uncle Bob.” Pam tells us she’ll be hitching a ride into town with us in the car that is not even ours, cause she’s going to her moms house to hang ghosts and skeletons in the yard for Halloween. She tells us if we’re hungry we can always call up Pizza hut, cause her sister is a driver there. Pam works at the Holiday Inn express. We thanked her for her help and told her how comforting it was. “Girls, I always hope that someone would do the same for me, I always tell my kids that too, you girls sure are in a shitty spot and can use help right now.” We drive by the motel that we made a reservation for earlier, Mavericks frontier lodge, a weird looking log cabin with fake bear, bison and horse silhouetted wall art on gaudy vomit pink colored walls. She says she doesn’t trust the place cause it’s run by Israelis. “I don’t trust or like Israelis, just cause of TV, you know?” We sure ain’t in the golden state no more…
[too exhausted to continue, we will keep you all updated on what's next. we're happy to be okay, apparently this had to be a part of our journey. we appreciate everyones love and support]
