Border or Bust, Part 1: Tweaker Freakouts and The Limping Sprint to Grants Pass

Things were somewhat busy and stressful in the week before we left that property in Oregon.  Acid tried to help us fix the truck, but we all kind of knew there would be no fixing the truck.  Things got more hostile once they realized our truck was broken down, as they thought that would keep us around longer.  We were determined to leave before the 31st of January, broken truck be damned.

Somewhere in the few days before we left we had separate talks with Acid and Mountain Boy.  We explained the time frame for leaving and offered them an out with us, as they'd be both useful and free from that property.  Both had reasons that hinted to say they didn't really belong there, so we offered them the chance to come with us on our adventures.  Acid said he'd consider it, but at the end of the day he decided to stay.  His plan was to come this way eventually, but I'm not sure he ever will. Acid, if you're reading this, shit's getting awesome, time to head south!

The night before we left we had a visit from Rob and Cassie where we said our goodbyes, just in case we didn't get another chance.  They bought more weed and dabs and gave us little keepsakes to take with us.  

The next morning wasn't so peaceful.  Rob woke us up to tell us that he was confronted by his parents for not taking responsibility, so he decided to smash everything in the kitchen.  He then promptly headed over to our place, it was clear he was on meth.  We brought him in for a dab to calm him down and he explained that he was fighting with Cassie as well. He left muttering that he'd send her over.

Before long she showed up, looking more than a bit pissed off. She explained she was leaving Rob and probably taking their son.  We dabbed her and apologized for what she was dealing with.  She headed off and we thought that'd be the end of it, or we hoped it would anyway.  Considering he had already trashed the kitchen, we wanted to leave in case things escalated to a point where the cops were called. 

I started packing the truck with our stuff and things did indeed get worse.  At one point they drove off in his mom's car together with their kid, returning to the driveway to have her jumping out of the car screaming "CALL THE COPS".  Wanting no part of that, I moved faster to pack.  He sped off and came back, chasing her through the yard to his mom's property.  Within a few minutes I was hearing screams of "I'm not tweaking!!!" coming from that direction, it was official, Rob was tweaking and tweaking hard.

I got the truck packed and we did our final dabs, asking Acid if he thought we could make it to Grants Pass, a 25 minute drive away in normal conditions.  He said he thought it would make us there, but he wasn't sure about things beyond that.  We figured the same but hoped for the best, as we honestly couldn't stick around anymore.  Hopefully in a place like Grants Pass we could get money together to fix the truck or buy a new one.

We had spent the week before asking questions about spanging from the hippies, as that was how we were going to make it to Mexico.  We had always been told that you make lots of easy money in California spanging and flying signs and we depended on that, rather stupidly.  We also took pictures of Acid's train kid guide, which explained the routes into Mexico just in case we had to ditch everything and take a train across. We were trying to be prepared for anything.

So we packed up Rebel and headed out.  Once on the highway we were forced to stop every few minutes over an overheated engine.  It took us three hours to take a drive that should have taken 25 minutes.  We made it there and beelined for a place with internet(after actually getting some items from Autozone in an attempt to save the dying engine), to check our options of places to stay.

After trying some things we found there weren't going to be any free short term options.  We were at a Burger King where an employee told us to go to the Walmart, which is where we were headed to spange the next morning anyway. We had been told that it's illegal to be homeless in Grants Pass and that getting caught would get our names ran at the very least, something we couldn't have happen.  We decided to find a better place and what we ended up doing was parking between semi trucks behind a cheap hotel.  We were both honestly too paranoid to sleep, but we did our best anyway.  

The plan was to wake up, go to Walmart and make a bunch of cash spanging.  From there we'd determine our plan of action in regards to the truck and the rest of our trip southward.  I'll save that for next time though.  Thanks for reading!

Here's Rebel Dog, in the hammock almost a year later.  Life's much easier now, as a year ago we were traveling through Mexico to Acapulco, living and sleeping in our truck!