On the Run and On the Move: Leaving Detroit with Expired License Plate Tags

The last part of this story left of with us waiting for our ride out of Detroit.  We had arranged for a ride share, one intending to go from Detroit to Oregon in just a few days.  We were scrambling to get ready for that trip until the last second, where everything came together in terms of finances right before we were scheduled to be picked up.  We made enough to make the trip with a little left over for things we needed, like a dab pen and containers to carry our medication.  After final dabs and packing, it was time for our ride share to show up.

Which she did, in an SUV.  Considering how suburban she seemed, it seemed surprising she even agreed to the ride share considering where we lived.  She quickly mentioned she knew a friend who lived here, which made her significantly less wary of the neighborhood right off.  We later identified this was a good friend of ours, someone who had also bought weed to help us on our way out.  He was also the friend to give me the ride to the smoke shop, which was convenient and appreciated. 

As we brought out our things she seemed to get nervous.  I guess it's understandable when two people you don't know load an axe and a chainsaw into the back of your vehicle in the hood of Detroit.  We sadly and quickly explained that Renegade would not be making the trip with us, so we would be leaving without him.  She did her best to hold her composure, she really did.  We got the rest of our things in the truck, handed our keys off to a friend so they could salvage anything they were to find useful in our house and we left.  

Driving by Renegade's house was hard, I tried to ignore the significance of it completely. Leaving the neighborhood was harder, still able to ignore it though.  Leaving Detroit with the understanding that I wouldn't be back was heartbreaking, I miss it to this day. We were now in the hands of a total stranger, hoping that nothing happened along the way that would end in us being arrested. 

We drove out of Detroit and I swallowed back tears.  I couldn't fall apart over leaving Detroit, as I really didn't want to have to explain why I couldn't go back to the D. So I swallowed it back and focused on the trip ahead, as I would eventually have to drive.  This was nerve wracking as cops tend to target out of state cars, and I was on the run and no longer a licensed driver, technically speaking. We never told our ride share mate our situation, although we are fairly sure she was aware of it by the end of it, at least vaguely speaking.

We found out pretty quickly the girl we chose to travel with was an interesting mash of cultures.  She was a pretty suburban girl who occasionally tripped on acid and smoked pot.  She had a taste for heavy metal music, that she listened to the whole way to Oregon, at least when she was driving.  She too was heading to Oregon to trim, but for a close personal friend of hers.  She was moving to Germany, at least temporarily afterwards. 

We were in Nebraska maybe, or at least the middle of the country when we noticed it.  We were getting gas and John was outside of the vehicle.  He happened to notice that the plates, which were ironically enough Ohio license plates, were expired and had been for months.  From my understanding, Nebraska is not the place to be caught without proper plates.  So not only were we on the run, but we were driving in an illegal vehicle. 

When we got back in the car John confronted our ride share partner about the plates.  She apologized profusely and said it was her Dad's car, who lives in Ohio.  Evidently it's a pain in the ass to get the tags renewed because of it, which I get.  Getting your own cars tags renewed is a bitch, dealing with another party that doesn't even live in the same state.   Considering she was leaving very soon to Germany and had been driving for months without getting it fixed, she took the chance hoping she got lucky.  If the police stopped her, her plan was to handle it by crying about the fact that it was her Dad's car and responsibility, not hers.  She probably intended to lie about it and say she didn't know, which works sometimes but not always.

We really needed for her not to be stopped, considering our on the run status.  All it took was one asshole cop to run all three of our information, revealing our identity. We recognized we were most likely to be picked up while traveling out of the United States, and this new piece of information did not help our stress level.  We couldn't be too angry, as we all have our secrets.  We never told this girl we were on the run, although she probably suspected it by the end of the trip.

I'll end here, the next part of the story will pick up when we enter Oregon. This trip cross country should have been relatively mild, but it wasn't.  The plates were bad and the main driver was a terrible driver, which meant we were constantly on the verge of being pulled over, in our minds at least.  We were smoking on the pen nearly constantly to deal with nerves and nausea from the experience.  Things only got worse as we approached Oregon and our contact there became missing in action, all things to share in the next part. 

Edit: John just clarified that the reason he even looked at the plates in the first place happened to be that there was a cop at the gas station we were at when he made the discovery.  We saw an obnoxious amount of cops in Nebraska, which heightned things as we were on the run. He also clarified that it was late at night, at time when cops are most likely to fuck with foreign plates.