On the Run Flashbacks, Part 2: Renegades, Creepy Dirt Roads and Being Stranded in Oregon

lily-da-vine (73)in #life • 7 years ago

We spent our time on the run in Detroit doing our best to make some money to have for our journey. Ideally, we wanted a registered vehicle with all of our stuff and possibly the underappreciated pit bull Renegade to head west and eventually south to Acapulco with, but that wasn't how it was playing out. We had a contact for work in Cannabis in Detroit, but he dropped our pay unexpectedly and started showing signs of taking advantage of our on the run situation, so we started assessing our options. It was then that we decided it was finally time to just head west, with the hopes of making more money on the West coast.

Now before I move on, I'll share a quote from one of the few posts I shared about Renegade. I'll admit I still tear up when I think about him, and sharing our story hasn't been easy. Long story short, he was an underappreciated pit bull on our street in Detroit. We were warned against him but instantly gravitated towards him. We spent some time getting to know him before we were arrested and when we came back, he was there although with a badly broken leg.

"After we returned to Detroit on the run, Renegade got very close to us very quickly. After an emotional reunion in which he ran down the road with a broken leg to come see us, our friendship was kickstarted again. At the time of today's story, he had been staying with us on and off, by his own accord. He was the type of dog to knock on the door when he was there to see you, and if you didn't answer he'd bark...then knock...then bark. He wasn't very well trained in most ways and he also didn't take no for an answer. "
The Renegade Adventures: Lily and Renegade buy weed in the Hood

I recommend reading that post, in which I got mad respect from neighborhood weed selling thugs when they noticed the dog they all feared in the passenger seat of my car, with a happy look on his face.

Now with the Detroit situation turning sour, it was seemingly time for us to move on. We weren't prepared for an off the grid winter in the D, anyway and the goal was to be in Acapulco by the Anarchapulco conference, which was in February.
On the Run and On the Move: The Mad Scramble to Prepare to Leave The Dirty D

Much of our payment for trimming trees in the dirty D came in the form of cannabis and for that reason the week before we left the city was spent selling that weed, partially in an attempt to pay our way westward to Oregon. Our hope was to get in on the green rush out west to make enough cash to feel comfortable crossing the border and starting our life. From the beginning however, we were prepared to deal with the idea of crossing with nothing. I've said it once and I'll say it a million times: I'd rather be homeless in Mexico than in jail in the United States.

So we made a plan to move west, getting a rideshare in someone else's vehicle who was headed from the same area in Michigan to about the same area in Oregon, just a few days from when we found the post. She even agreed to bring Renegade if we could, which was awesome. The adventures with here were crazy to say the least and I know more than once she thought we were going to kill her.

Now I'll pause here to say we weren't being aggressive, but we were stressed out and using clearly fake names and traveling with things like axes and chainsaw. So she was on edge to say the least and it was all we could to do to try and be chill as we traveled with her. At some point we found she was driving a truck with expired plates, making us a possible target to be pulled over at any time and being from the east coast, it was likely. We got extremely lucky.

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

As a note, the bringing of the axes and chainsaw was totally practical and legitimate and they all have served us well in our adventures.

So finally we get to Oregon and Google navigation sends us on the creepiest route possible, complete with windy dark dirt roads. She for sure thought she was going to be killed but when we found civilization and got a place to stay, she started to relax. She even took a dab with us, helping us to set off the smoke alarms in that tiny motel. We didn't tell her we were on the run, but I'm sure she picked up on something during our trip together.

So we said goodbye to our ride share and waited, standing behind a grocery store in a small town with all of our stuff, waiting and depending on total strangers
On the Run and On The Move: Sketchy Dirt Roads and Abandonded in Oregon

Our flaky hippy family member set up a meeting spot, ironically by the dumpster behind a grocery store...the only grocery store in that town for that matter. We were told to wait for total strangers who would whisk us away to the cannabis fairyland that is Oregon....or something like that.

He explained that there were currently people staying on the property to trim, some in tents some in RVs. The larger RV housed an elderly man, who depended on these people who were not his family for just about everything. The woman with the twin and her husband were not residents, just visiting with the babies. The kids were of the man and the woman, and there was evidently another son around somewhere. It immediately struck us that we may have moved into a communist situation, with no food or money of our own.
Stranded in Oregon Part 1: Crash Land into an Anarcho-Communist Commune

If there's anything we learned in our time with them, it's that we aren't communists. The Stranded in Oregon is a massive series that took awhile to share, but it shows a glimpse into the rural atmosphere of Southern Oregon at the time we were there. While it was anarchist, it was anarcho-communist and experienced many difficulties as a result. I'll share more on that later, this is enough of a flashback for me, right now.