Superior cops don't have Covid
Just had an upsetting incident while driving through Superior, Wyoming. We ran into trouble with the law!
We were in a pretty flat part of Wyoming and I was crouched between the gals in the front seat talking. Nothing seemed amiss but then I heard Roberta at the wheel saying "Oh the cops are passing us... " But then it turned out they were pulling us over! Turns out they'd been behind us for a while and tried the siren, but this thing we're driving makes a lot of noise (and admittedly we'd also been having a VERY interesting conversation)
What could we have done wrong?! We're literally incapable of speeding (not temperamentally, we just can't get this rig up to the 80 mph speed limit). I was worried because I hadn't been in a legal seat– maybe it would be a seat belt violation?
Oh shit, we realized we need masks! We scrambled to find them through a tangle of USB cables, crochet supplies and general road trip detritus. Roberta said "I can't wear my chicken mask!" I thought that was a good point, we want to show them we take the law seriously... and my chicken mask was in my bag. Only later, did I realize I'd been wearing another equally silly mask.
We got the masks sorted out just as the state trooper came around around to the passenger side. Sara rolled down the window and that's when things got uncomfortable. The guy leaned waaaay in. His forearms were folded over the windowsill and his face was literally inside the vehicle. He had no mask on and you can see in the picture how far Sara was trying to lean back to get a little bit of space. Every time Sara said something to him he replied "I can't hear you." The same conversation looped three or four times. It was obvious he was pretending he couldn't hear us.
Sara finally said "We're worried about being safe– could you move back a little?" He said, "I don't have Covid." I then heroically kept my fucking mouth shut and only screamed "But WE do!" inside my head.
This is the kind of thing that wouldn't have gone well if we hadn't been white.
Turns out it was all about the RV registration. It was expired. The guy who rented to us had renewed it but hadn't gotten the new registration yet.
Sara did all the right things... she damsel-in-distressed his ass, mentioning how scared we were about Covid 19 and working in the fact that her husband had just died– and how beautiful Wyoming is– and how the only other time she'd been through was when she'd been stranded on 9/11 and driven home to California from there. I was waiting for her to throw in a "God Bless America" and burst into tears. She told us afterwards, she had the waterworks ready on standby in case he was going to force her to take off her mask.
We got off with a warning. The toilet tree is unharmed.