What's this residue?

PHOENIX, AZ - When I played out this trip in my mind, I laid out all the ways I would minimize contact with people. I carefully thought through each potential scenario and how we would either either limit the exposure or avoid it all together.

Expect for the first night, when I insisted we get a motel outside of Pittsburgh because it was 9 degrees and snowing, we slept in the van.

To minimize the number of times we used public restrooms, I tried to pee along the road at every opportunity - much to my husband's discomfort with me potentially exposing my bare butt to truckers. I honestly no longer care - dignity being another one of Covid's casualties.

We lived mostly on drive-thru fast food, Burger King Impossible Burgers and McDonald's egg and cheese McMuffins. When we couldn't find a drive-thru, we relied on the loaf of bread and block of cheese, which we kept in the van's spacious cooler, and nibbled on cookies, chocolate, crackers and apples that I pulled from the back back I had stuffed with snacks. I packed two cases of Diet Coke for the caffeine to avoid going into truck stops and mini-marts for coffee.

Occasionally we'd run into the omnipresent Flyin' Js and Pilots to buy a forgotten item, but we were always careful, wore masks and used hand sanitizer afterwards. (For the record, I found the truckers pretty much took mask-wearing seriously. It was the general public who refused to wear them.)

Even though I was not entirely comfortable with our amount of exposure, I felt it wasn't that much more significant than we would be getting had we stayed home, what with running into the supermarket and local hardware store - where staff and shoppers wore their masks under their noses.

At least I believed that until we got pulled over by the Arizona Department of Public Safety.

We had just come down off the mountains into Phoenix. Instead of taking a straight route from Albuquerque to Flagstaff, we had turned south to avoid a snowstorm.  

Merging onto the highway from Route 87 towards Route 202, Jeff noticed the police car behind him, moments before the cop turned on his lights.

"Is he pulling me over?"

He pulled over alongside the highway and put the van in park. Patting his pockets for his wallet, Jeff said it was in the back on the countertop. Without thinking, I unbuckled my seatbelt, stood up and stepped through the door that divides the van's cab from the living area to fetch it. It took me a second, but as I stepped back into the cab and handed to Jeff. I realized my mistake. Two state troopers, already at the driver's side window, were staring at me in the doorway with alarmed expressions.

It was a critical mistake. A mistake so serious that had I been someone other than a privileged white woman in my 50s, I might have been shot. Instead, they told us we had been traveling too slow in a 65 mph zone.

Neither of the troopers wore masks.

While we waited for them to run Jeff's driver's license and registration, we fished out our masks and put then on. But when Trooper J. Milam returned, he was still not wearing a mask. "Where are you coming from?" I interrupted his questioning and asked him to put one on. To his credit, he complied. 

Trooper Milam and his partner - whose name I failed to get - peppered us with questions (which we answered) about where we were coming from (Pennsylvania, but we had stayed last night in New Mexico), where we were going (California), the reason for our trip (to visit my son), whether we had been drinking (We were not), whether we had any guns or knives on us (We did not, unless you count the kitchen knives packed with our camping gear.) and how much sleep Jeff had gotten the previous night (10 hours).

Not satisfied, the other trooper ordered my husband out of the van, "so we can figure out what is going on here."

Scared, I grabbed my phone and followed them in order to record the interaction. The trooper ordered me back in the van. "I have a constitutional right to record!" I said. "Ma'am, get back in the van!" he said.

"Tell her to get back in the van," he told my husband. 

"Lauri, get back in the van," Jeff said.

Things were escalating.

The trooper said he had a right in Arizona to order passengers back into the vehicle. I said I would get back into the van, but in protest of my constitutional right to record. I tried to keep recording from inside the van, but the light from the police car blinded me. 

For nine minutes, the trooper questioned Jeff from within two feet away without wearing a mask, looking for probable cause to search the back of the van. 

"What's this residue on the back of the van?" he asked.

Residue?

"I guess salt?" Jeff answered. "As we told you, we have been driving across the country. It was snowing in Pennsylvania and Ohio."

Each time he spoke, the trooper leaned in, probably so he could hear Jeff over the highway traffic - but so close that I imagined the spittle flying onto my husband's face and into his eyes.

After a half hour,  Trooper Milam handed us a warning for traveling 50 mph in a 65 mph zone. They asked us if we understood and had any questions. 

I told them that my husband had cancer and may be immunocompromised. That they may have risked his life with Covid.  I told them that was why we were driving across the country instead of flying. Because, until they pulled us over and issued us this bullshit warning, we felt it was the safer option. 

They nodded. They left.

As he put the van in gear, Jeff said, "You had to get the last word in, didn't you?" 

I said, "Hell yeah, I did."

“Residue” on our van