des and Jay as drug traffickers

So I have many exciting stories and photos from my Southern road trip, but I have to start with an incident that happened just a few short hours from home because it's the most interesting. Btw Ohio, I hate your state.

The last leg of our trip: Louisville, KY to home. I'm the one doing the driving for this part, because Jay has done 75% of the trip driving. (I also drove from Savannah, GA to Raleigh, NC but that's it.) We stop at Taco Bell for what was among the worst food ever. I can say this with some authority because earlier in the trip we stopped at a different TB which had the best food ever, and I'll go into that later. But anyway as an example of the badness, my 7-layer burrito was layered horizontally instead of vertically. This means eating the burrito meant that I would get a few bites of pure lettuce, and then a few bites of pure sour cream, and then a few bites of pure guacamole, and then a few bites of pure beans. You fellow 7-layer-lovers out there know why I was unhappy.

Why the TB tangent? It's relevant, I swear. It becomes so in the part of the story when I am still driving, and without touching my eye, I suddenly got hot sauce in it. This is the only logical explanation, as my eye felt like it was on fire. Just my right side was gushing tears and burning like nobody's business, making it incredibly difficult to see. I've learned that being able to see is an important aspect of driving on the highway. Since my eye was on fire and I couldn't do anything about it, I (somehow) managed to pull off the highway. Jay got me some eye drops and a tshirt to wipe my eyes, and he took over the driving duties.

Just minutes after re-beginning the trip, a black sheriff's car rolls up behind us. Jay admits he was going a tiny bit over the speed limit, like maybe 5mph, so we shouldn't be getting pulled over. And in fact we aren't - right away, that is. The sheriff stays directly behind us as we change lanes a coupla times, and after about 5 kinda stress filled minutes, the lights go on and we make it to the side of the road. The sheriff walks up to the window and explains that we were speeding and blah blah blah. Then he asks for my license, because I'm the passenger (?) and tells us he's not going to cite us for speeding. But he still wants to run our licenses. Okey dokey, officer. Neither of us have anything to hide.

While he's taking his sweet time making sure we are not felons, another sheriff's car pulls up behind. Does this really require 2 patrol cars, Officer? They confer for a bit and the new sheriff walks up and asks Jay to step out of the car. Um, heart skip a beat, anyone? I send them telepathic messages that they aren't allowed to take my boyfriend away because I need him to get me home. Oh and also he hasn't done anything wrong. They are chatting behind our car, and even with both windows rolled down I can only catch snippets of the convo. Stupid loud highway right next to us, with traffic slowing down to watch the spectacle. But I hear noise noise Florida plates noise noise Michigan driver noise noise California passenger.

This might be a good time to divert and say that in my almost 2 months of living in MI I have not yet gotten a new license. Also, in the 2+ years I lived in NY I renewed my license by mail. So yeah, I still have a CA driver's license. And? The reason we went on this trip in the first place is to pick up the car that Jay just bought from his mom's neighbor. In Florida. Tada! Florida plates, Michigan driver, California passenger. Getting pulled over in Ohio.

So I keep straining to hear why 2 sheriffs are talking to my boyfriend on the side of a OH freeway. I hear them wrapping up, and one guy says he's gonna come talk to me. He approaches all uniformed and intimidating, and introduces himself as Deputy Somebody from the Drug Something. Drugs? Oh. We are clearly drug runners, which is apparently a very big fear in OH, especially when them foreigners come around. You know, anyone not from Ohio. He didn't spell all this out in such a simple way, but he did make it known that our cosmopolitanism is a "good" cover for drug trafficking. So he asked for my story to see if it matched up with Jay's. Of course it did, because us innocent folks just tell the truth. That whole "driving up from FL" thing that we did.

Then we had a conversation like this:
Anything we should know about in the car?
No.
Any illegal narcotics?
Definitely not.
Any weapons or firearms?
Definitely not.
Any large amounts of currency?
(This is the part when I couldn't help myself from laughing.) I wish we had large amounts of currency!
Well, you'd be surprised. Some people....
No, we bought this car for $300. We don't have any money at all. But if you need to, you can search through our stuff.

He asked me to open my backpack, which I did no problem. Opening the front pocket, I showed him the empty ibuprofen bottle and the nearly empty tylenol bottle. He waved them away and told me I can keep them. He didn't even have me open them or show him any details of my backpack. In some strange stroke of luck, he does not see the eye drops that I was using just minutes before. That would have raised some issues, methinks. He tells me that Jay has already consented to a search (which is a tiny fib on his part) and I nod because I have no problem with that. We aint got no drugs, no guns and no cash.

Sheriff goes back to talk to Jay, and they open the trunk. There is lots of poking around and sniffing, which makes me laugh because the trunk is very full (for reasons that I will go into in another story about this trip). I get my ID back, Jay gets back in the car after being told that he was only going 3-4 mph over the limit (hence the no ticket getting), and we go on our way. The only thing lost is 20 or so minutes, but we got a heck of a good story out of it. (Maybe if Jay is feeling rambunctious, he'll tell his side of the story which is slightly different than mine.)

So ha ha, they didn't catch us. Let the methtivities begin!