All the signs said stop. Seriously. No money, no vehicle, one tiny credit card that would barely pay for the trip. I suppose if I was with a major publishing house, they’d be paying for things like book signings; but as a tiny publisher author, it was all on me.
I had paid for the table, reserved the cheapest nearby motel that would take my dog. I told myself I would get there, high water or hell. I mean, come on, it was at the Stanley Hotel! You know, the one that inspired King’s The Shining??? The event was called Deadly Reality, and a bunch of us authors (mostly indie) were going to pile into that hotel and take over a couple of conference rooms and do this! I wanted to to do this. I kind of HAD to do this. I almost didn’t do this.
Money wasn’t the only issue. The vehicle my husband and I had been using all this time is a ’67 Ford Ranger. It has no 4WD. It has no 2WD. I wouldn’t even say it has limited slip differential. In a few inches of snow, one tire spins merrily while the truck goes any direction but forward. And here I am, living in the most snowy part of the contiguous continental United States, and just two days before we were supposed to leave, the roads were iced over.
A friend was going to loan us his vehicle, but at the last minute he got nervous and changed his mind. I don’t blame him. The poor little thing had already gotten stuck twice in the snow. But he could have let us know a LITTLE sooner, not two days before we were leaving! There was freakage of the massive sort. I begged everyone I knew for a loaner, no luck, and again NO blame. The roads were nasty!
Then, there was a minor miracle. Something warm happened in our area. The ice melted. The roads were clear! Our old truck (nicknamed Grop), could get us out of town with only a few minor repairs. Grop had carried us from Kansas to Montana, we had faith that he could make the trip. So I, my husband, and my Siberian Husky smooshed onto the bench seat and off we went with our luggage and my books in the truck bed.
As the friend who actually owns Grop has said, it’ll pass anything but a gas station. At about 8 mpg, we made our way toward Estes Park, Colorado. We stopped for the night in Sheridan, Wyoming. I got an alert from my credit card company. Did I approve a charge of $75.00 to some random mailing service? I texted back, “NO!”
Hint: NEVER TEXT “NO.” You’ll be stuck in Wyoming with an immediately cancelled credit card and no way to get the replacement until you get home. It was bad. There was panic. I texted friends asking for short-term loans. My husband finally managed to cash a small payroll check at one of those check cashing places after every bank and Walmart turned him down. So with $500.00 scraped together (the amount I would have had on my credit card), we continued toward Estes Park.
I was a nervous wreck and had no swag to speak of, but the signing went pretty well. I met a lot of people I only knew from Facebook and Twitter; other authors and their assistants and other book-world peeps. Everybody was wonderful! Anytime Author Promotions put the event together and they were seriously on their toes! When the food they had arranged for turned out not to be filling enough for a bunch of starving authors, they said f*ckit and ordered pizza and hot wings. 
I have to say, they really took care of us and I can’t wait to see them and some of my new friends again at their Crossroads event in Lawrence, Kansas, in July. (Yes, that’s a shameless plug for all involved. I’m getting better at making those.)
So, a few books signed and sold and feeling like maybe I’m finally a REAL author now and don’t have to drop my head and wiggle my toes when I say it aloud, we checked out of the Coyote Mountain Lodge the next morning and headed toward home. It was a long drive, and hubby was scheduled to work the next morning, so we were set on making good time. We only stopped for gas. Every two hours.
We left Cody, Wyoming before dark, knowing that under normal conditions we’d be home in less than two hours (or one tank of gas).
Conditions were NOT NORMAL. The snow had come back with a promise of retribution to us escapees. The Chief Joseph Highway was almost invisible. With much regret, we gave it a pass as darkness descended and headed toward Billings. The two hour trip was now going to be a four hour trip, or actually much longer since conditions were approaching white-out and the darkness was not helping the cockeyed headlights at all.
About 25 miles outside Cody, as we began to wonder if we should just use the night vision option on our phone cameras to steer by, there was a SHREEIIIIKKKK and a THUNK! And suddenly we were spinning off toward the side of the highway. My husband kept the spin to a semi-controlled skid and we were lucky enough to have shoulder to land on. But there we were, dead on the side of the road in a blizzard. Transmission? Huh, maybe! That was my guess. I hoped it was just a pin thing, or maybe a belt thing. No matter. We weren’t going anywhere. We sat freezing our butts off (under the dog’s blanket) until the tow truck arrived. Yay, roadside assistance insurance!
Now, let me make this situation absolutely clear: Dead truck. No money. No credit card. Two treacherous mountain passes between us and home. Also, in case you don’t know, Cody is not a big town and Cooke City is TINY. This isn’t the kind of place where you can rent a vehicle and then just drop it off at your destination. Tentative inquiries hinted that we MIGHT be able to get a taxi to the tune of two hundred bucks and no way in hell were they going to try it at night, in a snow storm. Even if we did get a taxi, we’d be in Cooke City with no vehicle at all and therefor no way to get groceries or anything else since those services are all in Cody or Gardiner or Billings.
To sum up: We were screwed.
Frantic Google searching found a Super 8 Motel in Cody that would let our dog in. (Side note and another minor plug here, they have a really great area for guests to walk their dogs and even provide baggies for picking up the poo.) Thanks to a few sold books and the dregs of my PayPal account, we could afford a night. We checked in and made sure the Ford was at a good mechanic’s place to be discovered in the morning.
The one thing my brain is trained to automatically do is this: Work The Problem. Somehow in my sleep my poor harried brain must have run down every possible path in every possible maze, because by the time I woke up it was clear that we were going to have to buy a vehicle. Something in a 4WD and hopefully of the little SUV variety, so that I can travel to book signings and stuff without having to leave a bunch of luggage in the open bed of a pickup. Something cheap. Something we could get with virtually no credit, and zero cash down.
So, while snow blew around Cody and my dog snoozed comfortably in the motel room, hubby and I did the shopping thing. We found a dealership that would work with us (Midway Auto and RV, talk to Joey), and a dear friend (who would probably prefer to go unnamed here) agreed to cosign. I owe that man any transplantable body part he chooses. Hubby and I now also owe our first born for the next several lives to a loan company.
After three days of haggling and finagling (and more begging friends and family for money for nights in the motel), we drove out of Cody yesterday with a 2008 Jeep. It’s a hard top. It has 4WD. It has a fantastic stereo system (hubby and I are both rabid audiophiles). It has a tow package and numerous oh-shit handles to grab if we ever go off road. It needs better tires, but it got us home.
Report from the mechanic babysitting Grop is that the transmission “shelled.” I call it “blew to smithereens.” He says that we got very, very lucky. Usually when this kind of thing happens, the vehicle goes flipping end over end. The fact that the snowstorm kept us at 30 miles an hour probably saved our lives. The mechanic is looking for a new transmission, and I think Grop’s owner has decided not to murder us, which is good.
Or is it? I can’t help but think of the headlines. “Soon-to-be-Famous Author Dies Tragically After Signing at Haunted Hotel.” That may have gotten me a few book sales, right?
Angela Pryce: Author, Muse, Mo'o 