Get a Little High With the Help From My Friends

Everybody's going to Dallas. Maybe so, but for Jason, Laura, and I, we were getting out of there and heading for the Oregon coast.

In the airport, I sat at the computer writing, deleting, and writing some more. You'd never know I was lonely, because I wasn't; I love alone time, especially when I travel and can get some work done without interruption. Yet...

I met these two artistic scientists when I had to squeeze into a middle seat of the airplane--which worried me at first. Think about it. I write true crime and I'd have hours to think about the crazy things that can happen. In the middle seat there's no way out.

Instead, within two minutes and before take-off, we were the life of the party (I know this is true because the flight attendants had to assess us more than once before coming back to party with us)(we were not drinking, darn it).

Everything was fair game in our conversations and maybe it was the fact we were late in boarding and worried they hadn't really fixed the ice-whatever-it-was-issue that caused us to nearly have to find a new plane or maybe we just play well together, but we laughed so hard most of the trip I had to find a bathroom as soon as we landed (remember, I was the middle seat, no way I was going to force my way through to the bathroom).

It started with the fact that I was the oldest and wondered out loud if they remembered the time you were terrified to have your phone on during the flight lest it break everything and well, that's the end of life as you know it. Now that I say this out loud, I realize the baby of the group (that's you, Jason) never answered. Hmm. Anyway, two of us laughed at that one.

Naturally, that led to the fact that we were terrorists and they should have searched our luggage for the one full of Samsung Galaxy Note 7's. Probably we shouldn't have said the "terrorist" word too loud (again, thank goodness we were sober), but it's a free country, right?

Speaking of terrorist, we were terrorized while flying. Here we were during the entire flight, smashed together like three campfire marshmallows and the guy in front of us had the audacity to be ALONE in his three-seat section--sitting in the center seat and not straying into the window or aisle seats, if yu can believe it. He didn't even offer to give us one of the seats so we could have some breathing space. And you know what happens to guys like that, don't you?

We had four hours to make jokes at this guy's expense--which only served to bring us closer. No, really, we had to whisper, it's a plane and he's right there, in front of us.

Of course we talked about the usual: what's your job, your partner, your education, your reason for Dallas and reason for Oregon...

One of us lived in a tent (hint, it's not me (yet)) while going to college and lived to tell about it and his newfound Lyme's Disease companion. Sadness. Except. Another one of us (not me) has actually done extensive scientific research on words-I-cannot-remember which is exclusive (or something) to ticks and all that come with them. So that was cool. Way cool.

She may have researched because she's a scientist (duh) or because her niece became quite fascinated with it for a minute; either way, we meshed. All of us.

Ticks led to hiking and, well, I love to hike, especially in Hawaii and Lake Tahoe... we talked about the places we were from and where we thought we were going.

You know where this is going, right? Right to Reno. What happens in Vegas stays there (unless you get pregnant) but what happens in Reno goes in my book because everything since January 4, 1994 somehow connects to The U-Haul Murders.

(Before we get serious, which we on the plane did not get, let me say that there was a lot that went on before, during, and after we talked about Reno, but that's best left in our imaginations. Just kidding, we were all over the place, we talked about everything. In fact, if I get permission, I will share some beautiful artwork with you...)

What do you do when you are squeezed between two outgoing fun-loving geniuses and you are... me? You talk about what you know. I mentioned that I was in school again, after getting a nanodegree as a full-stack developer, but "let's not talk about that since I still feel a bit like a fraud," instead, I'm a writer. True crime is how I'm labeled, but the truth is I have not yet finished my book.

Once I got onto the story, we talked for more than an hour because no one who knows the story can say what really happened in less time. No one. And yes, it was "we" because they both had things to say and new ideas came to light.

Instantly, they became my U-Haul Murders posse. It mattered to me how WE could present the book, since that's what I am struggling with more than anything.

Most of you know me personally (shout out to my 9 fans) and know that it kills me to have to leave such interesting things out of the book because as U-Haul Murders Prosecutor Dave Stanton says, "This is Fargo."

Wouldn't you know it, my posse developed a plan of action to make sure nothing was left out. They get it. Not to leave you hanging, but I'm keeping some of this secret for now, as I have a couple of U-Haul Murder interviews coming up next month and I do not want to risk influencing anything...

We exchanged contact information and my head was going crazy (in a good way). Our chat continued, sometimes talking about yet another ironic thing that happened (like the terribly ironic thing that happened to the Reno gun store owner and how it was found out--which took TWENTY YEARS to learn, by the way) in connection to the U-Haul Murders, sometimes about paralysis and ticks, and sometimes it was about South Korea and "key money."

Though the flight didn't add one word to the book, I did add two friends to my life and now all I want to do is write and publish so I can visit them again in twenty years and we can laugh about getting high together for a good cause.