Surfing in Cambodia: a strain review

Today I decided to play mad scientist. What got me going was reading through a blog post from a grower who liked to mix and match his herbal bounty. He felt that just smoking one strain at a time was not sufficient. In order to get really high, he said, you had to mix up four or five different strains at one time and then fire it up.

Well, there are days that I am what I read and today I decided to take up this man's advice. Who am I to get in the way of science? After the family departed and I got my first round of housework out of the way I found myself with a bit of time to mess about in my sticker patched trunk, I dug around through my strain jars, read up on what the strains consisted of, broke them down and did my best to try to get to the bottom of how they were supposed to make you feel, just like I did earlier on with my Blue Dream experiment. That day I was the investigative reporter of my dreams, out there witnessing the fun and glory of Super Silver Haze and Blueberry strains, finding out what kinds of highs they were, all on their own. I thought, why stop there? I was just about to start to break those two strains down to their land race elements when I came across the above mentioned article. Why breed a new strain in the hothouse when I could make up things in the kitchen instead?

I have to admit that I was comforted knowing that my company does pretty much the same thing when they make up their oil products. They will take a five or so flower strains, grind them up and then gather together all that flowery goodness into one big CO2 processor and make the delicious oils we are known for all over Colorado. I know I will never go quite so crazy as that. I like to have small fun, instead. Instead, I take a look at my holdings, take out three or four kinds of cannabis that might go well together and then I take a bit of bud from each jar and grind them up. My Mendo Mulcher has been a radically grand toy to have around, especially for projects like this. Every time I mix up a batch the closet that I am squirreled away in goes from being a mere storage room for our clothes to a opulent, grand scented hashishin's den.

Today I smoked a sample of a blend I call "Surfing in Cambodia". It is a mix of Chemdog, Skunk No. 1 and a Phnom Penh strain I found awhile back at Verts in Fort Collins. I have to admit that I did use it on top of an earlier application of Viet Thai, a truly stellar, ceiling-less  sativa. The total sum of those herb pools mixed together was, to say in the least, very stony, indeed. What I experienced was what I have been looking for out of an herb for quite a long time. It had the high, open ceiling of a quality sativa, the goofy, smiley goodness of a fine hybrid and the happy, couch locky feeling that I have been craving out of an indica. I guess when you add up all the the strains in the above mix...Colombian, Mexican, Thai, Afghani, Cambodian...you should expect a nice compounded sativa head high and a righteous indica body stone. When I mixed it up I did give it some thought and it turned out just like I wanted. A short, pleasant moon shot and then a nice afternoon spent on the couch watching Tony Jaa.

I have a few others blends I have been messing with but have yet to sample. It's been fun accumulating land races and simple strains like Northern Lights, AK-47, Acapulco Gold and Maui Wowie. It's been like getting out ingredients in the kitchen and pulling together a nice pan of cookies. And just like those treats coming out of the oven, I get to be baked, too. Huzzah!

Salud!

Eye up in space

What a day! Not my day, per se. Mine's been nice and simple. A bit of housework, a run to recycling, a touch of weed sampling and now dinner coming up. Rather, I was thinking of the planet orbiter Cassini. Today it is ending it's career in the atmosphere of Saturn. All those years up there all alone, using the gravity of Titan to swing around the big gas giant, snapping a bounty of photos of rings, moons and our little planet Earth from oh so many millions of miles away.

Take a moment to read through the article below snatched out of the New York Times. Dig into it a bit and read the accompanying article that highlights 100 photos from the space mission. It was pennies on the dollar well spent, a program that was close to not going up at all. We are all so much the better for having sent that bit of metal out there to do our investigative work for us. No dogs, monkeys or people were harmed in the snapping of those photos.

Yeah, money well spent, US and European alike. We do all sorts of outrageous things with our government dollars. We wage war on drugs, we lock people up in prison, we pay the salaries of many Republican congressmen who go out of their way to impede the will of the people and we, unfortunately, send a lot of good folks off to fight little brown skinned people in far away foreign lands. But on the good side, we help restore lives after horrific natural events, we feed kids free lunches, we conserve land through public parks, we fund museums and libraries and through cool agencies like NASA we send elaborate devices out into the heavens to get the best photos of planets money can buy.

I thought it was a mighty big thing, as a boy, to watch the moon landings on an old black and white set, fuzzy connection and all. To put folks on the moon was awesome, something we have not duplicated or replicated on other moons since. While we're waiting to go again we send other kinds of crafts out into the solar system and beyond, just to see what we can see. Cassini was a by product of the Voyager program. That one passed by the big guy and we said, holy cow, we gotta see more of this!

Well, we did and here you go. To see the results of what that orbiter sent back is and will always be, I imagine, mind blowing and never to be duplicated. The magnificent, fear inducing winter storms swirling the atmospheric surface above Jupiter, the geysers on Enceladus sending off salt water plumes into space that settle back down onto the planet as alien snow, the many moons of Saturn weaving beautiful woven patterns into the planet's rings, is the stuff of fantasy. Our THC addled brains, always awake and thrilled to witness new and ever present wonders, could never, in a lifetime of toking, come up with the wonders of the imagery you are about to witness. This is no science fiction CGI, no movie studio magic, no work of pen or paint. This is the real deal.

So, fire up a bowl and get ready to have your imagination be fired up, too.

Thanks, Cassini for sending back all those mighty fine images. May your molecules find happiness there on the surface of Saturn.

Salud!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/14/science/cassini-grand-finale-saturn.html?emc=eta1

Tired, satisfied, happy

It has been two weeks now. 40 hour work weeks compressed into four days. Two hours worth of commuting each day. Up at five, home after six, sometimes as late as nine. But you know, I am happy as all get out. Don't want to say I am having fun, mind you. Said that once to my true love and we had to have a discussion about what it means to have fun at work But happy? Hell yes. Satisfied with my choice? Damn straight. Tired? Yeah, driving will do that to a man.

I know, though, that I made the right choice, and it goes beyond not finding interested folks who want to hire me cluttering up my email box. This feeling, this sense of certainty, takes me back to when I first started library work in the 80's. There was a passion about that work back then that drove me to take on difficult assignments, put in the long hours, move across state lines and do all the extra curricular stuff that was necessary to do not only to get ahead but to make my mark in the profession. I feel that that kind of passion again and know that it is possible to make a real go of it here in the cannabis industry. If these past two weeks are any indication of what is coming up, but more, what is possible, well, then, I am completely signed up, ready and totally on board.

Being a Distribution Driver has been a nice way to get my foot in the door of this industry, but what is even better is working for a firm that has folks out in the world singing praises about the product and clamoring for more. My territory for driving is essentially the entire state of Colorado. I have been on the road from day one. I learned all about what it took to handle manifests and travel apps from my ski board buddy Chas, but everything else I needed to learn about this job and our product I've had to get from initiative and verve. What is great, though, is that everyone I've met is happy on the job. Folks are kind, ready with help and answers to questions. I have a newish Suburu Forester to drive, an Iphone to navigate with and a hell of a great product to deliver. Half of what I do is driving, the other is being a happy face and good representative of the product. Every day I pinch myself. How can a guy get to be so lucky?

I start my day in the kitchen, helping out where I can until I get my stack of shipping manifests for the day. I have had a chance to witness the whole process of CO2 cannabis oil processing, from start to finish, and what a process it is. My side of the house has been mainly packaging. I get to blister seal cartridges of oil, label the packages and handle all the various parts of the process. While I stand there wrapping bundles or folding instruction sheets I get to stand in a space that, while radically well handled and ventilated by an industrial strength HVAC system, is suffused with cannabis odors and molecules. Call me a lightweight but I know that when massive pans of ground cannabis are decarbing in the oven or when large Pyrex dishes of oil are being heated and stirred to make them easier to handle while loading up syringes, I can't help but to get a little bit high. Last week, first week on the job, I had to take regular breaks from the building just to clear my head,. And to think I am getting paid to work! Wow!

But the best part of the job has been the driving. And while it generally means a solid ten hour day behind the wheel with the slight promise of an occasional break, it is something that I find invigorating and exciting all at the same time. I have a decent navigational GPS app that I call Reggie. With his voice softly purring in a strong British accent in the background, I manage to get from point A to point B and back again every driving day. I have been getting used to the roads in and around Denver but the big thrills have been hitting the highway for long trips. In the past two weeks I have gone as far south as South Pueblo, as far north as Steamboat Springs and have had a chance to cross the continental divide and take on the nifty little art town of Gunnison. I been up to Central City and Idaho Springs, old Rocky Mountain mining towns caught up in tourism and casinos.

I have had a chance to visit old dispensary haunts like Verts and Oasis, have run into old bud tenders who have moved around and moved up in the industry, have had a chance to see and explore tons of new and enticing dispensaries like Lucy Sky in Denver and Green Tree in Boulder. One of the best things to happen to my budget has been this job. I see and am surrounded by mota every day. Every run I make I get to chat with the dispensary owners about our products and before I go ask them about their latest, hottest flower products. I get to look at premium buds every day and every day I get to pass them by. Well, until two days ago. I found a strain that I had only read about that I had to buy. Viet Thai. A strain review ab out that will certainly come around later.

What has been such a gas, though, more than anything, is that I am finding that our product sells itself. I go around and drop off boxes with folks and they ask me, where have I been, we needed this yesterday but today will be fine! Patrons and customers can't get enough. The pen is built like a tank, the cartridges don't leak and the oil is super refined, pure and tasty. I can't wait to try it!

Yeah, I am super fine and beyond happy. I took the long road to get into the industry but I think, if we can continue to afford it, I would like to stick around awhile to see what happens. Right now I am making small money but I think if all goes well, if I continue to shine and make this product do so as well it will turn into something truly grand.

Fix your sights on your dreams and just maybe, your dreams will come true. Mine did, may yours come true as well.

Salud!