Does your life consist of one bad decision after another? Too much of the wrong kind of excitement. The drug-fuelled adventures that started by cliff-diving on windowpane acid and ended in a local jail. All these old memories came flowing back after a cousin of a friend had reminded him of that distant life. Now his friend had been deported to Mexico and is not allowed to return.
It turned out he was born in Mexico. It turns out when a person gets in trouble and puts their ankle monitor on a cat and takes off to Mexico it gets hard to get back in. It was a relief to know the friend was still left in Mexico. This is a person to whom the laws of karma don't apply. The friend was a thief who had robbed everyone blind. An opportunistic kleptomaniac with no remorse.
You would think that things would turn out poorly for a person like this but apparently this type of life leads to being the coach of a bikini football team in a beach town in Mexico. Seeing his cousin brought back memories of a different time and a different path. Through the estranged friend is how he made some of his connections. Normally Alex had better judgement but there was something exciting about not knowing what would happen. Getting in a vehicle with the friend was usually a brush with death or the aftermath of a situation gone wrong.
The cousin he had ran into was the polar opposite. Mexican people put family first, even with cousins like that. The cousin had taken a different path going to school, becoming a mechanic, and eventually buying his own shop. Alex had been real careful to put distance between himself and the old friend. There were often two other people involved in all of the misadventures before Alex became more reclusive.
One was a half Native American and the other half from the Philippines and the other a another crazy Caucasian who had moved to the Pacific Northwest from Georgia. Memories of that old life came back like a familiar smell that brings back old memories. The bowling alley was in this way the same. It reminded him of the old days. The last time he talked to his friend, ironically, they were supposed to meet at a bowling alley.
Another cousin who may or may not be related to the cartels picked him up that day. He had hardly known him. The other cousin showed up in a blue 1990 Cadillac with four doors. It was winter, he remembered, the window being rolled down. Upon further inspection he saw the car had one of the small spare tires on the rear. The cousin had brought one of his younger brothers along for the ride; he was riding shotgun. After a few miles down the road Alex noticed that the window didn't roll up because it was broken. He also noticed the ignition was broken.
When Alex asked about it the cousin came up with a story that seemed reasonable at the time. The cousin had spotted a police car and took off for no reason. After about an hour of a high speed chase that exceeded 130mph on a spare tire Alex decided his only option was to jump out. The entire chase Alex had his hands in the air. Once the cousin slowed down to about 30mph to take a corner Alex jumped out on a lawn of a corner house. The entire police force of a small town, as well as some Sheriffs and State Patrol, had been trying run him off the road or stop him.
When Alex jumped out a couple cars stopped off and arrested him. After about 6 hours of explaining that he barely knew the cousin, that was the truth he didn't even know his last name. Later on the younger brother had jumped out and eventually the driver wrecked into a trailer at a trailer park. Alex had somehow talked his way out of bigger charges and ended up with a $66 seat belt ticket. He started arguing that he had to take his seat belt off to jump out and realized he had better just shut up and take the ticket. It was about an 8 mile walk home. The only other excitement that night was being chased by wild dogs.
Apparently after being arrested the cousin had given them a fake last name of an in law that was an illegal immigrant. He was deported to Mexico. His dad apparently was a cartel guy. Anyhow the cousin got deported the dad went down to get him and they partied for two weeks in Mexico before coming home. They likely used the trip to bring more drugs back with them. Even the old cartel guys who heard the story would laugh at Alex. What a blast from the past, a brief revisiting of the glory days.
How things have changed. In Eastern Washington it started in school with brown bricks of weed full of seeds and stems. At that time it was $400 per lb or 448 grams. A quarter or 7 grams would sell for $25 at first but after a while just ounces were sold to a middle person to increase volume and reduce risk. It was going well until a trip North close to the Canadian border below Vancouver B.C.
Our connections there were through our Native American friend. We found a much higher grade of cannabis being sold for $20 per gram. This was actually grown in that area by the old hippies. After that the majority of the market came from Vancouver B.C. Before that September 11th smuggling from B.C. was just a matter of loading up a back pack and walking across the border. After the border shut down the growers moved here to Washington. Some of the best weed, still to this day, was grown outdoors in Eastern Washington. It was bred generation after generation outdoor in the area for more than 30 years.
Now pot is kind of boring; anyone over 21 can just go into a store and choose between hundreds of varieties. Not many people can say they grew over 2,500 plants in a season before any of the medical cannabis laws. It used to be exciting having either a trunk full of pot or piles of cash. Now it is mom-and-pop type operations. The quality has actually gone down since it became more legal. There is still the few and far between that can meet the same quality standards.
After the friend had ran off to Mexico Alex started learning more about the production end. He had been raised on a farm and had helped with the home garden his entire life. An girlfriend had given him his first seeds. Who knows where they came from it was long before seed banks. It was called Crown Royal Pink Hair Big Bud Kush. The pot turned out purple with pink hairs; it looked amazing. At that time a method was used that is similar to super cropping. Fishing weights were used to get the plants to grow along the ground instead of vertically. It looks like hundreds of smaller plants at the end of the year.
Over time Alex had grown thousands of strains and had bred several hundred of his own. The same obsession with learning a process would be applied. Japanese auto-makers use the term Kai Zhen developed by ancient sword makers, that means "constant improvement". We often pat ourselves on the back for how smart we are. We often forget that plants were smart enough to make themselves appealing to animals. It is no coincidence that cannabis is part of our lives.
It has the same cannibinoids that are found in our brains. Like other plants it has chosen us to aid its propagation. It is just one of many symbiotic relationships between plants and animals. A great example of this is certain plants that are being attacked release chemicals that attract beneficial insects, such as parasitic wasps.
The concept of talking to plants is not as far fetched as it seems. If someone is familiar enough with plants it is almost as if they are telling you how they want to be taken care of. Anyone can grow a pot plant with very little experience. Not a lot of people can grow to perfection. A perfect plant almost looks fake. The leaves will be dark green and have an almost wax like coat on the leaves. This same obsession foe plants was currently being focused on a game with unnatural movements. Learning that perfect stroke seemed to take the place of the obsession with growing plants. This was new even though it was a reminder from the past.
That smell of the lanes brought him back to the younger days. Bowling alleys and wood floored skating rinks seem to have a familiar smell. Hopefully his past wouldn't come out of the woodwork and cause that old reckless lust for that feeling of not being in control. He had escaped death several times over. The most recent brush was getting hit by a tanker truck and rolling a Toyota 4 runner across the highway. It was like watching a movie in slow motion. How he walked away without a scratch defied logic. He had never planned on living this long, and wasn't sure what to do next. All he knew was it was his turn to bowl. Looking back in time or planning a future would need set to the side. He couldn't hide out there forever but maybe time was just an illusion.