5/3/16

New Hope Wellness

210 Edwards Village Blvd
Edwards, CO 81632

Gorilla Glue

The Vail Valley is a nice departure from the wild and crazy rat race of the Front Range. Sure, there are plenty of big rigs and U-Hauls, but those roads are starting to pay dividends from state taxes. They are quick! I have endured an 11 mile rush hour jaunt in Denver that took just as long. Many times. The trip to Vail is much more pleasant.

This area also has a particular air of snootiness to it too. The Kardashians were here recently and they brought an entire entourage with them. From what the locals tell me, the main job of the entourage was to keep a noticeable perimeter and broadcast their West-Egg hosts to everyone around.

Vail reminds me of a place that everyone in West Egg would have gone for vacation. Most roads up the mountain start at a gate. Commoners like me can only see the massive vacation homes from a distance. They jut from the mountainside in various style and shapes. The Buchannans would have definitely had a home there.

The locals, however, could care less. They are in the middle of a jog or a bike ride. For that weekend, the clean mountain air was interrupted by shouts of “Clear the way!” and “Please do not disturb! They are here on vacation!” or “give them privacy!” Daisy would have loved it.

Of course, squeaky clean means no drugs, m’kay. Pink Escalades deliver past the gates to the mountain retreats of the Kardashians and the Buchannons. The rest of us commoners have to get on the interstate and drove to the closest town, Eagle/Vail to buy our Rec.

The locals here even added an additional $5 transaction tax because why not. It is a $5 tax on your purchase, regardless of what you spent. You want to buy a pre-roll for $3? It will cost you $8. There are medical shops in this area, but youhave to go even farther, to Edwards and New Hope Wellness.

The Med shops are not very easy to find in Edwards, either. New Hope Wellness is stashed in the last bay of an industrial area. Etched into the side of the mountain, it is about as far away from the bright red brick retail stores and plazas that are begging for another Starbucks. It would be great if you needed some granite cut for your new bathroom. It’s not so great if you needed a bag of weed.

Once you find the address, you have to go through a head shop to the office in back to get there. Crazy. In another time, my alert level would have been on high. But here, I was intrigued by the situation in front of me. I was doing a legal transaction over a desk in a back office. It was like something out of Miami Vice. But it was legit.

New Hope Wellness had about ten varieties herbs to choose from. They were all stacked in a pyramid on the desk. I am always a sucker for Gorilla Glue, and closed right in on that. It has that Sour D sheen and that Sour D stank that always makes it top rank!

The nugs looked they were fully developed, but they were actually really light and had no density to them. They barely produced any fruit.

Then comes the packaging. New Hope Wellness sells their products prepackaged. I loathe prepackaged for a variety of reasons:

1. They are knocked about constantly before they get into your hands. Then there is the trip home, and all the potential for potholes creating popcorn buds and piles of shake in the bottom of the jar by the time you get home.

2. Plastic jars are bad for storing items for human consumption. There are many concerns with BPA leeching into what we consume. BPAs in babies and children are more likely to get breast, testicular, and prostate cancer. The six major baby bottle companies in the US voluntarily removed BPAs from their products. The FDA deauthorized BPA in 2013 (this is also where the FDA authorizes hempseed oil as a coating for food, if you are as geeky as me).

2a.    Plastic jars are made of oil. The cannabis industry is creating a new form of waste that is not exactly healthy. Cannabis packaging will make its way into more regulations as they come to pass in more jurisdictions across the country.

Water is an absolute necessity of humanity. We have prospered in the last 2 million years with out the use of plastic. Since then, 2,500,000 bottles of water are thrown away every hour. A glass and a tap would do just fine.

I would rather bring the same glass jar and refill it. It doesn’t matter what the container is made of, it is the fact that we don’t need to throw everything away. Containers can be used over and over again.

3. A pre-filled container is a crapshoot. These guys always have a display jar for you to look at. But is that really representative of what the employee in back filled the jars with? Were some containers all popcorn buds and others big buds? What if there were no big buds in the entire bottle? There is nothing worse than seeing one thing and going home with something different.

4. I like to see what I am buying. I am assured that I am getting good buds when I see the budtender weigh things out. They often give a bit extra too.

Basically, a premeasured bottle reminds me of something that happened to me when I was in high school. My friend wanted herb and the only person who was available at that time (it was Friday night in the mid-90s) was at a party. He seemed sketched about calling the dude, but he did it anyway.

Long story short, he got a bag of oregano. It was a bad scene. Now, every time I see a prefilled container I want to see the person selling it to me smoke it. I do not trust pre-filled containers. Nope, Nope, Nope. I consider it o be part of my PTSD from the drug war.

As for the smoke that was in that pre-filled jar? Well, it is smooth on the throat and crazy stoney. But then again, 7500 ft (2286 m) is high enough on its own, if ya feel me.

One final note:

If I was fortunate enough to have a ganja café, I would give a small discount to customers who did bring in their own containers. I was famous at a coffee shop I worked at for not giving my local customers paper cups. They hated it. But they knew that the environment of the café was much more appealing than the container they were drinking out of. It sickens me to go into a full café that has full to-go cups on every table. Those cups are indicators of the laziness of the barista who is supposed to be at the center of the most grassroots, socially conscious organization on the planet- the café.

 

Sources:

 

• http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=c02564e0482bef0d53ce694b9c589700&mc=true&node=se21.3.175_1300&rgn=div8
• http://www.fda.gov/Food/NewsEvents/ConstituentUpdates/ucm360147.htm
• http://humanorigins.si.edu/research/asian-research-projects/earliest-humans-china
• https://www.reusethisbag.com/reusable-bag-infographics/the-truth-about-plastic.php
• http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/05/AR2009030503285.html
• http://www.vaildaily.com/news/8779122-113/marijuana-retail-tax-eagle

9/4/16

Trenchtown

734 Sheridan
Denver, Colorado,
80214

Trenchtown is incredibly easy to find. Just north of the 285 on Sheridan Blvd, it is in one of those ungodly mini malls that dominate this American landscape. You are basically going from 65(ish)-0 in an exit. Then it is back to walking for a brief second. Then it is back to full speed when you get back into traffic. That is only for ¼ mile though, because the construction cones are quick to add a little snarl to your day. The whole positive experience could be erased if there wasn’t that sweet Cotton Candy Romulan in the trunk.

Cotton Candy Romulan

This Cotton Candy Romulon smells so sweet that it should be an air freshener. It looks like it would belongs in a potpourri mixture too. The light green buds are speckled with brown clumps. They are like mini corn: decent sized, but not really large.

This Cotton Candy Romulan smoke is barely noticeable. For an indica, it is amazingly light. It is stoney, too. But it is an indica. A  little taste of a good Indica should be adequate. You need to smoke an entire blunt of the Cotton Candy Romulan to get to the same level. Unfortunately,  I get a headache if I keep smoking it. I found a couple of premature seeds too. That is never good. Maybe it should be relegated to potpourri.

NYCD

Diversity is good, however, and I got other flavors as well. I got some NYCD, A.K.A New York City Diesel, since I raved about it so much the last time I was here.

The NYCD smells much woodsier. The buds are a bit bigger. The smoke is kind of mentholish. Unfortunately, on the other side, there is just nothing. It is like smoking air. And I get a headache. Strike four.

Los Portales

Fortunately, there is this taco shop next door called Los Portales. They make amazing tacos! They get my vote for best taco in Denver, for sure. In fact, it is worth it to go to trenchtown just to have some tacos after. (I am sure they would have Champions League on as well, which is just awesome.)

There is a familiar kind of feeling here. It is comfortable. There is a steady flow of traffic, but not too much for the solo waitress, who deftly shifted lanes between “Espanol” and “English”, “for here” and “to go”, and all of the other responsibilities that come with a busy restaurant. The staff is nice and did I mention the tacos? Those tacos definitely deserve an honorable mention.

Alas, after all that, the real world is back and it is crazy. It is a mess of traffic as the ecosystem hums along with their collective energy shuffling towards a clogged artery. Of course, the construction crew is there to hopefully make the road flow better. But I know better. And I don’t care because my belly is full, and I can handle shuffling along next to this  youngblood in a green Accord who is on the road to Washington to start his dream company, Grow Better.