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Old School Arizona
- Thread starter mofeta
- Start date
You gotta pick a quiet time
You gotta pick a quiet time
I agree moving it might get some 'more air time', and alot of people readiing this will start vibratin, and things start movin around in the air, whooshing in your peripheral, old friends popping in out of nowhere....we're on the trail, hiking sticks ringing up the canyon,raven remindin you to be ..... oh yeah here I am.
MJ keep unraveling the yarn, been fun.
But I like mosying over to tha Arizonny section,my hood, smellin the woods after the rain,lookin at that great multi hued blue sky today with all those cumulous clouds teasing.
You gotta pick a quiet time
I agree moving it might get some 'more air time', and alot of people readiing this will start vibratin, and things start movin around in the air, whooshing in your peripheral, old friends popping in out of nowhere....we're on the trail, hiking sticks ringing up the canyon,raven remindin you to be ..... oh yeah here I am.
MJ keep unraveling the yarn, been fun.
But I like mosying over to tha Arizonny section,my hood, smellin the woods after the rain,lookin at that great multi hued blue sky today with all those cumulous clouds teasing.
T
THE PABLOS
Beautiful....love monsoon season.
* Small cargo parachutes would have helped auger those supplies in....fairly accurate....with less damage.
Great story telling....enjoying the read
* Small cargo parachutes would have helped auger those supplies in....fairly accurate....with less damage.
Great story telling....enjoying the read
...........Crazy Wisdom...........
...........Crazy Wisdom...........
From my friend Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche's book, Crazy Wisdom:
"The essence of crazy wisdom is that you have no strategized programs or ideals anymore at all. You are just open."
"Using obstacles as a way of working with life situations plays a very important part in crazy wisdom."
"Hope and fear largely constitute the rest of the emotions. Hope and fear represent the kind of pushing and pulling quality of duality, and all emotions consist of that."
...........Crazy Wisdom...........
From my friend Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche's book, Crazy Wisdom:
"The essence of crazy wisdom is that you have no strategized programs or ideals anymore at all. You are just open."
"Using obstacles as a way of working with life situations plays a very important part in crazy wisdom."
"Hope and fear largely constitute the rest of the emotions. Hope and fear represent the kind of pushing and pulling quality of duality, and all emotions consist of that."
monsoonys are rough on your girls
monsoonys are rough on your girls
MJ, how did you guys fare with the summer storms beating up your crop?
monsoonys are rough on your girls
MJ, how did you guys fare with the summer storms beating up your crop?
Great thread Madjag! Have you still got the Sacred seed skunk#1 package, the Afghani #1 pack looked too cool.Wish i was around to experience the 70's. Keep the story's coming..Can't wait for the book. From your experience with the skunk #1, which pheno's where your favo's? Can you describe the smoke a bit? Thanks,Mack.
Monsoon Challenges
Monsoon Challenges
Except for late Monsoon rains, say at the August/September line, the rains were not harmful. Once the flowers were large and heavy, and the plants had stretched to max height, it could knock them down in a big storm. It happened once to a select number of plants that were in an open space with no nearby support. We tried a series of ropes tied between trees for the areas that did not have bushes or other native plants that would act as support if the weed drooped over from rain.
The rope network was perfect. We took it down once harvest time approached, though we kept it close by just in case.
Monsoon Challenges
Except for late Monsoon rains, say at the August/September line, the rains were not harmful. Once the flowers were large and heavy, and the plants had stretched to max height, it could knock them down in a big storm. It happened once to a select number of plants that were in an open space with no nearby support. We tried a series of ropes tied between trees for the areas that did not have bushes or other native plants that would act as support if the weed drooped over from rain.
The rope network was perfect. We took it down once harvest time approached, though we kept it close by just in case.
SS Skunk#1 Report Coming Soon
SS Skunk#1 Report Coming Soon
I'll have it for you in a couple of days.
Label:
SS Skunk#1 Report Coming Soon
I'll have it for you in a couple of days.
Label:
spiralofeyes
Member
Awesome...
I tried to imagine what it would be like to have something like that in your hands in the late seventies/early eighties...commercial hybrid cannabis. Did you realize it was the dawning of a new age?
I tried to imagine what it would be like to have something like that in your hands in the late seventies/early eighties...commercial hybrid cannabis. Did you realize it was the dawning of a new age?
Dawning of the New Age
Dawning of the New Age
Sort of...we knew, after reading Mel Frank's book on growing, and then Robert Clarke's Marijuana Botany, that just as we had always high-graded the seeds from the best weed our dealer friends were importing from Mexico or Colombia, we could also jump ahead of the curve by purchasing seeds that had been selected and then bred for specific qualities like stability, potency, and yield. Knowing that Sacred Seeds represented this advance made the decision easy to make. Also, Afghani Indica also was not common by any means, only hash. The chance to get strains incorporating such indica was totally clear.
And we're so glad that we did.....
Dawning of the New Age
Sort of...we knew, after reading Mel Frank's book on growing, and then Robert Clarke's Marijuana Botany, that just as we had always high-graded the seeds from the best weed our dealer friends were importing from Mexico or Colombia, we could also jump ahead of the curve by purchasing seeds that had been selected and then bred for specific qualities like stability, potency, and yield. Knowing that Sacred Seeds represented this advance made the decision easy to make. Also, Afghani Indica also was not common by any means, only hash. The chance to get strains incorporating such indica was totally clear.
And we're so glad that we did.....
Sacred Seeds Skunk #1 Smoke Report - 1981
Sacred Seeds Skunk #1 Smoke Report - 1981
Kind thanks to Sam S and RCC for facilitating a worldwide, mind-altering move so great that no one would have even guessed at the time how far reaching its consequences would become.
I call it crowdsourcing the smoke report…..
The HiLiter topless bar was located in a quiet family neighborhood on north 12th Street in Phoenix just south of Camelback. It wasn’t the typical seedy neighborhood in which most topless bars were found and it wasn’t even on a busy street that would generate walk-in traffic. A small, non-neon sign on a medium-sized building was all you’d see if you drove by. Because the parking was in the back you could easily slide right on by up 12th Street and never even know that such a cosmic place existed. It was a unique, high-quality topless bar that did not attract an aggressive, stupid crowd.
The HiLiter opened, strange to me as well, in 1962. That makes it one of the earliest topless dance clubs anywhere. It was the first topless dancer club I had visited that had a DJ in a booth spinning the tunes for the dancers. His mastery of disco and soul music meant truly fine rhythms and beats for the ladies to groove on. During its heyday from 1974 to 1985 I enjoyed its unique atmosphere and talented young ladies. Other clubs might have had more space, more dancers, and louder music, but no club had Tina or any other of the 5 or 6 exotic dancers I had the pleasure to watch and converse with over those years. Their dancing was several steps above the other clubs’ girls. They liked to smoke herb as well….
Why was it such a special dance club? The HiLiter’s dance stage was in the center of the darkened room with the small, round tables and wall-backed booths creating a U-shape around it. This dance stage was a peninsula about 20 feet long and 8 feet wide jutting out from the dark back wall that lead to the dancers’ prep room. A small bar, just wide enough for a glass or bottle on a napkin, circled this tight dance stage and facilitated those who liked to sit close. If you sat at the bar you’d be right at the dancer’s feet. Pole dancing was not prevalent yet, thankfully, so if a lady got on this stage she had to dance, not just swirl around and act sexy. Similarly there were no table dances to distract the crowd. You came to watch great dancers do some dynamite, erotic dance moves. And they sure did.
Tina was legendary and everyone’s favorite. I humbly admit that I learned to Disco dance by watching her moves and practicing them at home. Yes, way! Obviously not all of her moves translated into a man’s dance style, however she had so many moves down solid that at least 25% were good for either men or women. She could have easily moved to Vegas or New York and struck it big, however she loved the West and the desert heat made her life perfect. Dancing til midnight and then walking outside in Phoenix summer heat, maybe 105 degrees at that time, has a charm all of its own. It feeds the body in a special way, especially a body that knows how to move.
One fine autumn evening in 1981 my fellow Wizard Don Wand and I stopped by the HiLiter on a special mission. We wanted to see what the new harvest of Sacred Seeds Skunk #1 could do to an ordinary person who might think of themself as an experienced sinsemilla smoker, but in our humble view was not even close to being one. It wasn’t meant to be cruel by any means, just a giant, fun lab test in the field that would serve to entertain us as well. Our friend Dennis had the inside line with the dancers so we decided to test it on a few of them. We knew that they would be devastated and I have to admit we had a secret agenda as well. If we could impress the dancers, we might get a date. Yes daddy.
Dennis met us inside and we sat a table that was right next to the dancer’s entrance into the bar. A few beers later and Dennis’ close squeeze came striding in. She recognized D and sat down on his lap laughing and smiling. It was the beginning of her shift and she gladly entertained his suggestion to have a few tokes to get her ready. She signaled another dancer and D and I slipped out the back and into the men’s bathroom with the ladies. Like many old-time, down-to-earth clubs, the bathroom door’s lock was broken so I wedged my feet against the door just in case some drunk came bumbling in. I pulled out a fairly thin needle joint, not very impressive compared to the current fatties most guys were wielding, and lit it up. The dancers each got 2 good tokes, the kind you have to struggle to suck out of such a pinner, before the knock on the door came and Tina’s voice was heard outside. They moved me and let her in. Tina was working behind the bar this shift and in charge of the whole scene concerning the dancers. She was very pissed off that we were smoking one in the john, mumbling angrily and telling Dennis and I to get out.
We moved out of the bathroom and into our usual booth against the wall just off center stage. The booths were raised off the floor about 10 inches and let us see above the heads of all the other patrons and it put us about 20 feet from the tip of the peninsula-shaped stage where we had a perfect view of the dancer as well as the entire crowd. 5 minutes later Dennis’ girlfriend came marching out of the back with a big grin pasted across her face. The other dancer followed about 10 feet behind her as they sauntered between the tables and around the stage toward the steps that lead up to the dance floor. As Jeannie, Dennis’ girl, turned the corner of the stage and continued on, she walked straight into a round table and knocked it over, spilling numerous drinks and bottles and tumbling over it herself in one smooth motion. I could hardly believe my eyes. The commotion that ensued involved semi-drunk patrons yelling, Tina jumping in to rescue the girls, and DW and I flying out the back door to the parking lot and a quick getaway. Suffice it to say that we didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Tina. I think she let the whole situation rest because when she saw us the next time she didn’t bat an eye. Either she had a few puffs herself after she kicked us out of the men’s room or just understood that Jeannie was a lightweight. My test had passed with flying colors to the same degree that Jeannie had failed. Or was it failure? She learned something that day, didn’t she? Beware of Wizards bearing gifts…..
A similar test was enacted a few weeks later in another public place where we carefully left a pin joint in a spot that a hipster would most likely see it. Sure enough, one of the first guys to pass by found it and fired it up. Numerous false starts with this method are common because it leaves open the opportunity for the test subject to pocket the gift and smoke it later. The proper combination of locale and local color is necessary to ensure, fairly quickly, a solid test. In this case the fellow had a few hits and continued on without a worthy reaction. Oh well. My Colombo friend Gerardo used this method with great success countless times in Manhattan as a source of perverse amusement. He knew the power of his herb and didn’t need a smoke report. Come to think of it, neither did we. I guess that means we really are Deviatos, doesn’t it.
So the smoke report reads like this:
Sacred Seeds Skunk #1
•Smooth mouth, easy on the palate
•Expands in the lung, though not cough producing unless overtoked
•Not a sleeper weed. You get what you paid for immediately:
devastatingly potent, disorienting, but without paranoia because…..
•The strong Indica body effect within first minute causes loss of
motor control and focuses energy toward the physical, away from
the cerebral
•Surreal psychoactivity from the sativa Haze roots follows quickly
leaving the unprepared out to fend for themselves. Do not operate
motorized equipment or attempt to fly an airplane.
My personal experience with SK #1 was very satisfying. I had smoked amazing herb over the years preceding that first Sacred Seeds harvest including Oaxacan, Pueblan, Guerreran, Sinaloan, Santa Marta Gold, Santa Marta Red, Jamaican, true Thai stick, and of course my friend Gerardo’s black Colombian nicknamed “Candybar”. I was, and am, a lightweight in the sense that I never sought out the ceiling of a weed. Reefer for me was like ride, a journey. I didn’t care how fast or long the journey was, just that it was excellent in its characteristics. Thus I tailored my intake to the situation. Nowadays, because of a few characters that I hang out with who are just the opposite and smoke as much of the best herb they can find, I have explored the ceiling for a number of weeds and can honestly say that I enjoy doing so under the right set and setting. It just took a few more years for me to get there.
In the early 1970’s I remember walking down the street in my small northern Arizona town, past several cowboy bars, and gazing into them incredulously. What a loud and crazy scene. I said to my Colombo friend Gerardo, upon looking into the open door of Rusty’s Purple Sage bar and lounge, “Can you imagine going in there and having a drink at the bar?” Instantly he’d be walking in and I would follow, mostly out of friendship and partly out of unconscious dare. I had hair well below my butt and he had an Afro as big as any soul brother you’ve ever seen, except that Gerardo had deep brown-skin and was ½ French and ½ Colombian. Being high at moments like that made me nervous and I know Peter was just pushing me past my limits like a good weed brother should. When he sampled the Skunk #1 harvest a few years later he said, “Not bad, not bad” and proceeded to chain smoke an ounce in a week or less. I guess that was the final seal of approval for me. Johnnie loved his herb….
Sacred Seeds Skunk #1 Smoke Report - 1981
Kind thanks to Sam S and RCC for facilitating a worldwide, mind-altering move so great that no one would have even guessed at the time how far reaching its consequences would become.
I call it crowdsourcing the smoke report…..
The HiLiter topless bar was located in a quiet family neighborhood on north 12th Street in Phoenix just south of Camelback. It wasn’t the typical seedy neighborhood in which most topless bars were found and it wasn’t even on a busy street that would generate walk-in traffic. A small, non-neon sign on a medium-sized building was all you’d see if you drove by. Because the parking was in the back you could easily slide right on by up 12th Street and never even know that such a cosmic place existed. It was a unique, high-quality topless bar that did not attract an aggressive, stupid crowd.
The HiLiter opened, strange to me as well, in 1962. That makes it one of the earliest topless dance clubs anywhere. It was the first topless dancer club I had visited that had a DJ in a booth spinning the tunes for the dancers. His mastery of disco and soul music meant truly fine rhythms and beats for the ladies to groove on. During its heyday from 1974 to 1985 I enjoyed its unique atmosphere and talented young ladies. Other clubs might have had more space, more dancers, and louder music, but no club had Tina or any other of the 5 or 6 exotic dancers I had the pleasure to watch and converse with over those years. Their dancing was several steps above the other clubs’ girls. They liked to smoke herb as well….
Why was it such a special dance club? The HiLiter’s dance stage was in the center of the darkened room with the small, round tables and wall-backed booths creating a U-shape around it. This dance stage was a peninsula about 20 feet long and 8 feet wide jutting out from the dark back wall that lead to the dancers’ prep room. A small bar, just wide enough for a glass or bottle on a napkin, circled this tight dance stage and facilitated those who liked to sit close. If you sat at the bar you’d be right at the dancer’s feet. Pole dancing was not prevalent yet, thankfully, so if a lady got on this stage she had to dance, not just swirl around and act sexy. Similarly there were no table dances to distract the crowd. You came to watch great dancers do some dynamite, erotic dance moves. And they sure did.
Tina was legendary and everyone’s favorite. I humbly admit that I learned to Disco dance by watching her moves and practicing them at home. Yes, way! Obviously not all of her moves translated into a man’s dance style, however she had so many moves down solid that at least 25% were good for either men or women. She could have easily moved to Vegas or New York and struck it big, however she loved the West and the desert heat made her life perfect. Dancing til midnight and then walking outside in Phoenix summer heat, maybe 105 degrees at that time, has a charm all of its own. It feeds the body in a special way, especially a body that knows how to move.
One fine autumn evening in 1981 my fellow Wizard Don Wand and I stopped by the HiLiter on a special mission. We wanted to see what the new harvest of Sacred Seeds Skunk #1 could do to an ordinary person who might think of themself as an experienced sinsemilla smoker, but in our humble view was not even close to being one. It wasn’t meant to be cruel by any means, just a giant, fun lab test in the field that would serve to entertain us as well. Our friend Dennis had the inside line with the dancers so we decided to test it on a few of them. We knew that they would be devastated and I have to admit we had a secret agenda as well. If we could impress the dancers, we might get a date. Yes daddy.
Dennis met us inside and we sat a table that was right next to the dancer’s entrance into the bar. A few beers later and Dennis’ close squeeze came striding in. She recognized D and sat down on his lap laughing and smiling. It was the beginning of her shift and she gladly entertained his suggestion to have a few tokes to get her ready. She signaled another dancer and D and I slipped out the back and into the men’s bathroom with the ladies. Like many old-time, down-to-earth clubs, the bathroom door’s lock was broken so I wedged my feet against the door just in case some drunk came bumbling in. I pulled out a fairly thin needle joint, not very impressive compared to the current fatties most guys were wielding, and lit it up. The dancers each got 2 good tokes, the kind you have to struggle to suck out of such a pinner, before the knock on the door came and Tina’s voice was heard outside. They moved me and let her in. Tina was working behind the bar this shift and in charge of the whole scene concerning the dancers. She was very pissed off that we were smoking one in the john, mumbling angrily and telling Dennis and I to get out.
We moved out of the bathroom and into our usual booth against the wall just off center stage. The booths were raised off the floor about 10 inches and let us see above the heads of all the other patrons and it put us about 20 feet from the tip of the peninsula-shaped stage where we had a perfect view of the dancer as well as the entire crowd. 5 minutes later Dennis’ girlfriend came marching out of the back with a big grin pasted across her face. The other dancer followed about 10 feet behind her as they sauntered between the tables and around the stage toward the steps that lead up to the dance floor. As Jeannie, Dennis’ girl, turned the corner of the stage and continued on, she walked straight into a round table and knocked it over, spilling numerous drinks and bottles and tumbling over it herself in one smooth motion. I could hardly believe my eyes. The commotion that ensued involved semi-drunk patrons yelling, Tina jumping in to rescue the girls, and DW and I flying out the back door to the parking lot and a quick getaway. Suffice it to say that we didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Tina. I think she let the whole situation rest because when she saw us the next time she didn’t bat an eye. Either she had a few puffs herself after she kicked us out of the men’s room or just understood that Jeannie was a lightweight. My test had passed with flying colors to the same degree that Jeannie had failed. Or was it failure? She learned something that day, didn’t she? Beware of Wizards bearing gifts…..
A similar test was enacted a few weeks later in another public place where we carefully left a pin joint in a spot that a hipster would most likely see it. Sure enough, one of the first guys to pass by found it and fired it up. Numerous false starts with this method are common because it leaves open the opportunity for the test subject to pocket the gift and smoke it later. The proper combination of locale and local color is necessary to ensure, fairly quickly, a solid test. In this case the fellow had a few hits and continued on without a worthy reaction. Oh well. My Colombo friend Gerardo used this method with great success countless times in Manhattan as a source of perverse amusement. He knew the power of his herb and didn’t need a smoke report. Come to think of it, neither did we. I guess that means we really are Deviatos, doesn’t it.
So the smoke report reads like this:
Sacred Seeds Skunk #1
•Smooth mouth, easy on the palate
•Expands in the lung, though not cough producing unless overtoked
•Not a sleeper weed. You get what you paid for immediately:
devastatingly potent, disorienting, but without paranoia because…..
•The strong Indica body effect within first minute causes loss of
motor control and focuses energy toward the physical, away from
the cerebral
•Surreal psychoactivity from the sativa Haze roots follows quickly
leaving the unprepared out to fend for themselves. Do not operate
motorized equipment or attempt to fly an airplane.
My personal experience with SK #1 was very satisfying. I had smoked amazing herb over the years preceding that first Sacred Seeds harvest including Oaxacan, Pueblan, Guerreran, Sinaloan, Santa Marta Gold, Santa Marta Red, Jamaican, true Thai stick, and of course my friend Gerardo’s black Colombian nicknamed “Candybar”. I was, and am, a lightweight in the sense that I never sought out the ceiling of a weed. Reefer for me was like ride, a journey. I didn’t care how fast or long the journey was, just that it was excellent in its characteristics. Thus I tailored my intake to the situation. Nowadays, because of a few characters that I hang out with who are just the opposite and smoke as much of the best herb they can find, I have explored the ceiling for a number of weeds and can honestly say that I enjoy doing so under the right set and setting. It just took a few more years for me to get there.
In the early 1970’s I remember walking down the street in my small northern Arizona town, past several cowboy bars, and gazing into them incredulously. What a loud and crazy scene. I said to my Colombo friend Gerardo, upon looking into the open door of Rusty’s Purple Sage bar and lounge, “Can you imagine going in there and having a drink at the bar?” Instantly he’d be walking in and I would follow, mostly out of friendship and partly out of unconscious dare. I had hair well below my butt and he had an Afro as big as any soul brother you’ve ever seen, except that Gerardo had deep brown-skin and was ½ French and ½ Colombian. Being high at moments like that made me nervous and I know Peter was just pushing me past my limits like a good weed brother should. When he sampled the Skunk #1 harvest a few years later he said, “Not bad, not bad” and proceeded to chain smoke an ounce in a week or less. I guess that was the final seal of approval for me. Johnnie loved his herb….
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Sacred Seeds Skunk #1 Phenos
Sacred Seeds Skunk #1 Phenos
I just used the Wayback Machine to go back and check my notes on that year. The photo I posted in the smoke report was the Indica pheno that seemed to dominate our seed stock. Maybe it was what RCC intended and was what they considered the better, true-breeding pheno. I'll ask him later.
My onsite journal from that year was a simple pocket-sized notebook, the type with the spiral binding on top. I was amazed to read that our last Indie phenos were taken on November 5 that year. It had already snowed 2" two weeks before on the canyon rim areas that were 1600 feet above our garden in the canyon bottom.
Notes also showed how many of our close friends were paid to come in for 7-10 day stretches as pruners. The max was 9 people down there at one point. We brought in two more 8x10 foot Coleman Classic tents just for protecting our harvested trees in case of rain. When it snowed above, on the canyon mesas, it rained below, on us. Coooold raaaain. Rain that could destroy a lot of trichomes.
Most of the Indica phenos were 6-7 feet tall and fit in nicely because they were skinny with long, uninterrupted colas formed on the 4-6 side branches we had shaped by early tip pruning. A few of the other varieties we had going just for mix, like a Santa Barbara sinse from that era that had taken northern Arizona by storm the year or two before, were up to 10 feet tall and had to be cut to fit the tent. That strain smelled like pure Pine.
Our last day in the garden that harvest was November 14, pretty late when you consider it was Mogollon Rim country with elevations ranging from 4500'-6800'. We still left 28 girls behind that day that were picked up later that month. I dug out my photos and will pay to have 50-100 of them professionally scanned at 3000 DPI. I used a German Voightlander Bessamatic that my father-in-law had given me as a wedding gift. He designed the very first SLR cameras for the Japanese by reverse-engineering German cameras and finding ways to improve, and thus patent, his changes. Nikon execs used to visit his home and bow deeply. He had somewhere in the vicinity of 100 cameras and lens.
My Bessamatic became a casualty of 1980's parties and walked away, but I still have the skinny, adjustable long-range lens that came with the camera. If you have a Voightlander, let me know and I'll send it to you. I like to see objects from the past move on in new ways, serving new passions.
Sacred Seeds Skunk #1 Phenos
I just used the Wayback Machine to go back and check my notes on that year. The photo I posted in the smoke report was the Indica pheno that seemed to dominate our seed stock. Maybe it was what RCC intended and was what they considered the better, true-breeding pheno. I'll ask him later.
My onsite journal from that year was a simple pocket-sized notebook, the type with the spiral binding on top. I was amazed to read that our last Indie phenos were taken on November 5 that year. It had already snowed 2" two weeks before on the canyon rim areas that were 1600 feet above our garden in the canyon bottom.
Notes also showed how many of our close friends were paid to come in for 7-10 day stretches as pruners. The max was 9 people down there at one point. We brought in two more 8x10 foot Coleman Classic tents just for protecting our harvested trees in case of rain. When it snowed above, on the canyon mesas, it rained below, on us. Coooold raaaain. Rain that could destroy a lot of trichomes.
Most of the Indica phenos were 6-7 feet tall and fit in nicely because they were skinny with long, uninterrupted colas formed on the 4-6 side branches we had shaped by early tip pruning. A few of the other varieties we had going just for mix, like a Santa Barbara sinse from that era that had taken northern Arizona by storm the year or two before, were up to 10 feet tall and had to be cut to fit the tent. That strain smelled like pure Pine.
Our last day in the garden that harvest was November 14, pretty late when you consider it was Mogollon Rim country with elevations ranging from 4500'-6800'. We still left 28 girls behind that day that were picked up later that month. I dug out my photos and will pay to have 50-100 of them professionally scanned at 3000 DPI. I used a German Voightlander Bessamatic that my father-in-law had given me as a wedding gift. He designed the very first SLR cameras for the Japanese by reverse-engineering German cameras and finding ways to improve, and thus patent, his changes. Nikon execs used to visit his home and bow deeply. He had somewhere in the vicinity of 100 cameras and lens.
My Bessamatic became a casualty of 1980's parties and walked away, but I still have the skinny, adjustable long-range lens that came with the camera. If you have a Voightlander, let me know and I'll send it to you. I like to see objects from the past move on in new ways, serving new passions.
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Love this thread! Your pic, indica pheno skunk#1 has lovelly long cola's. the one to the right is a monster, stacking all the way. Interesting to see the sativa dom, if anyone has a pic.You where super lucky to run so many of the sacred seeds first batch, wish i could try that sk#1 now, maybe sams and rcc will do a redux, skunk#1 v2, yes please!
keep the info coming Madjag! Mack.
keep the info coming Madjag! Mack.
Hiding In Plain Sight
Hiding In Plain Sight
Cop stories abound when you’re talking with long-time professionals. Some tales get downright sad if you’re the actual subject one of one of these stories. The archetypal cat and mouse, cops and robbers game goes back to the time of Adam, I’m sure; however in our modern world of governments enforcing their morality upon the people, especially when victimless “crimes” are involved, the game at times seems even more endless.
This version of the game started in the early 1900’s when certain government and business elites decided to make a whole lot of things that make people feel good into illegal substances. First the old patent medicines that contained opiates, then weed, then alcohol. Smart, wealthy men like Joseph Kennedy jumped right into the game and made millions by being successful smugglers. Others like Harry Anslinger became famous by inciting fear in white folks concerning the evils of marijuana and heroin being forced upon young whites by black pushermen. Eventually alcohol prohibition fell apart, largely due to more government officials in cohorts with rich businessmen who decided it was time to be on the “right” side of the law. Why smuggle gin from Canada or rum from the Caribbean when you could own your own distilleries and retail outlets? Today we see the results: decades of lives impacted by laws that serve only the regime and wealthy businessmen.
If drugs were totally legal and treated as a health issue, a social issue, then law enforcement wouldn’t have it so easy. They’d have to go after real criminals like bank robbers, thieves, killers, organized crime and the rest of the criminal fringe of society. Violence often rules in these worlds so the mortality rate among law enforcement would go up radically. Citizens like ourselves, who hurt no one, injure no one else’s property, and are involved only in transactions between adults who make their own choices, would be left to live their lives peacefully.
Some analysts predict that this will be the future of marijuana once it becomes legal, that it will be controlled by the government in a very direct way. Sounds about right, however it’s a lot easier to grow a few plants for your own needs than it is to bottle up all the beer, wine, or whiskey that you might want over the course of a year. Personally I think that most smokers will simply become consumers, trying and buying the multitude of varieties that will inevitably make up the marketplace, much like Cali and Colorado dispensaries offer now. Those of us that agree with Uncle Ed’s quote will happily continue to fly on our own supply.
Over the years I’ve had to live a double life at times. As a young man the intrigue definitely sucked me in and required that I become an actor and master the art of disguise. This lifestyle had many perks, however many costs were levied as well. Being surreptitious and sneaky was a way of life at times; you simply had to do it in order to avoid arrest, and thus being an expert at hiding in plain sight became the name of the game.
Was it worth it? Oh yeah….But I don’t live in the past even though I can recall it with amazing detail and zeal. Be it difficult times or living on easy street, life is a gift. Even my time in the monastery, as restrictive as it was, taught me in ways I would have never imagined. So here are a few events and situations that stand out concerning how to appear one way when you are actually another. If you follow this path for very long, do your best to remember who you really are. It’s easy to forget.
- Chogyam Trungpa
Shipping the Sacred Herb from the southwest to New York was an interesting challenge. At least it was on our home turf and didn’t involve international airspace, radar, and ugly custom jet intercepts. How you did it, if you planned for as many contingencies as possible, was within your direct control. Acts of God and Nature could add factors that included the unpredictable, however even those were possible to prepare (to a degree) for if you put a lot of effort into your play and didn’t get hooked on easy success. Nothing like a string of easy successes, based upon loose planning and preparation, to suck a person or team into thinking they had it made. Many players have gone down because they confused luck with skill.
I’ve seen plenty of car moves fail just because there was no back up if someone opened the truck and looked in, let alone smelled the big pile of luggage within that had bundles of stinky homegrown carelessly loaded up. WTF, just throw it all into the trunk, look cool, and drive safely within the speed limit? No one will suspect a thing! Right, maybe in 1965….except that by 1975 New Mexico became the all-around champion of profiling and questioning when simple Interstate or State highway stops were made by patrolmen. Two brothers I knew very well, long-time personal friends, had sent out two totally distinct, unknown-to-each-other loads moving east through New Mexico. Both loads were in separate cars and by coincidence were stopped and questioned at a simple road block on the same day. Such odds. NM State Police began tossing up these quicky road blocks so that they could either wave you by or have you stop to answer a few questions. Both drivers were singled out by the profiling, later found to be primarily the presence of Arizona plates on newer sedans driven by young persons in their 20’s. This profile then signaled the initial tier of questions; “where were they going?”, “what did they do for a living”, and “do you have any illegal drugs in your vehicle?" Not the sort of questions I ever want to answer on the roadside, how about you?
Needless to say the profiling merely brought the drivers into a legal sphere of fear, often resulting in stuttering, wild-eyes, or lack of composure that indicated that they “might be hiding something”. Later, in jail, the two drivers discovered that they were both from Tempe and had a lot more in common than they would ever believe was possible. They shared a little more nervous talk and soon realized that they were working for the same brothers, from the same imported Mexican load, toward the same target city, New York. Any more real than that and I think they would have collapsed into the Twilight Zone.
I know what you’re thinking, that they were ratted out and someone involved must have snitched. Negative. It was totally because they chose the same route, hit the same road block, had the same vehicle/driver profile, and virtually had the exact same cover story. On top of that, they both fit the most important factor of all: the New Mexico Highway Patrol profile for drug smugglers. This event proved to us that the good old ways and days needed a lot of improvement in the Stealth Department. The tried-and-true methods of the early 70’s were no longer useful and drastically needed an upgrade. This is where I came in.
My good friend John the Mover, the man who could pilot any vehicle that moved on land or air, got lucky one day and called me up to see if I wanted any Mexican sinsemilla. It seemed that his connections down south had way too much mota on their hands and were willing to front him some. I was still growing in the remote canyons of the Rim, however I was not one to turn down an opportunity when it came to good weed…especially good fronted weed. As John explained the deal it became clear that we would have to handle all the logistics. They had the weed, pilots, and plane and we had to supply the rest, including an airstrip! The things we do for adventure.
To make a long story short, we pulled it off and had 500 kilos of beautiful sinsemilla from Jalisco, wrapped in 25 pound cellophane bundles, sitting in our rented, extended length van. A slight miscalculation in our supper hurried plane unloading and van loading procedure made it necessary to put two bundles on the floor below the passenger seat up front while the rest was stacked in back with the window curtains drawn and a blanket or two over the load. We had to drive 45 minutes of dirt road and 3 hours of highway to get back to the metro Phoenix area so we planned an escort the whole way. One car in front and one in back. If for any reason the state patrol was looking at the van or pulling in behind it in traffic, the plan was for the follow-up car to blast wildly past them both and toss out a beer bottle. The lead car would drive a bit further ahead in order to signal, via walkie-talkie, if there was a road block (unlikely) or an accident that slowed traffic down to a crawl (possible) that could bring the van close to emergency highway crews, especially those friendly traffic-directing highway patrolmen. You could smell the load 50 feet away, even with the windows closed, so you didn’t want to be driving slowly by the accident response team. Sometimes they make the traffic sit for hours, sometimes they have you turn around and go back, but most times they just have you pass by in one lane at very low speed. No option was fun. If we could avoid it we would.
We made it to Phoenix safely. The load was stashed at a lovely rental home that our herb-friendly friends, a local 70 year-old couple who we had hired, were renting specifically for this project. The house had all of our requirements: a drive-in garage (for unloading/loading in peace), a very tall block wall around the backyard (no neighbor troubles), and a swimming pool with a stand-alone poolhouse and changing room (the stash room for weighing and packing that was not in the main house). Finding a rental with all of these necessary ingredients meant a lot of real estate research, driving around, looking, and finally meeting the real estate agent at the property. It’s a much taller order than you might think. I played a new role and spun a story that would pass the realtor’s need to believe. You couldn’t prepare yourself for every possible scenario, but money talked and rentals need to be rented. If the realtor had any doubts, though, they quickly vanished when he met the old couple (our grandparents, for sure!) and was handed the huge check with the first and last month’s rents, as well as for the hefty damage deposit. No questions asked.
The game continued on into Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn and Chinatown in Manhattan. We shipped in small U-Haul trucks that had to meet several criteria. Definitely another hiding in plain sight scenario; it wasn’t just about hiding the weed in boxes stuffed deep in the back of the truck. Several stealth criteria had to be met for every shipment. First, the truck’s license plates had to be from Iowa, South Dakota, or some other non-weed shipping, non-weed famous state. Trucks sporting plates from Arizona, California, Florida, and East Coast states like New York were taboo and flagged too many profiles. Second, we only used the U-Haul mini trucks that had a small Toyota or Ford truck body with a modest cube on the back, though these days the body used is a van and no longer a compact truck. The best of these actually had a crawl through from the front cab, but that quickly became rare and I think was discontinued because people were sleeping in the back (like we did once) while another driver took the wheel. Great for the long-haul, though over-tired, never stopping, constantly driving teams could also pop up the profile if they were stopped and questioned and had to make up an answer for, “Why are you folks in such a hurry?” Third, we had a special packing method that didn’t conceal the weed as much as it served to camouflage the entire load and make it appear to be something totally innocuous. It created the old Obi Wan Kenobi scenario: if you looked inside the back of the truck you’d be struck with, “This is not the truck you’re looking for. These aren’t the people you want.” If you rolled up the back of one of these trucks you would see the load as portraying some folks moving their possessions to another state. Even better than that, you’d smell it that way, too.
We’d buy chests, tables, chairs, and lots of clothing at several different second hand stores. A box spring and mattress lined were standing along each side of the truck box walls; believe it or not, in case the truck took a side blow in an accident (we had seen in a similar accident how a soft lining could keep the rest of the load intact) and at the very back, near the door, was a chest facing out, drawers full of clothing and shoes. Buckets, mops, Mr.Clean bottles, and other cleaning accessories were crammed in last. The idea was that if you opened the roll-up door, you could easily imagine, or be told if questioned, that the drivers had just finished cleaning up their previous home (rental?) and had loaded up the moving truck with all of their belongings. Chlorox and ammonia cleaning vapors floated happily out of the back as the door was raised thanks to the small but potent amount we left on the mops and as residue in the buckets. Any chance of a human smelling weed was impossible. This method has been Arizona tested for days on end in 100+ degree weather and still passed the olfactory test. We packed the herbal goodies extremely well inside of cardboard moving boxes, with games, clothes, and plates inside. The herbal bundles as well as the boxes received plenty of strong tape and extra plastic, too. We never used telltale fabric softener sheets like Bounce that many herb movers packed inside their boxes to disguise the odors. That trick was old, old, old. Perhaps it had actually become part of the New Mexico State Highway Patrol profile because both of the previously mentioned brothers, whose drivers got nailed, used Bounce in every load they shipped cross country. They swore by it and now their drivers could swear at it too.
You might ask, finally, what if a trained dog sniffed in the back of the truck? Dog barks = probable cause. It’s extremely difficult to say. I wouldn’t want to test it, would you? I know of some guys who trailored a Baja dune buggy behind their truck down to Mexico and back. At a customs checkpoint coming back into the US, a dog sniffed the frame, barked, and the customs agents searched the truck and the basically empty dune buggy. They found nothing so they cut a piece or two out of the welded roll bar frame and low and behold the dark goodies that they found within were very illegal. I read a forensic expert’s opinion on this event and he said no dog can smell through a welded compartment. What was most likely was that someone in the welding crew had smoked a joint, rubber their resin-covered fingers on the frame or steering wheel, and the clean looking drivers fell victim to forces beyond their awareness and control. In this world, what looks like a fluke, like coincidence, rarely is.
Bruce Schneier is one of the finest cryptographers and security experts in the world. He has advised the US government on hackers, post 911 terrorist threats, and the multitude of internet security concerns that grow daily as we become more dependent upon it. His monthly newsletter, Crypto-Gram, is certainly worth reading if you value your personal security or simply want to know who might be messing with you. He’s an old-school genius who uses his brilliant mind to approach any and all security issues in a common sense way.
In March 2008 Bruce wrote a nice essay on the “security mindset”. I resonate with his viewpoint and recognize my affinity to this way of approaching the world. Back in the 70’s and 80’s weed world I used to get flak from some of my buddies for worrying too much or planning too deeply. They believed in winging it much more than I did and though I realize that you can’t plan for every contingency, you can do your best. You can also heighten your awareness to pay attention to signs from the Universe. It never lies if you want to know the truth.
Here are a few excerpts and a link to the entire essay:
“Security requires a particular mindset. Security professionals -- at least the good ones -- see the world differently. They can't walk into a store without noticing how they might shoplift. They can't use a computer without wondering about the security vulnerabilities. They can't vote without trying to figure out how to vote twice. They just can't help it.”
“This kind of thinking is not natural for most people. It's not natural for engineers. Good engineering involves thinking about how things can be made to work; the security mindset involves thinking about how things can be made to fail. It involves thinking like an attacker, an adversary or a criminal. You don't have to exploit the vulnerabilities you find, but if you don't see the world that way, you'll never notice most security problems.”
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/03/the_security_mi_1.html
In college Judo class I used to ask the instructor, “What if the attacker does this when you do that?” and he would patiently show how to counter my projected countermove. Then I’d say, “What if when you do that he does…”. You get the rest. I became known as Professor What-If. Needless to say my wife and adult children still get a laugh out of my approach to things dark and dangerous. Call me paranoid but if you really knew me you would never believe that this is how I roll. I am relaxed with the whole scene…it’s second nature. I don’t have to worry. I take in all into consideration, then, like a warrior, I leap.
Another example: I don’t leave young children in parked cars, especially if the motor is running. Why allow any possibility that your kids could be hurt if you can avoid it? Where I live now I see young mothers doing exactly that. I looked into a car yesterday at the quick stop gas station and a 2 year-old toddler was in the driver’s seat holding the wheel while his 4 year-old sister was in the back seat yelling. The windows were up, air-conditioning on, and the motor running. Recipe for a disaster I’m thinking. One pull on the shifter and they’re launched. While discussing this scene with the female clerk at the checkout counter I was told by her that she does it, too, only she takes special precautions against her kids being kidnapped, which is her biggest fear. She makes sure to lock the car doors, too. How is it possible that these mothers are so unaware? The Darwin effect in action, for sure.
When my kids were 4 and 6, I took them to A&W for a few root beer floats. I went inside to order instead of using the drive-through. Their friend Manny was along for the ride and just had to play with the steering wheel and shifters while I was gone. My girls knew not to mess with anything – I had taught them peacefully what would happen if you slip a car into neutral or what could result if you take off the brake. “What’s neutral, papa?” So I’d show them in great detail, park on a slope and slip it into neutral. I’d show them how the brake works and how it may or may not hold if you shift the gears into neutral. I believe that young children are bright and typically remember much more than which we give them credit. You have to make them responsible for an increasing amount of their own survival mission starting when they’re young.
Anyway, a guy came into A&W as I stood in line and said, “Does anyone here own a big Buick Electra?”
I said yes and he added, “I just dove through the driver’s side window and pushed on the brake because the car was rolling into traffic and I didn’t see any driver”. My heart almost stopped and I ran out the door to my car. Little Manny had slipped it into neutral and the car had been rolling downhill toward serious traffic on Highway 89A. That kind young man had seen it and saved the day…..and probably had saved my girls and the other drivers in the highway traffic as well. I secured the vehicle and went back inside to thank the man. He was gone, but like Superman, I knew he was happy with his save. So was I, so was I.
I got in a lot of trouble for telling little Manny that he fucked up and that he should never touch these car things when grownups aren’t around. I kept my cool, yet I let that 6 year-old know the truth of the situation. Both of my daughters swore that they told him not to. I believed them, they already knew. In truth, I was actually at fault because I left an unknown entity in my car full of precious cargo. His mom got really mad at me later and called me a “disciplinarian” for the stern feedback I had given her son. I took that as a compliment. That’s the security mindset in a nutshell. That’s how you approach today’s weed world. You have to think about what could go wrong and at least pretend it did and figure out how to safely respond to such possibilities. You look at how to break your system. You push all the bad buttons and let go of the brakes. And you especially don’t count your dollars before you see the green.
So there.
Hiding In Plain Sight
Cop stories abound when you’re talking with long-time professionals. Some tales get downright sad if you’re the actual subject one of one of these stories. The archetypal cat and mouse, cops and robbers game goes back to the time of Adam, I’m sure; however in our modern world of governments enforcing their morality upon the people, especially when victimless “crimes” are involved, the game at times seems even more endless.
This version of the game started in the early 1900’s when certain government and business elites decided to make a whole lot of things that make people feel good into illegal substances. First the old patent medicines that contained opiates, then weed, then alcohol. Smart, wealthy men like Joseph Kennedy jumped right into the game and made millions by being successful smugglers. Others like Harry Anslinger became famous by inciting fear in white folks concerning the evils of marijuana and heroin being forced upon young whites by black pushermen. Eventually alcohol prohibition fell apart, largely due to more government officials in cohorts with rich businessmen who decided it was time to be on the “right” side of the law. Why smuggle gin from Canada or rum from the Caribbean when you could own your own distilleries and retail outlets? Today we see the results: decades of lives impacted by laws that serve only the regime and wealthy businessmen.
If drugs were totally legal and treated as a health issue, a social issue, then law enforcement wouldn’t have it so easy. They’d have to go after real criminals like bank robbers, thieves, killers, organized crime and the rest of the criminal fringe of society. Violence often rules in these worlds so the mortality rate among law enforcement would go up radically. Citizens like ourselves, who hurt no one, injure no one else’s property, and are involved only in transactions between adults who make their own choices, would be left to live their lives peacefully.
Smoking marijuana isn’t addictive, but growing it is. – Ed Rosenthal
Some analysts predict that this will be the future of marijuana once it becomes legal, that it will be controlled by the government in a very direct way. Sounds about right, however it’s a lot easier to grow a few plants for your own needs than it is to bottle up all the beer, wine, or whiskey that you might want over the course of a year. Personally I think that most smokers will simply become consumers, trying and buying the multitude of varieties that will inevitably make up the marketplace, much like Cali and Colorado dispensaries offer now. Those of us that agree with Uncle Ed’s quote will happily continue to fly on our own supply.
Over the years I’ve had to live a double life at times. As a young man the intrigue definitely sucked me in and required that I become an actor and master the art of disguise. This lifestyle had many perks, however many costs were levied as well. Being surreptitious and sneaky was a way of life at times; you simply had to do it in order to avoid arrest, and thus being an expert at hiding in plain sight became the name of the game.
Was it worth it? Oh yeah….But I don’t live in the past even though I can recall it with amazing detail and zeal. Be it difficult times or living on easy street, life is a gift. Even my time in the monastery, as restrictive as it was, taught me in ways I would have never imagined. So here are a few events and situations that stand out concerning how to appear one way when you are actually another. If you follow this path for very long, do your best to remember who you really are. It’s easy to forget.
Using obstacles as a way of working with life situations plays a very important part in crazy wisdom.
- Chogyam Trungpa
Shipping the Sacred Herb from the southwest to New York was an interesting challenge. At least it was on our home turf and didn’t involve international airspace, radar, and ugly custom jet intercepts. How you did it, if you planned for as many contingencies as possible, was within your direct control. Acts of God and Nature could add factors that included the unpredictable, however even those were possible to prepare (to a degree) for if you put a lot of effort into your play and didn’t get hooked on easy success. Nothing like a string of easy successes, based upon loose planning and preparation, to suck a person or team into thinking they had it made. Many players have gone down because they confused luck with skill.
I’ve seen plenty of car moves fail just because there was no back up if someone opened the truck and looked in, let alone smelled the big pile of luggage within that had bundles of stinky homegrown carelessly loaded up. WTF, just throw it all into the trunk, look cool, and drive safely within the speed limit? No one will suspect a thing! Right, maybe in 1965….except that by 1975 New Mexico became the all-around champion of profiling and questioning when simple Interstate or State highway stops were made by patrolmen. Two brothers I knew very well, long-time personal friends, had sent out two totally distinct, unknown-to-each-other loads moving east through New Mexico. Both loads were in separate cars and by coincidence were stopped and questioned at a simple road block on the same day. Such odds. NM State Police began tossing up these quicky road blocks so that they could either wave you by or have you stop to answer a few questions. Both drivers were singled out by the profiling, later found to be primarily the presence of Arizona plates on newer sedans driven by young persons in their 20’s. This profile then signaled the initial tier of questions; “where were they going?”, “what did they do for a living”, and “do you have any illegal drugs in your vehicle?" Not the sort of questions I ever want to answer on the roadside, how about you?
Needless to say the profiling merely brought the drivers into a legal sphere of fear, often resulting in stuttering, wild-eyes, or lack of composure that indicated that they “might be hiding something”. Later, in jail, the two drivers discovered that they were both from Tempe and had a lot more in common than they would ever believe was possible. They shared a little more nervous talk and soon realized that they were working for the same brothers, from the same imported Mexican load, toward the same target city, New York. Any more real than that and I think they would have collapsed into the Twilight Zone.
I know what you’re thinking, that they were ratted out and someone involved must have snitched. Negative. It was totally because they chose the same route, hit the same road block, had the same vehicle/driver profile, and virtually had the exact same cover story. On top of that, they both fit the most important factor of all: the New Mexico Highway Patrol profile for drug smugglers. This event proved to us that the good old ways and days needed a lot of improvement in the Stealth Department. The tried-and-true methods of the early 70’s were no longer useful and drastically needed an upgrade. This is where I came in.
My good friend John the Mover, the man who could pilot any vehicle that moved on land or air, got lucky one day and called me up to see if I wanted any Mexican sinsemilla. It seemed that his connections down south had way too much mota on their hands and were willing to front him some. I was still growing in the remote canyons of the Rim, however I was not one to turn down an opportunity when it came to good weed…especially good fronted weed. As John explained the deal it became clear that we would have to handle all the logistics. They had the weed, pilots, and plane and we had to supply the rest, including an airstrip! The things we do for adventure.
To make a long story short, we pulled it off and had 500 kilos of beautiful sinsemilla from Jalisco, wrapped in 25 pound cellophane bundles, sitting in our rented, extended length van. A slight miscalculation in our supper hurried plane unloading and van loading procedure made it necessary to put two bundles on the floor below the passenger seat up front while the rest was stacked in back with the window curtains drawn and a blanket or two over the load. We had to drive 45 minutes of dirt road and 3 hours of highway to get back to the metro Phoenix area so we planned an escort the whole way. One car in front and one in back. If for any reason the state patrol was looking at the van or pulling in behind it in traffic, the plan was for the follow-up car to blast wildly past them both and toss out a beer bottle. The lead car would drive a bit further ahead in order to signal, via walkie-talkie, if there was a road block (unlikely) or an accident that slowed traffic down to a crawl (possible) that could bring the van close to emergency highway crews, especially those friendly traffic-directing highway patrolmen. You could smell the load 50 feet away, even with the windows closed, so you didn’t want to be driving slowly by the accident response team. Sometimes they make the traffic sit for hours, sometimes they have you turn around and go back, but most times they just have you pass by in one lane at very low speed. No option was fun. If we could avoid it we would.
We made it to Phoenix safely. The load was stashed at a lovely rental home that our herb-friendly friends, a local 70 year-old couple who we had hired, were renting specifically for this project. The house had all of our requirements: a drive-in garage (for unloading/loading in peace), a very tall block wall around the backyard (no neighbor troubles), and a swimming pool with a stand-alone poolhouse and changing room (the stash room for weighing and packing that was not in the main house). Finding a rental with all of these necessary ingredients meant a lot of real estate research, driving around, looking, and finally meeting the real estate agent at the property. It’s a much taller order than you might think. I played a new role and spun a story that would pass the realtor’s need to believe. You couldn’t prepare yourself for every possible scenario, but money talked and rentals need to be rented. If the realtor had any doubts, though, they quickly vanished when he met the old couple (our grandparents, for sure!) and was handed the huge check with the first and last month’s rents, as well as for the hefty damage deposit. No questions asked.
The game continued on into Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn and Chinatown in Manhattan. We shipped in small U-Haul trucks that had to meet several criteria. Definitely another hiding in plain sight scenario; it wasn’t just about hiding the weed in boxes stuffed deep in the back of the truck. Several stealth criteria had to be met for every shipment. First, the truck’s license plates had to be from Iowa, South Dakota, or some other non-weed shipping, non-weed famous state. Trucks sporting plates from Arizona, California, Florida, and East Coast states like New York were taboo and flagged too many profiles. Second, we only used the U-Haul mini trucks that had a small Toyota or Ford truck body with a modest cube on the back, though these days the body used is a van and no longer a compact truck. The best of these actually had a crawl through from the front cab, but that quickly became rare and I think was discontinued because people were sleeping in the back (like we did once) while another driver took the wheel. Great for the long-haul, though over-tired, never stopping, constantly driving teams could also pop up the profile if they were stopped and questioned and had to make up an answer for, “Why are you folks in such a hurry?” Third, we had a special packing method that didn’t conceal the weed as much as it served to camouflage the entire load and make it appear to be something totally innocuous. It created the old Obi Wan Kenobi scenario: if you looked inside the back of the truck you’d be struck with, “This is not the truck you’re looking for. These aren’t the people you want.” If you rolled up the back of one of these trucks you would see the load as portraying some folks moving their possessions to another state. Even better than that, you’d smell it that way, too.
We’d buy chests, tables, chairs, and lots of clothing at several different second hand stores. A box spring and mattress lined were standing along each side of the truck box walls; believe it or not, in case the truck took a side blow in an accident (we had seen in a similar accident how a soft lining could keep the rest of the load intact) and at the very back, near the door, was a chest facing out, drawers full of clothing and shoes. Buckets, mops, Mr.Clean bottles, and other cleaning accessories were crammed in last. The idea was that if you opened the roll-up door, you could easily imagine, or be told if questioned, that the drivers had just finished cleaning up their previous home (rental?) and had loaded up the moving truck with all of their belongings. Chlorox and ammonia cleaning vapors floated happily out of the back as the door was raised thanks to the small but potent amount we left on the mops and as residue in the buckets. Any chance of a human smelling weed was impossible. This method has been Arizona tested for days on end in 100+ degree weather and still passed the olfactory test. We packed the herbal goodies extremely well inside of cardboard moving boxes, with games, clothes, and plates inside. The herbal bundles as well as the boxes received plenty of strong tape and extra plastic, too. We never used telltale fabric softener sheets like Bounce that many herb movers packed inside their boxes to disguise the odors. That trick was old, old, old. Perhaps it had actually become part of the New Mexico State Highway Patrol profile because both of the previously mentioned brothers, whose drivers got nailed, used Bounce in every load they shipped cross country. They swore by it and now their drivers could swear at it too.
You might ask, finally, what if a trained dog sniffed in the back of the truck? Dog barks = probable cause. It’s extremely difficult to say. I wouldn’t want to test it, would you? I know of some guys who trailored a Baja dune buggy behind their truck down to Mexico and back. At a customs checkpoint coming back into the US, a dog sniffed the frame, barked, and the customs agents searched the truck and the basically empty dune buggy. They found nothing so they cut a piece or two out of the welded roll bar frame and low and behold the dark goodies that they found within were very illegal. I read a forensic expert’s opinion on this event and he said no dog can smell through a welded compartment. What was most likely was that someone in the welding crew had smoked a joint, rubber their resin-covered fingers on the frame or steering wheel, and the clean looking drivers fell victim to forces beyond their awareness and control. In this world, what looks like a fluke, like coincidence, rarely is.
Bruce Schneier is one of the finest cryptographers and security experts in the world. He has advised the US government on hackers, post 911 terrorist threats, and the multitude of internet security concerns that grow daily as we become more dependent upon it. His monthly newsletter, Crypto-Gram, is certainly worth reading if you value your personal security or simply want to know who might be messing with you. He’s an old-school genius who uses his brilliant mind to approach any and all security issues in a common sense way.
In March 2008 Bruce wrote a nice essay on the “security mindset”. I resonate with his viewpoint and recognize my affinity to this way of approaching the world. Back in the 70’s and 80’s weed world I used to get flak from some of my buddies for worrying too much or planning too deeply. They believed in winging it much more than I did and though I realize that you can’t plan for every contingency, you can do your best. You can also heighten your awareness to pay attention to signs from the Universe. It never lies if you want to know the truth.
Here are a few excerpts and a link to the entire essay:
“Security requires a particular mindset. Security professionals -- at least the good ones -- see the world differently. They can't walk into a store without noticing how they might shoplift. They can't use a computer without wondering about the security vulnerabilities. They can't vote without trying to figure out how to vote twice. They just can't help it.”
“This kind of thinking is not natural for most people. It's not natural for engineers. Good engineering involves thinking about how things can be made to work; the security mindset involves thinking about how things can be made to fail. It involves thinking like an attacker, an adversary or a criminal. You don't have to exploit the vulnerabilities you find, but if you don't see the world that way, you'll never notice most security problems.”
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/03/the_security_mi_1.html
In college Judo class I used to ask the instructor, “What if the attacker does this when you do that?” and he would patiently show how to counter my projected countermove. Then I’d say, “What if when you do that he does…”. You get the rest. I became known as Professor What-If. Needless to say my wife and adult children still get a laugh out of my approach to things dark and dangerous. Call me paranoid but if you really knew me you would never believe that this is how I roll. I am relaxed with the whole scene…it’s second nature. I don’t have to worry. I take in all into consideration, then, like a warrior, I leap.
Another example: I don’t leave young children in parked cars, especially if the motor is running. Why allow any possibility that your kids could be hurt if you can avoid it? Where I live now I see young mothers doing exactly that. I looked into a car yesterday at the quick stop gas station and a 2 year-old toddler was in the driver’s seat holding the wheel while his 4 year-old sister was in the back seat yelling. The windows were up, air-conditioning on, and the motor running. Recipe for a disaster I’m thinking. One pull on the shifter and they’re launched. While discussing this scene with the female clerk at the checkout counter I was told by her that she does it, too, only she takes special precautions against her kids being kidnapped, which is her biggest fear. She makes sure to lock the car doors, too. How is it possible that these mothers are so unaware? The Darwin effect in action, for sure.
When my kids were 4 and 6, I took them to A&W for a few root beer floats. I went inside to order instead of using the drive-through. Their friend Manny was along for the ride and just had to play with the steering wheel and shifters while I was gone. My girls knew not to mess with anything – I had taught them peacefully what would happen if you slip a car into neutral or what could result if you take off the brake. “What’s neutral, papa?” So I’d show them in great detail, park on a slope and slip it into neutral. I’d show them how the brake works and how it may or may not hold if you shift the gears into neutral. I believe that young children are bright and typically remember much more than which we give them credit. You have to make them responsible for an increasing amount of their own survival mission starting when they’re young.
Anyway, a guy came into A&W as I stood in line and said, “Does anyone here own a big Buick Electra?”
I said yes and he added, “I just dove through the driver’s side window and pushed on the brake because the car was rolling into traffic and I didn’t see any driver”. My heart almost stopped and I ran out the door to my car. Little Manny had slipped it into neutral and the car had been rolling downhill toward serious traffic on Highway 89A. That kind young man had seen it and saved the day…..and probably had saved my girls and the other drivers in the highway traffic as well. I secured the vehicle and went back inside to thank the man. He was gone, but like Superman, I knew he was happy with his save. So was I, so was I.
I got in a lot of trouble for telling little Manny that he fucked up and that he should never touch these car things when grownups aren’t around. I kept my cool, yet I let that 6 year-old know the truth of the situation. Both of my daughters swore that they told him not to. I believed them, they already knew. In truth, I was actually at fault because I left an unknown entity in my car full of precious cargo. His mom got really mad at me later and called me a “disciplinarian” for the stern feedback I had given her son. I took that as a compliment. That’s the security mindset in a nutshell. That’s how you approach today’s weed world. You have to think about what could go wrong and at least pretend it did and figure out how to safely respond to such possibilities. You look at how to break your system. You push all the bad buttons and let go of the brakes. And you especially don’t count your dollars before you see the green.
So there.
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T
THE PABLOS
That's the thing....there are always the Mannys out there.
great post mj.
