44.) Pricy Conditions......Free Box......and Investigative Journalism...

      

     The yellow, diamond shaped street sign I pass while heading into Telluride warns of Icy Conditions. A local prankster type has stuck the letters PR in front of the word Icy so the sign reads “Pricy Conditions”. It’s a good joke and when I pull into downtown I'm given reason to believe it’s accurate.The little mountain town is stupidly beautiful. Like something out of a Swiss tourism brochure. Cute little shops and brick store fronts line the main drag.  It's the middle the off season so a lot of the places are closed, have shortened hours, or are remolding; and nearly everyone I pass has a K-9 sidekick. It’s heavenly and throughout the day I have a reoccurring thought, “I think I could live here.”

     

     While the town itself is esthetically pleasing it’s not why I’ve come to Telluride. I could try and convince you that I’ve come here for the change of scenery. And to be fair, that is partly true, I suppose. The desert gets lonely. It takes its toll when you spend an extended amount of time in it….especially when the majority of that time is spent alone, and after only 2 and a half hours of driving I am definitely not in the desert anymore.      The town sits in the the crook of a horseshoe bend in the mountains.  Three sides flanked by the jagged snowcapped walls.  The highway just sort of ends in Telluride, it has no place to go once it reaches the mountains

     So don’t get me wrong, there’s no doubt that this place is beautiful, but again, it’s not what made me come here. Truthfully, I’ve never even heard of Telluride, but it’s 2014 and I HAVE heard about Colorado’s legal marijuana laws and I mean to check it out.  It’s a strictly journalistic pursuit, I assure you….Mom.   

The medicinal stuff has been legal for awhile in these parts, but recently Colorado was the first state to legalize recreational sales as well and it seems the locals are as excited as I am.  I can walk from one end of town and back in less than an hour, so it’s not a big place but the have 4 marijuana dispensaries….FOUR. One of them was strictly for medicinal purposes so I’m not allowed in since I don’t have a prescription card from a doctor.  The others have a special room for the medical stuff which I'm also denied entry to without my “green” card, but where I’m standing now has no shortage of inventory.  

Edibles, smokeable  hash, wax…everything one could want is on display inside the glass  counter or on shelves on the back wall. It’s just like the wall behind any bar in America.  Top shelf is the fancy, most expensive product.  It’s your smokable Royal Crown and Patron. Prices and quality diminished as you move down the shelves.  

I talk shop with the guy behind the counter, ask about the different products, what’s his favorite, what isn't worth my time that sort of thing.  He’s wearing a Minnesota Wild jersey, I let him know I’m a Blackhawks fan so I have to take anything he says with an appropriate level of mistrust, but he smiles affably and points me towards some chocolates .  Edibles have never really done anything for me so I have my doubts, but after I think about it every time in the past have eaten brownies, they were made by one of my stoner friends who, it’s very possible, had no idea what they were doing. These are professionally made so I trust his judgement and buy a package along with a few grams of the smokeable that I’m more familiar with. These they call “flowers”. It’s weed dude, just give it to me.  The “flowers” come in plastic cylindrical containers that resemble prescription bottles without the child proof top.  The chocolates come in a similar, larger bottle. It reminds of the container I used to keep my pogs in as a kid…Oh man, remember pogs!?  Anyway, 4 chocolates come in the tube, each slightly larger than a rectangle broken off a hershey bar.  I choose the mint chocolate chip flavor and am told that each piece contains 25 milligrams of THC.  The recommended dosage is 10 milligrams so the guy tells me to eat half of one to see how it goes, you can always eat more but you can’t eat less, so be careful, once it’s ingested you’re along for the ride.  

I thank everyone inside, shout "Go Hawks!" at the kid in the hockey jersey, and head back to the Jeep with my new found, totally legal, bounty.  I hide they flowers in the car since the new laws say I can buy and posses it, but I’m still not allowed to smoke it in public. Not on the streets, or in a pub, I’ve got to be in a private residence if I want to be 100% legal, but theres no law that says I can’t eat chocolate anywhere I want, so I remove 1 piece from it’s packaging. 

25 milligrams of THC per piece, I don’t really know how much that is. Recommended dosage 10 miligrams; that doesn’t sound like that much. I bite off half the piece and it tastes pretty good. I eye the other half and contemplate saving it for later but, it doesn't take me long to say fuck it, with a shrug and pop the other half into my mouth. I spend the rest of the afternoon wandering around the small town and reaffirming my earlier thought that I could live here.

Plenty of bars to choose from, a skate park down one of the out of the way back roads, a park with a large grassy area bisected by a shallow mountain stream.  It’s obviously ski/snowboard town, I can see the runs coming down the mountains covered in grass instead of snow this time of year, and pass by the deserted ski lifts. Evidently you can take the lift up the mountain and ski down the other side to a different resort in a different mountain town. That’s beyond my experience considering the ski hill I grew up with in the Midwest was just an old landfill long ago covered with dirt to make a hill.  This is another animal entirely. I’d like to try it out for myself one day.  

I’m still not feeling the effects from my chocolate and I curse myself for wasting my money.  I shoulda got all flowers, I know those work. Oh well, I chalk it up to a new experience and continue my wandering. That’s when I make an mind melting discovery in the middle of town…..The Free Box.

    

     

     It’s a series of cubby holes, like a bookshelf but with more space, and it’s full of all sorts of useful items. Old books, shoes and clothes that people have grown out of. House wares like plates and placemats. Blankets, pillows, anything that someone no longer needs or uses can be placed here, as long as its still useful. People can drop stuff off, or pick something they could use themselves.  It’s an incredible idea and I'm whole heartedly in love with it. This sort of thing should be in every town! Why don’t more places do this!?  But I quickly realize that all you need is one party pooper to ruin the whole thing for everyone.  Someone who cleans out the entire box, regardless of if they need the stuff or not, or someone using the box as a receptacle and filling it with trash or as a bathroom, filling it with……yuck. “This is why we can’t have nice things,” I think to myself.  But the nearby sign with the Free Box rules on it also has the heading “A Telluride Tradition” which makes it sound like its been around for a while.  I really wanted to partake in the Free Box but the books that were there I’d either already read or didn’t interest me, so I abide by the rules and take nothing I can’t use.  This is such a great idea, I’m elated, lifted up by the concept, and excited that apparently this town has found a way to make it work.  I have a little bit more faith in humanity after this display and when I finally turn away to check out the rest of the town, that's the moment I realize that I’m fucking flying.  Blazed outta my gourd.  The chocolates take a little patience, but eventually, they get the job done; and it’s less of a stuck on the couch and can’t move kinda high. While not energized exactly, I’ve still got the motivation to wander around Telluride for a bit longer soaking in the sights and snapping a few pictures in the process.  It turns out to be a wonderful day, and a relaxing respite from desert hiking.  So with my investigative journalism complete, and still too high to make the trip all the way back to Utah, I find a truck stop on the outskirts of town and crash in the Jeep for then night.