This is a story about the first time I smoked weed. I was 16 years old at the time and on an island in the Bahamas, Great Abaco Island, and indeed it is. I traveled to this beautiful island with my fellow scouts, most notably Patrick and Justin. Our itinerary for the trip is as follows: Fly down there, stay on a boat for a week, fly back. The boat stayed on the dock the first night and the last night that we were there. The trip less the weed was amazing, but without the weed I might not have this feeling of really getting all I could out of the trip. It's like sledding. You can't not have fun sledding, but if you didn't really get scared, at least for a moment, it wasn't worth it. Just be happy you went home with no broken bones, or in my case be happy you went home with your life.
The first afternoon Justin asks me and Patrick if we want to smoke. Me and Pat both look at each other and agree that it's a good idea, neither of us have done it, and what a better place than the Bahamas? So our mission begins. So Justin takes the lead because he knows what he is doing and starts by asking strangers if they have ganja or trees. Right away we meet with some success, this kid smoking a cigarette just outside our dock pulls out a small amount of weed in a small plastic baggy from his cigarette box. This success was short lived after I jumped into the pool with the baggy. When I was in mid air Justin screamed at me and I had forgotten so I just thought there was a crazy Bahamian snake predator in the pool or something. Nope.
So were off again, we walk along the road that runs parallel to the shore with no prevail. We take the main road away from the shore and we see a gas station. Justin asks the guy attending the pumps "Hey do you know where we can get any trees?"
"Cheese?"
"Yeah"
The man proceeds to point us to the supermarket. We realize that he thinks were talking about cheese. haha
"no no no, TRRREEEES"
"Oh, no" but acts suspiciously sketchy. Cut losses, we head inside. There is a man working stocking the soda machines.
"Hey do you know where we can get any trees?"
"trees?"
"Yeah, like ganja."
"Hold on."
So now the soda guy talks to his pump buddy outside and all of a sudden someone has weed. They tell us to wait at the gas station and one of the men walk across the street, across the field, and into the woods. We make some small talk and about five minutes later, our order is up. We then buy a fine Cuban leaf and Justin rolls a mean blunt. We smoked it across the street from our dock and relished in our success. Neither me or Pat got high.
So mission success, lets go snorkel and soak up some sun all around the Islands. I saw sharks, eels, squid,a plethora of fish, dolphins (not while i was in the water, tear), and of course coral. No big deal.
So we are back on the dock at the end of the week and we decide to be devious and do this again. But this time its different, we didn't get back till after businesses closed. What were we to do? We skipped the road with the gas station on it and kept walking.. sort of in the direction of where the man went but on a road, not through the woods. So were asking people and its starting to get dark out. We ask this guy getting into his car if he knows where we can get any weed and he tells us to follow him. Justin asks if he should get in the car and he refuses and tells us to walk behind his car. There is a street light in the distance that he leads us to and points down this long dark dirt road. We thank him and start walking. We make it about 30 yards down when two men get our attention from the street light.
"Hey where you going?" They ask us. We tell them. They say they will show us the way. How kind. So were following them down this dark long dirt road and we enter an area that is pretty much a trailer park, but instead of trailers it's shacks. We leave the road and go through a hole in a metal fence, cross a small driveway, a few shacks, and a lot of mess and trash when we come to a group of men, some fairly large and the two who walked us in tell them we want some trees. All of these guys are already smoking and are sitting on old furniture and boxes, pretty sweet. So the main Bahamian left the group and entered his shack (i assume its his) and comes back momentarily with a mega blunt. We light it up and pass it back and forth between us offering it to the group who consistently refuse it. This deep in the woods of the Great Abaco Island the accent is a lot thicker and very hard to understand, so this cut down on small talk. We awkwardly smoked the blunt, just the three boy scouts and then went to leave when we had finished. As if this all wasn't sketchy enough when we went to leave, so did the two men that walked us in. Back down the long dark dirt road we go, with the two men at our back, slightly high.
"Don't worry were not going to rob you or anything." They actually said that...
Then it hit me, for the first time. "My god... I should be dead. Jesus Jon... What were you thinking! Why did they go down there with us??? they didn't even smoke!?!? They want my kidney. Okay, just get back to the docks... I can probably run faster than at least Pat, but there's two of them and Justin can run faster than me. Damn this sucks. I can see the street light, its not far off now. Fuck!"
Man was I scared. To the ease of our minds when we finally reached the street light they simply went on their way and we went ours. Were still a long way from our dock so we pick up our pace. Our scoutmasters have no idea where we are and I'm worried they are going to be asking questions. So we get back and no one was the wiser. Sweetness. I slept under the stars that night. Sometimes things are just beautiful, and the sky was that night.
Pretty pimp I know but it gets better.
"How Jon?! You have to tell me!"
Okay, if you insist. So my father does some high end carpentry, mostly cabinets. He, through his contacts, got a job down on an island in the Bahamas. So I got a paid trip to the Bahamas a couple summers ago and didn't realize I was going to the same island till I landed in the airport. So cool. On top of that after she stamped my passport I looked at it, and it was August 6th 2006 and the stamp directly above it was August 4th 2002, 4 years later I show up to the place where I first smoked weed. I ate dinner in a restaurant that I walked by 4 years earlier.
Our Dock.
The Gas station. (the building across the street didn't exist 5 years ago.)
The Dark Ghetto.
Where did you first smoke weed?
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Sea Base
This is a story about the first time I smoked weed. I was 16 years old at the time and on an island in the Bahamas, Great Abaco Island, and indeed it is. I traveled to this beautiful island with my fellow scouts, most notably Patrick and Justin. Our itinerary for the trip is as follows: Fly down there, stay on a boat for a week, fly back. The boat stayed on the dock the first night and the last night that we were there. The trip less the weed was amazing, but without the weed I might not have this feeling of really getting all I could out of the trip. It's like sledding. You can't not have fun sledding, but if you didn't really get scared, at least for a moment, it wasn't worth it. Just be happy you went home with no broken bones, or in my case be happy you went home with your life.
