Day two rolls around in typically sunny splendour. The 9:00am start sounds harsh but I awake with a smile on my face, a spring in my step and a Mighty loaded with a mixture of a few different things based on the flavour - fully charged? I must have plugged everything in last night. Wonders will never cease.
The sun really is cracking the flags and I’m keen to get going - I’ve not heard from our kid down the hall so I figure he’s still asleep. Shooting him a text - yep he’s still a bit bleary. I excitedly tell him that I’m pretty much ready for the off; that he should text or call when he’s ready and I’ll come collect him. As it turns out - by the time I’ve built a doob of the 24K and had a shower he’s changed his mind and is ready for the off. Smashing. We leave together meandering across town heading for La Grotte to meet DLN.
Along the way we stop in at Siberia for a quick pit stop. Team Macky are there enjoying a mid-morning break so we hang with them for ten minutes and grab a few bits for the stash. Ricky gets Popeyes's OG at €14 and I grab the Critical and African Durban.
Ricky will later rate the Popeye as ‘pretty decent’ and give her a typically low score of 6.8.
The Critical and African Durban weren’t up to much if I’m honest. The Durbs had none of the ‘poison’ I was expecting. Some peppery herbaceous spice but not enough to tempt me back. The critical was disappointing also - slightly under par on the finishing so I rated them at 6.5 and 6.8 respectively.
Breakfast goes down well with the usual dose of doobs, banter and vape bowls. There are plans afoot to hit up various private sources and get stocked up for the big mans birthday party later. With the sun on our backs we head off on the mission; happily heading in the direction of the organised CS sessions out east so there’s a strong chance we can kill a few birds with a single stone here. Despite the day marching on and the itinerary calling we have time to hit up the homie for some Karmarado. Ricky and I grab a 5g bag to split. It’s beautiful - definitely the best OG of the trip. Hints of star-anise, black midget-gems and diesel funk are complimented by the soft desert sand of the afghani parentage. This pheno is light on the chemdawg funk - despite the multiple OG back-crosses in the lineage by breeder in-vogue Karma Genetics. This is a property of his OG selections that I often appreciate. He always manages to deliver something different and not simply rely on the dank-bank of the chemdawg parentage. The potency is up there too. Heavy hitting as she sits right behind the eyes pulling them droopy.
We realise that we’re in the way of a brighter future as the plug needs to study so we wrap-up and head to Het Ballonetje to find the ACD in takeover mode. The entire bottom floor is packed and there are huge bags of weed on the table.
It takes a good ten minutes before I register that these bags of trees have been provided free but the owner. Gratis. On the bleeding house!
I’m totally gobsmacked! What a lovely gesture - I don’t know exactly how many bags there were or what size they were but there were at least three 5-7g bags that I can remember. Tangle, G-13 and SFV-OG. The Tangie and G-13 were on most peoples (Ricky included) smokes of the trip lists and I walked away with a bag of the SFV and their White Balloon (white widow X PP - Ricky bought the Wb and G13) as I thought it the least we could do to actually spend some money there.
They didn’t let anyone pay for a single drink during the two/three hours we were there and brought us a mountain of sandwiches and hoodie/t-shirt apparel - generally treating us like kings. Totally mind-blowing and totally out of the blue.
Suffice to say this made for a LEGENDARY session. 95% of those bags disappeared in the short time we were there.
On scene were Lemming, Mrs and Mrs CC, DLN, Danny, drugsbunny, Smirks, Spidergawd and Daughter, Matty, Madmaxx, Cisco, KeyMonCha, Lafe, Ricky, Me, Nathan420stoner and perhaps a few others.
The SVF-OG was one of the CS buys of the trip for me. Strong on the bubba kush end of the profile - sweet and candy like with a hint of minty floral skunk. SO much desert floor though the middle and a dank exhale. Fantastic stuff. Can’t remember the price but it wasn’t extortionate. I rated her 7.9 on the day. The White Balloon fared just as well as I vaped her over the coming few days. I rated her at 7.5 as the signature Dutchman’s cupboard flavour profile from the PP was all out front waving his balls about. Exactly what I was looking for.
Leaving the Balloon in something of a daze. I don’t think any of us are prepared for getting the same treatment again in The Stud!!
The cycle crew hangs back for a while - giving the heel patrol a good start.
Cycling alone is great fun - but is SO much more fun in a pack. Having a squad feels great and we banter, laugh and giggle our way across town away from the setting sun. Happily - both fiets crew and the walking posse seem to arrive at The Stud around the same time which is fortunate as the venue has reserved the entire back-room for us and are SUPER intent on us having the place to ourselves. They were again the most amazingly gracious hosts bringing out a variety of 3-4g bags of flowers for the crew and a couple of bags of import hash. A little sample of their (mixed variety) bubble hash topped off a good few large doobs I crafted from those bags that did the rounds.
Despite the carnage of the previous session - everyone got stuck in once more and again those bags were decimated in that session (Shoreline x kosher, Silver haze, G13, Amazing haze and a Casey Jones I think). Amazing effort team - hats off to the lot of you. Serious smoking in those sessions
The Shoreline x Kosher is an interesting strain — more shoreline heavy than I’d expect; this deserves a special mention as it’s priced very competitively at €10.50 p/g. You’ll pay €15 or more in the centre for straggly scraggly shoreline larf and this was a nice solid 2-3g nug. Impressive stuff at that price.
As the session drew to a close and people started to head off for sustenance; the remnants of some weed bags and the hash were saved for squishing later in preparation for Macky’s birthday. What an afternoon.
We leave to find the sun still shining and as we all have doobs rolled it would be rude not to enjoy some outdoor roken action. DLN, Ricky and I stopped off near the zoo for a little smoke on a boardwalk:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.36836 ... !1e1?hl=en
It is a lovely ride back to town. I’m smiling all the way back. We scheme various destination changes along the way. Finally settling on simply heading for Batavia for food and staking a spot for Macky’s birthday bash.
Somewhere along the way - I magically score:
8g x Silver Bubble
3g x white Choco x Girl Scout Cookies
3g x PP
3g x Karma’s Polar Bear
3g x Jack flash
3g x Bubblegum
1g x 24k shatter
Something tells be this will be an amazing session!
BATAVIA. Yes it’s too warm. Yes it’s too smokey. But fuck this place it too good to be true. I think I spent about €15 in there all night and had a BLAST. Just about everyone was there from early on and the stragglers went hard till early in the morning. It was a great birthday for the big man who went nuclear on the ‘man-sized’ dabs and never once showed signs of slowing down. Many a younger man fell that night. Brother Macky you are indeed a machine
Before everyone arrived I camped in the corner with hair straightener and an irwin clamp banging the remaining flowers from the afternoon sessions through the rosin process and the three grams of hash. Import hash dabs ain't my thing but those rosin slabs kept doing the rounds for the remainder of the week! Stan, DB and Danny (now rocking a mancunian sized hunger for fucking monster dabs after his initial reticence) did the flower rosin in (about an 1/8th of flowers) with just three breaths amongst them (ACD squad STRONG)
and then the night progressed from there
Unsurprisingly it’s not too late a night - everyone is totally faded by kicking out time at 12:30 so the fiets crew trundles into De Wallen for more hot-wing action on Caribbean Corner. After CC and Ricky have gone to bed. My boy DLN and I do the now customary two doob RLD shuffle giggling and bantering like idiots before calling it a night - I think I was in bed for around 2am.
The end of day two. Still another full day before 420???? Madness.