WCS 18 Cheap weed through the cold snap

My transition out of the Pacific Northwest takes a break on MLK's big day

“It’s deadly out there,” a passenger in the doorway yells at the TriMet driver. “It’s fucking deadly out there.” The bus is nearly empty. Anyone out on a Portland night as blustery as this is likely out to satisfy their drug habit.

Saturday’s temperature is 10 degrees and tossing my mind back to Lake Erie in the mid-eighties. Early in the am, after classmates’ keg parties, my partner in crime Biscuit Head Jed would walk home with me, from a white part of Sandusky to ours.

Snow would accrue on our shoulders near the end. Lake Erie was frozen.

This Oregon trek began in Beaverton. My aim had been catching the 7:25 pm Greyhound to Sacramento, over in the big town. Neither the Blue nor Red line trains were operational, so TriMet had a bus wend its way downtown. A felled tree blocked our route on the suburb’s inner edge.

A mile or so into Portland, I jumped out of my seat, grabbed my bag, and jogged over the crunching the snow and into the gym. Funny how weather can shut down most of a city, but if you walk into a fitness club there’s that core of humanity who must get in their workout fix.

It was after leaving 24-Hour fitness and the light had drained out of ths day that I flashed back to Biscuit Head Jed and the snow 2000 miles away. The Greyhound stop was a mile away—Amtrak trains sold out—and that adolescent memory well within my reach.

The snow fell as heavily in Sandusky, but we wouldn’t walk home in weather this cold. We were 17 and toasted, but we weren’t dumb.

When [Aaron Rodgers] and Shailene Woodley broke off their engagement in 2022, he needed to find a less productive outlet for all that anxiety than smoking cigs. So, like many men before and after him, he got into drilling Internet shit into his head all night and talking about it with his friend on a podcast

I hauled my shit across downtown Portland, into The Pearl—losing two earbuds along the way—and waited at the Greyhound stop for a while. And waited. And when the vehicle finally arrived, a disheveled driver broke news: The trip to Sacramento was cancelled.

People asked, What should we do? The driver answered one such query with, “You’re not a child.”

Into Union Station I go, to get my bearings and some heat. Ten minutes, I swear to the porter, and I’m out. The closest solution is my sister. The FX2 Division Street bus is the one. Up front, a passenger is yelling about the weather. A coatless man wrapped in a blanket staggers on.

Out of the bus and onto the sidewalk. Out of the cold in into the warmth of family. Flawed, insane and loving family. Just for now.

The 10 grams or so of a so-called half-ounce that I’ve been burning non-stop for two weeks.

I’m sitting on my sister’s kitchen floor, out in The Numbers, intermittently hitting from from a $30 bag of mildly amusing cannabis. It’s fine. The “bag” is a manila envelope packed out to about three ounces. (How is this even a business is a conversation for another time.)

Thank you for tagging along on yet another trip. Most of this scampering is in support of reporting, ya know? When/if the work I’m putting together gets published, your mailbox shall be hipped.

For now, here are 10 developments you can bring up among certain lively West Coasters and sound dialed in:

10 Don’t be tryin’ this shit in Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh native and engaged dad Wiz Khalifa said on Wednesday’s episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast that he’s gone into LA parent-teacher conferences high as hell and that the educators know what’s up.

Admit it, you’ve gone to at least one parent-teacher conference high, haven’t you? One edible over the line? No? Just between us, how did that work out for ya?
Call Her Daddy/Complex

• The veteran rapper told Complex, “I’m pulling up high because I want them to connect with the real me. They’re not going to get a fake version of me or this made-up parent that society makes you think that you’re supposed to be.”

• Wiz is approaching six public months of California Sobriety. He’s stopped drinking and only consumes cannabis and mushrooms.

Lil Hits

• Does it really matter that Trump’s going to be on the Oregon ballot, aside from potential violence at the polls?
  Idaho Statesman

• You didn’t have to do time in houses of worship to appreciate the sweet the sweet and fleeting novelty of Frut Stripe Gum, but it helped. RIP.
  The Hill

9 We have to talk about The Summer Olympics & Israel & Palestine

And when I say “we,” I don’t mean me specifically. Didn’t you see where I’m on Greyhound? My shit is way too precarious to be pontificating on Israel all helter skelter. The subject is super important. So, please read as The Nation’s Dave Zirin