Helen, Ga
You can buy these there.
What I bought instead.
If you know this reference, you are old. If you don't know it, you are young or sheltered.
"Aloha, Mr. Hand."
So before I was the PILLAR <insert sarcasm> of health and fitness I am today, I was a tattoo artist that was slightly less than healthy...slightly :) As I stated in my prior blog "Drugs are bad Mkay?" I dabbled in some drugs back in the day.This is a little story about a drug bust I was involved in around the year 2001...can't really remember the exact date...probably because I was indeed smoking the dope back then. Now, I'm sure most drug busts are like a total bummer...but not this one.
One day I was hanging out at the tattoo shop with my girlfriend at the time who was also a tattoo artist, the body piercer and her girlfriend, and the owner of the shop. We were all sitting around talking about what we were going to do Mother's day weekend. Since all of our mom's lived far away, we decided to go to Helen, Ga for the weekend...I have no idea why. For those of you not familiar with Helen, it is basically a recreation of an alpine village complete with cobblestone alleys and old world towers. There are also a bunch of trails and rivers and what not to hang out on or hike. If you are in search of a new pair of Dutch wooden clogs or a new beer stein, then this is the place for you. Bikers and tourist fuckin' LOVE it!
So we decide to head up there, spend the night and then hangout down by the river the next day. Unfortunately for me, my wisdom teeth were breaking through my gum meat and literally crumbling as they came out. I had an appointment the following week to get them yanked, but too little too late... I was completely miserable the entire trip. I held a giant baggie filled with ibuprofen close to my heart and was poppin' those bitches like every 30 minutes. Everybody on the trip smoked weed. I'm pretty sure there was a giant cloud of smoke billowing from the pickup truck getting everybody behind us wasted all the way there.
We finally arrive in Helen and decide to do a little shopping. Now this was the period of my life when I was a full freak. I think I had green dreadlocks at the time, big Frankenstein shoes, a bunch of metal in my face, tattoos a blazin' etc. And everybody I was with was equally freaky. I'm sure the tourists thought the circus had just arrived in town. I'm sure we could have made a few bucks if we had thrown out a hat on the side walk and danced a little jig. Anyways, we are walking around this store, and this guy comes up to us and asks us if we want to shop in the back room. Without hesitation, we were like "sure do." So he takes us back to this room that is essentially a head shop with a a few sex toys included. I can't imagine why he thought we might be into this sorta thing, but he was RIGHT! So everybody bought a couple things. I bought a bitchin' corn cob pipe cuz I'm classy as fuck! So we head back to some cheap roach motel and break in our new stuff for the rest of the night.
The next day, we get up and head down to the river. Now it's kinda a rainy day and I'm pretty sure all we had with us was like a bag of Cheetos, a six pack of beer and some weed. No blankets, chairs, ponchos...nothing. We probably spent an hour trying to get a fire started with wet wood, but somehow managed to make it happen. So we are all sitting there, smoking dope and I'm like "Dude, I can't believe nobody brought marshmallows." So I look over and see some other people down river. And the ONLY thing that will get me to approach a stranger clearly is food, so I talk one of the other girls into going over there with me to try to score some marshmallows. Looking back, I'm certain we would have scared the shit out of our neighbors. I'm sure they would have thought they were suddenly a part of the Blair Witch Project.
So my friend and I start to walk away from our site when we hear "HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!" I turn around and see all these cops literally tumbling down a hill to get to us down by the river. My first instinct was to laugh because most of them ate shit on their way down and I was super stoned, but the humor of the situation quickly left as I imagined myself sitting in jail. One of the cops said "We have been sitting up there for quite a while watching you. We saw all of you smoke a pipe except YOU," and he pointed at me. He said "What's wrong with you?" I said "What can I say officer, I'm straight edge." He was like "I'm sure you are." So they started searching us and the truck we were in. They found several bags of weed, pipes and various other things. My girlfriend apparently was holding most of the contraband because every time a cop would hold something up and ask who's it was, she'd be like "That's mine." The only thing they took from me was my giant bag of ibuprofen, which I begged them not to take. But the cop said "I ain't never seen ibuprofen that looked like this before," and he snatched that shit right out of my hands.
As the search continued, the piercer and her girlfriend were kinda giggling to each other. We were like, what are you laughing about? And they said, "I wonder if they are gonna find our vibrator?" Which caused us all to bust out laughing. So the cops were like, "What's so funny?" And we said, "We are just curious if you are gonna find their vibrator?" Two of the cops turned bright red and the other one was like "What is that?" At that point we were rollin' on the ground we were laughing so hard. They never did find it because it was stashed in a little compartment under the seat. But just for fun, the girl who owned the truck, popped that seat up and whipped it out for them anyway to give that sweet young cop and education.
Next, one of the cops started to get our info. He rolled up to my girlfriend and was said "Sex....female, hair....blue, eyes...brown, with a littttttttle bit of red." Once again, we all cracked up. Finally after he wrote up a ticket for everybody except me. Then he said they needed to get a picture of us. So we all hop into the back of the pickup truck for the photo. You would have thought we were at a beach party or some festive event. We were all fixing our hair, leaning in with our thumbs up and we had the biggest smiles imaginable. If only we had smart phones and instagram at that time...I would pay top dollar to get a copy of that picture. I'm pretty sure we made him take a couple because somebody blinked and we couldn't manage to get our squinty eyes open. I'm certain that photo is mounted on a cork board in some police station somewhere. I think the bust ended with us giving the cops a high five and possibly a hug.
So the cops leave and I'm like "Man, I'm never smoking weed again." And my girlfriend was like, "That's too bad cuz I threw some weed over my shoulder when I saw them coming down the hill." I said "Well maybe just one more time to calm my nerves :) " They had taken all our smoking devices with us, so I can't remember exactly how we smoked the moment they drove away. We either rolled up some leaves or fashioned a bong out of a Mountain Dew can. As any good pot head knows...where there is weed, there is a way!
All the girls had to go to court and since they were on federal land or some shit like that, all they got was like a $300 ticket. So every year, when Mother's day rolls around, I think about two things, my mom and the funnest drug bust ever. Say no to drugs.
