I learned how to cross a bicycle freeway, visited a cannabis museum, enjoyed an Argentinian steak no better than an Irish one, sat on a bench drinking wine out of a paper cup, smoked no-THC hemp flower at a corner cafe, slurped up a bowl Vietnamese noodles, sipped a shot of Baileys, and watched my friend get a tattoo.
All on one street!
Sitting in a room where people smoked pot and drank coffee was like going back in time. "Only old people smoke flower," I've been told by young Santa Cruzans.
I might be getting old even though I'm healthy and only the one knee pains me. When I was young, I loved smoking, and I miss it. The lit matches, filling lighters, opening the pack ritual, the sociability. When I get terrible news, I still crave a cigarette. Nothing else will do.
Soon smokable hemp will be everywhere, more legal than cigarettes, tasty as cannabis, and all the THC bred out of it.
When I got back to Ireland, I ordered a sample of dried hemp flowers from a cafe in Waterford that buys hemp flowers from Italy and calls it "Strawberry Kush."
It was like smoking that stash you forgot about from last year. No, much worse. It was like smoking hemp.
But my knee feels better when I walk up the stairs.
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