Soda

I recently made the transition from a long and proud history of joint smoking into the bubble sucking ways of waterpipes. My piece was 20 bucks, it's a mix of a pipe, bubbler, and hookah - but none of them by definition.

I've had my doubts about bongs, as I had read they only served more concentrated tar and less thc per smoking unit (something about the thc molecule sticking to the solids in the bong). But **** that, it was probably the man trying to trick us.

My first question is about the bong water. It would be great to tell a new smoker that chugging the bong water after a smoking session is customery and watch hilarity ensue. Anyway, is water the best liquid to use? Maybe some cool blue colored energy drink or no? Distilled water better? Best way to pack - ground up - nugs - what? Dare I say...a sprinkle o' strawberry rollin' tabacci? At let me see some pics of bongwater, dirtiest bong water recepient will get a free doobie, that I'll keep with me for safety.

I pour in some spring water and freeze it (ice cubes are actually larger then the whole chamber of my piece), then fill in a little more spring water. It hits nicely - but the bowl usually gets hot enough to burn and the damn thing needs to be unattached and cleaned with a paper clip every three smokes or so, and the water needs to be changed every three hits because the chamber is so small.

I named this piece King Turbo, in memory of a bagseed cannabis plant I was growing in a 20 year old pale on a stealth grow indoors. Unfortionately my good mother threw it away into the woods or backyard. I was crawling on in the dark on mud and wet grass crying his name looking for him, it was so climatic. Remeniscent of Wilson the ball floating away from Tom Hanks in Castaway. The next day I looked at pictures of him and tried to cry to inflict guilt to those responsible.

__________________
Alas! the forbidden fruits were eaten,
And thereby the warm life of reason congealed.
A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun of Adam,
Like as the Dragon's tail dulls the brightness of the moon.

— Rumi: Masnavi I Ma'navi

Soda

Thought I might as well get started to set par for the bong water competition. I think I might just win that free jay.

My sister had borrowed the bubbler this morning while I was still asleep, returning it a few hours later. That same night I prepared my poorman's kif by rubbing very dry weed on a tea strainer. I was able to fill the bowl with the crystally powder. Unfortionately when I tried to hit it, the pull was all gone and I couldn't even draw smoke! Oh, the the agony. Luckily marijuana gives me limitless and ingenuitive motivation on one particular subject - doing anything that will successfully end in me getting high.

I generally worked on it for hours, doing everything from a resin scrape (with nifty scraping tool) to adjusting the tube connections. When I finally tried to hit the repaired bubbler it was still not pulling, so I was straining my mighty lung muscles just so I could pull hard enough to keep the cloudlike bowl smoke from lifting away. In about ten seconds of pulling, I saw a small fragment (probably a resin ball that had hardened) ZIP down the bowl tube into the water. Instantly, the pull was restored just as powerfully as the day I bought it. Bubbles of pure white (picture upcoming) were shooting up the water from the end of the bowl tube, and the chamber was being hit harder then it ever had - it was pure white with no transparency! Since I had froozen the water in the chamber for 25 minutes like I always do, it was extremely cold. Because the smoke was being so efficiently cooled, I couldn't even feel it going down - just a very intense and strange feeling of expansion in my lungs. The while bowl cherries and I took the whole hit. I was instantly blazed which soon settled into a bake. Biggest hit ever. Should have been there.

Below is my scraping tool with a ball of resin from that bubbler's scrape. Obviously the other picture is my contender for dirtiest bong water - and it only had that one hit.