Aesliip Strain Stories: Purple Haze and Hippie Rick

I had an interesting experience the other day that I feel compelled to share. It was completely random and an example of genuine friendliness. While wandering the wilds of Ravenna Park, I met a strange and wonderful fellow who went by the name, “Hippie Rick.”

It was a rainy day and I was out for a walk. It was quite nice because there weren’t as many people there as usual, and I don’t mind a little rain. My favorite thing to do while high is walk in parks, and this time I had some purple haze and I was listening to the soundtrack for Final Fantasy XIII.

I walked around for about an hour. On my way back to my car, it began raining pretty hard. I took cover under a giant bridge while the rain poured down and the wind roared about. It was pretty neat to sit there and listen to the rain.

This is where I sat and saw lighter-signals

On the opposite side of the under-bridge, covered in darkness, I could see the shapes of what looked like two people sitting and chilling just like me. Suddenly the unmistakable glow of a lighter appeared for a brief moment, and was gone. It flickered a few more times. I smiled and thought that those people were probably doing the same thing as me. I lit my lighter a few times to signal back.

It was getting dark, so I left that spot and made my way out of the ravine and up towards the field that also had a covered pinic/grill area. I had my headphones on, but through them I could hear someone calling out.

My first thought was, “oh shit, someones calling me.” My second thought was, “shit this isn’t where I parked.” I took off the headphones, and looked to where I would need to go to get to my car and saw who was calling me.

Someone was under the picnic area, taking shelter from the rain. I couldn’t see this person, but they were saying something like, “Come out of the rain, man, come hang out.” I figured it was probably some crazy person and was like, whatever, I’ll chill with this guy for a bit.

As I got closer I could see he was dressed in a nice button up shirt with a collar, and was wearing one of those fedora-style hats. He introduced himself as “Hippie Rick” and started talking about the weather and some other things. I couldn’t understand much of what he was saying, but the gist of it was thus: he had just come up to the Seattle area and was going to put a down payment on a house in 10 days. Until then, he was roughin’ it in the wilds.

It also happened to be his birthday. I wished him happy birthday, and from the empty bottle of wine chilling on the brick, I could deduce that he had already started celebrating. The rain, unfortunately, had blown a stick in his gears. He was trying to cook some hot dogs in one of the grill stations by burning scraps of paper, but the rain kept putting the fire out.

The bridge I took cover under

I was about to leave when he bade me stay and smoke weed with him, like a true hippie. He had a little glass peice and I was like, “dude!” and pulled out my glass peice. He laughed and started telling me about how hippies need to stay together and “share the kind-bud.”

We smoked and hung out a bit and talked. I learned he was a chef/caterer and had been living in hotels in a bunch of different cities for a while before coming to Seattle. He was quite an eccentric person; a cool cat. While we were smoking some guy came over to us flashing a flashlight and I freaked out thinking he was a cop or something, but it turned out he was just a guy working with a laser tag company looking for his customers.

After about half an hour it was almost completely dark, so I said farewell to Hippie Rick and walked to my car while thinking about how awesome the events that just took place were. He was probably the most friendly/outgoing guy I’ve met, especially since we were both strangers. If I ever create a cannabis strain, I’m gonna call it Hippie Rick.

Hippie Rick, wherever you are, I salute you. Hopefully we’ll meet again some day.