I had a friend offer to me his truck and hot air balloon equipment for a weekend competition in Iowa in late September.  It was an opportunity I could not pass up, so I took the Greyhound back to Des Moines, met up with friends and family, and spent the weekend in a small Iowa town.  Here is a write-up of the weekend that I did for a ballooning website:
---

Saturday morning brought shifting winds and very little steerage out of the South, and a 2 part task .  There was a traditional Fly In to an X, and a Maximum Distance Double Drop utilizing the paved and grass runways.  The paved runway runs SE to NW, so the best score would have been the first MAX baggie on the southern tip of the runway, a good score at the X, and the other baggie somewhere on the SW to NE grass runway. 


Sunday morning brought more steerage, winds out of the SW with a right turn and speed above, and another 2-part task.  The first was a Fly In to the airport, measuring either 300’ from the X or anywhere on the paved runway, giving pilots a chance to get a result even if they missed the X.  But there were a lot of great scores, including several scores with 1 meter.  The 2nd task was a target at the Cemetery NE of the airport.  It required a relatively-low approach, and it was just north of a line of trees, but several pilots were able to navigate their way to put a baggie within the legs of the X.

---

I took the greyhound back to Denver on Sunday night.  It was cheap taking the bus, but not exactly fun.  The weather worked out and I was glad I went, but next time, I'm taking a car!

    On August 27th I (Mark) had my appointment with the Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division to obtain my Support Badge to be able to work in the Medical Cannabis industry.  It's been a long journey, starting all the way back in the Spring, when I tried to make an appointment with the MMED office in Fort Collins.
    We were living there through June, and I knew that once I moved to Denver I would want the badge.  Dispensaries had been closed in Fort Collins since February, and the MMED closed at the end of May, meaning that Colorado Springs and Denver were the only places to obtain a license.  And when I called Denver to schedule an appointment, I was told they were not scheduling appointments until July.  By the time we moved to Denver, Colorado Springs had also had their office shut down. 
    I called in July, and after several messages I finally got through and was able to schedule an appointment for August 27th at 9am -  the first available appointment for that day.   
    I arrived at the MMED offices at about 8:50am.  I wanted to make sure I was first, because I had heard horror stories of people waiting for hours.  The MMED offices are on the 3rd floor of a fairly nondescript office building, and the office itself seems to be staffed by only 2 or 3 people at most. 
    The nice lady at the desk checked my application and noted a couple small spots I had accidently left blank; no big deal.  The application includes listing sitations and arrests of every kind, and I listed traffic offenses, which she informed me I didn't need to list, but better be safe than sorry.  As they exsplicitly explain in the application, leing or not divulging a sitation, arrest or conviction would result in a denial of the application.

And then I waited.  I was the lone person in the waiting room of about a dozen chairs lining the walls.  I started to read a book, but ended up chatting with a delivery or maintenance guy that was came in to get something signed.  But he literally stood around for ten minutes before anyone else showed up to help in; in the mean time we talked about Iowa Hawkeye football, and the medical marijuana industry.  He asked if I had a job lined up, and wished me luck once he got his paper signed and headed on about his day.

Once the lady came back with my paperwork, she matter-of-factly said we would next be doing fingerprints, which was my first acknowledgement that the application process was a success - I was slightly worried about having student loans or government debt that I didn't know about, or some government red-tape issues that would have ruined my chances, but everything worked out just fine!

The fingerprinting took about 5 minutes, I got my picture taken, the badge was printed, and I was out the door before 10am!

Denver has treated us wel thus far.  Dan has settled into his job as a trimmer, and I have a job outside the medical marijuana industry that I can enjoy for the time being.  We both have appointments scheduled with the Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division, mine is for the 27th of this month, and Dan's is in early September.  I would love to get a job as a budtender, and that is the goal!  We took a week off from making videos, but no plans on stopping, and a lot of good content and things to look forward to

I went years and years without having the 4th of July off from work.  I worked at a pizza place, and we would close by 7pm, which gave me a couple hours to get out of there in time to see the fireworks.  Onetime we climbed onto the top of the rough to watch them because it has been so busy that day we weren't yet done.  But for the last couple of years, and today, I have the 4th of July off.  Which is nice only because everyone else seems to have the day off, and that common experience is always cool.  The plan for today is to go for a swim in the apartment pool, and then find a chill place to smoke a bowl.  A bar-b-que may be in order.  The new apartment is awesome, the balcony is great, the pool is heated, and 10ft deep, and being close to Shana has been fontastic!

If you live in the United States, I hope you have a safe and happy Independence Day.  If you don't, I hope you have a safe and happy Wednesday!  And if you live in Colorado, please refrain from using fireworks!  It's too dry out there!

Take care everyone!  -Mark

Everything is flowing nicely.  I have the moving truck ordered, I have called to cancel the utilities, forwarded the mail, and we even went down to Denver for a day last week to make some connections and turn in resumes.  It wasn't the most productive time in the world, but we now have a better feel for the city, and the potential it has.  There are over 300 dispensaries, with more opening all the time.   The one problem is that, again, the Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division has a message instructing people to call back Monday, July 2nd to schedule an appointment to obtain a Support Badge.  But with our knowledge of the cannabis plant, with our involvement in the community, and our passion for improving the negative stigmas associated with this wonderful plant, the brother and I feel confident we will be working in a top-notch dispensary by this time next month!  

On the 1st we gave our 1-month notice to our apartment in Fort Collins.  So the move is official!  We will be moving to Denver!  We have an apartment lined up and ready to rent, and the plan is to move on Saturday, June 30th!  I'll give my 3-week notice to my current job here soon, and I'll be moving to Denver hopefully to work in the Medical Cannabis industry. 

There is one slight problem we have run into, though; the Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division is currently not taking calls to set up appointments to obtain the Employee Support Badge that we'll need to work in the industry.  They do say, however, that because it is an error on their part, they won't hold that against people that want to work in the industry, and they won't be requiring the badge until they can start accepting appointments.  We'lll call back on June 18th.

That's all for now.  Hopefully everyone is enjoying June!

On Sunday, May 20th the R3DBAND crew made a trip to the top of Rocky Mountain National Park.  When we entered the park, Trail Ridge Road was closed at Rainbow Curve.  We took our time getting to the top, stopping to take pictures and see the awesome mountain scenery. 

But we got to the end of the road, and we were going to hike down the road a few miles, but they actually ended up opening up the road just as we were about to hike up it.  So we got back in the car and made our way to the next scenic pull-off and path.  We probably shouldn't have taken the dogs down the path, but nobody else was around when we first got there.  Eventually more people showed up, but overall it was chill place.  The dogs liked it, even though they probably never got to see the view that we saw.  Once we left there we drove the last mile to the top of Trail Ridge Road, took some more pictures, and headed back down.  We'll probably have more pictures in an upcoming video!

It was actually quite warm today.  And the Colorado sun just beats down; having lived the majority f my life in swampy Iowa, less haze and higher altitude means more sun, and I dig it.  It's supposed to get up to 83 on Thursday, but the high for Friday is supposed to only be 52.  Oh, weather.

I recently posted a video on my channel of me using a Da Buddha Vaporizer.  I'll probably post another smoking video soon.  I like the idea of using cannabis for videos, and doing it on my channel means being the one to have final say of when a video goes up, knowing when the next video will go up, and generally having control over the upload.  I'm also looking forward to having more views, and improving my statistics.  As of right now, I'm 140 subscribers and 2,000 views behind Dan's solo channel, GreenBand1080.  Although...... "the only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself..."  

The 4/20 weekend was a blast!  We met up with Garrett, who lives in downtown Denver, and walked down to the park.  We got there just before 4pm, and smoked out for about an hour. 

On Saturday we had some trouble with the hotel room, and had to switch hotels.  We didn't end up making it to the cannabis cup,. but we shot a video from Lookout Mountain, and later that evening we met up with Paul Tokin, smoked a few bowls, and recorded some casual video.

On Sunday we recorded a video in Garrett's apartment using a couple of his awesome pieces.  We then headed down to the Medical Cannabis Cup, where we met up with a friend/grower from our town, Gil from WeedMaps and NugPorn, and we were part of the TokinDaily Livefeed from the River Rock Wellness booth. 

It was an amazing weekend, stay tuned to the channel fo

We'll be heading down to Denver tomorrow for the 4/20 events!  If you're also planning on being at Civic Center park on Friday, send us en email or message, and we'll try to meet up.  The Medical Cannabis Cup is on Saturday and Sunday, not sure if we'll make both days, but we plan on taking a lot of video from the event, so stay tuned!  I hope everyone has a safe and happy weekend!