Hello, from Middle of No-Where Colorado

As the title says, Hello. (and sorry in advance for the novel... I was writing a book tonight )

Figured it was time I finally join RIU, been a lurker for years on this forum, and now that I have my lovely card again and have a nice little closet going (finishing a round right now, and also starting another as we speak).

A little background: Back when I was young and dumb(er) I thought rebuilding dirt bikes to make them go faster was a cheap and fun past-time... then comes the accident when I forget to replace a rusting clutch cable with a brand new heavier duty clutch/transmission... Well shortly after I hit a ramp, all the torque snapped the cable, somehow broke the clutch and froze the rear wheel... "Not good" was all I could think before I see the trees coming fast on my left, 'ditch the bike towards the trees and try and fall down the (small) hill', I thought.

Bike goes tumbling towards the trees, I hit the ground and try to remember my "Tuck and Roll" from judo as a kid... didn't help, twisted my ankle and knee on one side from the landing, started to roll and I happen to see a rock (with adrenaline pumping, everything was slow-mo) but was unable to change directions (twisted right leg...). My helmet smashing into the rock almost knocked me out, cracked the helmet down
one side, my back landed on a few other rocks. 45 or so minutes go by just staring at the sky, wondering if anyone was going to come out and check on me... in massive amounts of pain, no one did, so I figure it was about time to gather the strength to make it to a phone or the hospital.

Back ended up compressing (almost every disk), almost shattered my right ankle, messed up the cartilage in my knee, and found out I also recieved a concussion. Dr. thought that was the only reason I made it back inside as jacked up as I was, the concussion "Allowed me to not understand the amount of pain/trauma my body was in". He started me on ANY type of addicting drug he could prescribe: Vicodin, Tylox, Tylenol 3, Flexeril, Darvocet, the list goes on...

Nothing really helped and my g/f at the time noticed I was slowing slipping into the nasty cycle of addiction. "This has to stop!" Then a good friend came over and noticed my pain, knew I was going thru hard times and asked, "Want to try something that might help the pain?" Seeing him pull out a joint and knowing my friend was actually trying to help, said why not. And that day forward I knew I found my medicine (15 or so years ago).

Took a year or so then I slowly started growing due to high prices on crappy product. Then Colorado became legal, and I had to go the legal rout. Stopped growing for a while due to low prices on ok to great product (for years it was 160 - $200 for an ounce of meds at my local dispensary). It was way more convenient to walk into a MMD and pick from a large list of product (up to 40 strains some days!) way more than I could do, with my limit of "6 plants", then I had to grow them and hope the clones they gave me are legit, or the seeds are true females when flowering, Bah just give me the dispensary list .

Then the prices slowly started to skyrocket and the meds slowly became junk at most of the dispensaries around, the actual good stuff was over $400 an O at "member pricing", clones went from $5 each or 4 for $15 up to $35 a piece!

"Well out come the growing supplies, I wonder if my seeds will still germ and if my light will burn down the house?" Looking at my 14+ year old 150w HPS light and ballast... I instantly toss it in the trash after fully taking it apart so no one else can just plug it in and have problems, "time to look for new lighting". Found out LEDs have started to make a huge leap in the indoor growing market, went to my local grow shop to check them out, all I see is over priced... repainted China made LED lights with a fancy 'lighthouse' and a few other symbols on them, and a few that say "... Made in USA"... look at it closer and its the same damn light as the Lighthouse next to it, and the Lighthouse was from the same company as a China Light I ordered and imported myself at 1/4 the price of the Lighthouse brand

My old seeds are still germing, my '300w' LED (150-180 true watts, depending on temp I have seen) worked like a champ even tho I messed everything up anyone could think of, other than enough lighting and no bugs that is .

Ok, Ok, enough rambling for now. I am off to the indoor section to hopefully start another novel

great pix. plants looked good. sorry for your chronic pain. i have it myself but cannabis doesnt work on my pain. it does make me sleep better though. props for using LED's. i have used them and the end products were every bit as good. growing is addictive. mb your grows will help take your mind off your pain. i hope it works for you.

Thanks for stopping by, it's rare for a Mod to stop in my threads, usually its to BAN someone .

I am lucky that it DOES help my pain, and the NLx's in the pics was created by a good friend and me. His Black Widow (aka the "first" White Widow) was mated to my Northern Lights #5 studly (pink balled) male, after 5 or so generations of breeding the overly potent and racy Widow out of her, we ended up with 80-90% NL leaning phenos with the rare "White" showing up every now and then... Our goal was to bring the: Instant high from the Widow; and; the Body Numbing meds from the Northern Lights.

The F1's almost ALL smoked like the Widow, too racy, and if over done a trip to the hospital was expected to keep my heart from exploding (150+ bpm is NOT good for the human body). Slowly moved and bred them out to F5's... We just started calling them NLx IBLs after the 3rd run. Took a lot of luck and about 3 years of work between 2 people (and selective breeding) to get this strain the way we liked it.

Looks like NL#5 until the frost hits the last few weeks, then turns overly frosty like the Widows. Smoke is an INSTANT high that hits you right between the eyes, then the brain starts to tingle, and the body gets a nice warm and fuzzy feeling. Yield is heavier than BOTH the parents, I think its due to the extra branches the Widow brings. NL used to grow a HUGE main kola and not much else. The Widow would grow HUGE fluffy buds almost everywhere, the best of both worlds are now in this one plant