The road is a strange place. It’s liminal, neither here nor there, and time morphs when I travel. So, I turn to the radio, and it always disappoints.

You’d think good songs would make it through the ether in the wide-open places, but it’s mostly static. I’ll click the seek button and watch the green digits cycle in a loop, and when nothing comes in, I feel lost. Stretches without reception feel desolate, alien, hostile, and I’ll speed up a little until something comes through. And when my radio finally finds something in the void, the station is usually old and stale: mariachi music, a sermon of some sort, or classical symphonies. I’ll land on the latter and leave it, doing my best to pretend like I appreciate Mozart, and then I’ll drive through the backwoods of Colorado waiting for something better, clicking the seek button whenever the violins get annoying, listening for something familiar the way I look for landmarks.

Granted, satellite radio is an option, but that’s just more of the same stuff I listen to while I’m at home, and it’s best to leave behind the familiar while traveling. Sure, some music is impossible to escape—that “here I go again” song by Whitesnake always comes on at least once during every trip, making me think about fog machines and women with big hair sitting on expensive cars—but without fail, I’ll hear something new, or learn something new thanks to NPR, and that’s the best part: novelty.

Know what I mean? I travel to hear and see new things, and I think it’s the same for all of us. However, that’s not to say there aren’t a few familiar things that come with me on every trip: my cowboy boots, my vintage North Face backpack, and marijuana. Fun, right? But marijuana isn’t exactly travel-friendly, if you know what I mean—the stuff stinks, so I usually bring edibles and my vaporizer, which is also something novel.

It still blows me away that we have marijuana vaporizers nowadays, because the word “vaporizer” sounds super futuristic, like “ray-gun” or “teleporter.” But they’re here now and they’re awesome. I’m in Boulder right now, doing my best to spread the word about The Greenery Hash Factory’s ridiculously good solventless concentrates, and I brought my PAX Era with me, which I love so much that it’s about to become just as necessary as my lucky backpack. And we just started selling PAX Pods and PAX Era batteries at our Durango dispensary, The Greenery, so this week, I figured I should tell you about them.

The vape pens most people are used to have a threaded cartridge that screws onto the battery, but the PAX Era is different in that you just plug the cartridge into the top, no righty-tighty necessary. And most vaporizers use a single ceramic element or a wick to heat the oil, but the PAX system uses two wicks which means you can make the hits twice as strong as usual (if you’re in to that sort of thing). But the best part about the PAX system is the smart battery.

Yes, “they” have officially made a Bluetooth smart-battery for smoking marijuana. There’s even an app you can download for your phone that’ll connect to these batteries, and it’ll allow you to adjust your vape-pen’s temperature remotely, track the number of hits you get per pod, and lock your battery with the push of a button. Isn’t that crazy? That means you can take a hit from your vape pen, lock it with your smartphone, and then leave your PAX Era out on the coffee table. Your kids or your roommates (or anyone else who can’t see the line between “mine” and “yours”) won’t be able to pick it up and smoke when you’re not looking. It’s insane how far we’ve come technologically speaking in this industry in such a short period of time.

But I’ll admit, the PAX Era is a little tricky to figure out in the beginning, so here’re the answers to the two most common questions I get in our shop about how to use the PAX system:

Q: How do I know if my battery is charged?

A: Most batteries come with a partial charge, but to check it, all you need to do is shake your PAX battery. The petals on the front will light up: one lighted petal means your battery is almost dead, and four means it’s charged completely. If you see only one lighted petal when you shake the battery, plug it in with the provided USB charger and let it sit for about an hour.

Q: I’m getting weak hits, so how do I change my pen’s temperature?

A: Most people use the smartphone app, but it isn’t necessary. Just follow these steps:

1.) Insert the PAX Pod into the top of your battery and then give your pen a shake; the petals will light up.

2.) As soon as the petals light up, quickly remove the pod. The petals will start cycling through the temperature settings.

3.) As soon as the petals display the temperature setting you want, quickly put the pod back into the battery to lock in the temperature setting (the setting colors are listed in the pamphlet that comes with every battery).

And frankly, that’s all you need to know. As soon as you master the battery check and temperature change, the PAX Era vape pen is one of the most reliable, user-friendly systems available—there isn’t even a button to press when you’re using your vape pen because these things are automatically activated when you start to inhale. I couldn’t be more impressed.

At The Greenery, our Durango dispensary, we’re selling the PAX Era batteries for $30 before tax (which is a damn good deal), and we’re selling the double-wick pods for $55 before tax. Each pod contains 500mg of concentrate (Sativa oil, Indica oil, or distillate). And if you’d like to learn more about the PAX Era or see a demonstration as to how they work, simply come see Your Best Buds at 208 Parker Avenue, and we’ll show you something new for the next time you go down the only road you’ve ever known (Whitesnake!).

  

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