just... watch. the answer is if you change the pen color by 101 then the color does not change.
My question was never answered, so I found the answer myself! Also I ran into the random problem that when I use the "repeat until" block, then it seems to run the "pen up" block as well. So I used the "pen down" block during every run through. I could have had a "forever if touching color (red) then stop all" but I did this instead.
