Ready to roll on summer fun....

Its kind of embarrassing to be taking my first break of the LONG, HOT summer so late.  Most Americans with any money to spend have already been where they intend to go, now they have to focus on getting their kids ready for school.  Not me.  I am lucky in that my family, while always greater globetrotters than me anyway, are using this last hurrah of summer to gather together in the Great Smoky Mountains.  

Every year for the last 5 or more we have taken a week to come together for a great time there.  We were always happiest in the Smokies as a family, but we always camped.  Nothing wrong with that at all, in fact it was a blast.  But now there are many more of us...and the kids today aren't much on camping.  So for convenience, it's now a cabin deal.  We eat great food cooked by renowned cajun chefs, (my mother and me, haha. ) We hike all over those mountains, sit in icy-cool streams and play with rocks, my nephew and I try to out-do each other in photographic skill.  The girl chillens from up north, my little sister's crew, are also freshly returned from a large youth conference in the NC mountains where they get together with 'weird southern children' and have a week of fellowship together, so they are full of stories and songs and a little fake energy.  I know they are beat.  But when we get up into the higher elevations and it cools off and they start seeing salamanders and birds and trees and streams, they get wound back up.  

Me?? I am just old.  I can walk and climb and am a bit of an amateur naturalist and a bit of a photographer, and a bit of a meat-smoker and a bit of everything.  I just try to keep up.  Even my mother in her 70's can still out-work me.  She always could.  We are about even in stamina, my weakness owing to a career in smoking cigarettes.  Now that I have quit that habit, it's a little easier, but I quit too late.  Shame.  It wasn't from a lack of advice.  Or morbid things seen.


But the reason I posted this entry is to make sure that you are hep to the news coming down the pike.  One item is that a reader is sending me a travel case/humidor to test out and give my impressions of.  I am NOT a fancy traveler when it comes to cigars. When I go to a herf, EVERYONE else has a pelican case with foam inserts to cradle their cigars.  Me, I have a big cedar cigar box.  It may or may not have a humidifier in it.  They roll around and get all busted up and I don't CARE.  But this reader mentioned that he was trying to get something going on the side, and the "363" cigar travel case was born.  It's not very different from any of the other cases you see at herfs around the world, but my job is to see what it does well and what, if anything, it does poorly.  I am going to be hiking and riding in the car and smoking on a balcony deck, so it will get a weak test.  I am not going to toss it off a cliff to test it much, but I can't promise I won't drop it SOMEWHERE along the line.  If they turn out to be great cases, I will let you know where you can get em.  I like the idea of supporting a regular guy over sending money to a large company.  They had their time when life was easy.  Now that its tough, we need to help out the little guy.


In addition to that I am gonna be knocking out a few more BHK 52s and some long and thin la Gloria Cubanas.  I'll be drinking a couple of new beers (to me) in the hot tub while smoking cigars, and drinking a lot of blended smooth drinks out of the ol' Jimmy Buffet machine.  I am gonna be complaining about my feet.  I am going to be complaining about the heat.


But I am also gonna be praising (hopefully) my new Rostra Cruise Control on my Cruze.  I was being cheap at the dealership last year, attempting to buy a car for cash while I could.  I got a decent trade-in price on my Colorado, and I thought, what the hell, might as well drop one bill for good since I had some cash on hand.  But in my being extra careful to leave myself some money in the bank, I opted down a package for what was essentially the cheapest new car on the entire lot.....WITHOUT cruise control.  Now those of you who are old like me KNOW that you gots to have your cruise control.  Trips over a few hours long are MURDER without it.  I was heading to Ohio last year for a herf and actually whimpering, my legs hurt so much.  I had to pull over all the time to stretch them for fear of getting "coach flyer" syndrome.  This crap went on for 18 months until I had had enough.  I spent $160 on a aftermarket setup and installed it last night.  We are unlucky in a lot of ways that we can no longer work on our cars like motorheads used to do.  But there are times when I am thankful for drive by wire technology.  The speed on most cars today is strictly a matter of voltage.  You can have the car stick to a set voltage range and therein control a car's speed.  So there was not vacuum module or mechanical linkages or any of that drek.  Tapped in to a few wires, installed a control fob lever et voila'!  I be cruisin, yo.

So my little 6 hour trip to the mountains will be MUCH more enjoyable.  Even now I am shaking my head and exhaling and thinking of how much better life will be behind the wheel.  Now if I can only do something about phone jockeys.


I will be making a lot of entries on the week, the sights, the smells, the finish, the burn...should also be fairly photo heavy and loaded with stuff to read.  So be on the lookout for the wrap-up in the middle of August.  And just as a test to see who reads this drivel and who doesn't, I WILL be at the Shack.  So that's another major smoking event and cruise control test, a 12 hour ride!  NOT fun.  But now, maybe even a little pleasurable.