A long and boring story

One of the reasons I bought a new car is that nowadays, it's not simple to work on cars.  I used to travel with a crappy vehicle and a box full of tools, and NEVER once had to call the wrecker on a road trip to get me there, although I had many chances.  I was inspired to independence of this sort by my father who seemed able to fix anything.  I was coming home from Keesler AFB in Biloxi one evening and overheated going up what's called the "high Rise" in New Orleans.  I limped on down the interstate to an exit and asked a person in the neighborhood if I could use their phone.  In those days kids, the phone was hanging on the wall inside of the house, it was kooky.  And you had better look honest or you'd be walking to a pay phone in an area without too many pay phones.  My dad came to get me, and within 45 minutes of my call, he showed up with water, tools and electrical tape.  He took the hose off the car, wrapped tape around and around and around it, then took out a knife, carefully cut the tape, and replaced the hose on the car.  He filled it back up with water and we got home with no further issues.  That made me really impressed with my already iconic father.  The only thing he couldn't fix with steel, wood or duct tape was Cancer.  Oh what 25 more good years wouldn't have done for his legend.  

But when you see something like that, and the cars you own are old enough to actually FIX, it nourishes a part of you that you never knew was there.  It makes you believe anything is possible when you are left on the side of the road.  And it also showed me an important lesson.  When you are far from home in a car, BE PREPARED for anything.  You can't fix much anymore without a computer and wires and power and a lift.  But I felt like what I could fix, I was ready for.  Bouyed with this confidence, I went on a 12 hour road trip to The Shack Herf in Northern Ohio.

The trip up was uneventful.  Its the trip home that causes me to want to write all this down.  If I hadn't lived it, I would swear it was something out of The Truman Show.

I left my motel room at 8am local time.  Which meant when I got home I would be actually be pulling up at 7pm, owing to the time zone difference.  So I was pumped up and ready to go.  40 minutes down the road I realized somehow that I had left my dirty clothes on the suitcase stand in the room.  I did a little bad math and realized I could just blow em off.  Apart from the embarassment of having your drawers there for all to see or sniff, the gas required for a 'quick" 80 minute jaunt to get them would be worth more than the clothes.....except for my GEAUX TIGERS shirt!  Damnit!  Even then the math did NOT warrant a return trip, I could simply order another.  But still I turned around.  Because I am an idiot.  

So now I am behind by an hour and a half as I get back to the place where I had originally turned around to go back to the motel.  I DID actually do one thing right in that sequence.  When I left that morning, I left the door unlocked.  It was to be my only victory of the day and not much of one at that.  But I was able to pull up, grab my crap and go without involving anyone or waiting for them to realize how important the matter was.  So that worked out uneventfully.  However, as I made my way further down the interstate, I noticed that under my ice chest, which was riding shotgun, there was a bit of condensate forming on my upholstery.  Now normally water is no big deal to me, I knew it wasn't WET wet.  But I DO love me some new car smell.  Moisture deep in my upholstery might jeopardize the lovely aroma of my car on a hot day, all new and stuff, despite it's 2 year old reality.  So I pulled over immediately, and did NOT wait until I needed gas an hour down the road.  I dumped the ice chest out and got back on the road.....for a minute, that is.

There are two things I like about modern cars and not much else.  First was how easy it was to install cruise control on this little rocket.  Its all a matter of voltage control now, no pain in the butt throttle linkages and vacuum hoses and sensors.  Just a couple of wires.  DONE.  The second thing is the sensor that tells a motorist that his tire is going flat.  The way cars handle today, I could have shredded my tire and part of my rim before I realized, Social Distortion cranked up loud, that I had a flat tire.  DING, DING, DING, it sang out to me.  I watched the indicator go from 30psi to 27 to 22 to 18 to 12 to 'screw this, I am pulling over now'....

I had punctured my tire on a road hazard on the shoulder where I had emptied out my cooler.  I could have EASILY waited an hour and dumped it when I filled up with gas.  BUT NO!  I had to do it RIGHT THEN.  So a perfectly good tire is wasted.  But here is where the beginning of the story comes in.  I am totally prepared.  I am not in the mood to change a tire, but I am ready.  I have both tire plugs and a tire inflator.  So I take the crap jack and jack up the car, naturally emptying my trunk out onto the roadside like some kind of  idiot.  I take off the flat, plug it with two plugs and air it up.  I put it back on, jack it down, load up my crap and hit the road.

And for 5 glorious hours, it held.  I was tickled.  I had beaten the beast again.  Back when I had old used trucks and hand me down family cars, I broke down on every trip.  It was just a simple truth of life, that I would have car trouble when travelling anywhere for over 4 hours.  But I always fixed it.  And this time I had fixed it again.  Until I hit Nashville.  I stopped for gas and some cat drove up in a beat up truck and said "Hey man, can you spare some gas?"  Was this karma, asking me if I wanted to take a chance on pissing off the gods of the wheel?  Was it actually Jesus, as many of us have been warned to expect in our youth?  No, I was sure it was just another bum that catches people stopped and vulnerable at gas stations.  Poor guy, though.  His pitch was weak.  In Memphis they turn off the engine as they pull in beside you at the pumps and tell their tale of woe, about how they had been on fumes on the interstate and JUST made it to the gas station before they ran clean out.  I have had this one pulled on me three times in 9 years of living in Memphis.  Every time it happens and I tell them to piss off, they get in their cars, start them up and drive off cursing me.  So much for their story.  But this guy in Nashville had a weak pitch.  And one messed up truck.  It sounded like a slow motion traffic accident as it pulled away and crossed the street to the gas station on the other side of the highway.  He may have just been panhandling gas, but he was NOT a Rockerfeller, I was now convinced.  Maybe I SHOULD have given him a little gas.  Being broke because you like crystal meth is the same broke as when you just have no money and no job.  One is only a little better than the other.  But in the end, I did not help him, and sure enough, he pulled in beside some other sap, whom I waved my arms at to let him know what he was in for.  He left there with no gas and went under the interstate to the Mapco station to try again.  A missed karmic opportunity?  You decide.

I started for home, full of gas and a quarter pounder with cheese in my belly for extra luck.   DING, DING, DING sang Karma.  34, 28, 27, 25, 22, 18, 17, big truck behind me, crap, 14, 13, 10, 8, 5....pulled over.  Major pain in the butt, but hey, I have 12 plugs, I'll just replace em and get back on the road.  So I do.  And a whole mile down the road, it starts again, DING, DING, DING...........

Shit.

The tire would no longer hold plugs.  I could have put more in, maybe THREE this time, maybe be a little more careful installing them.  But in the end I thought "Hey, this was all nice, kept me able to go fast all the way home, but I still have my baby-spare AND a air pump that can top it off.  The worst thing is I have to go a lot slower on a spare, and it's getting dark and I am still 3 hours from home.  My nice 7 pm get-home time was looking like 10:30 if I was lucky.  So I got the spare on, got up to speed and immediately ran into road construction that had three lanes of traffic choking down to one slow bumper to bumper crawl.  I am SO GLAD at this point that I decided to get gas, or I would have let karma not just beat me but maybe even pull down my pants and defile me right there on the side of the road.

Once I cleared the construction traffic, it was a long, slow, dark trip home.  In the end I had 3 hours and 15 minutes worth of stupid-ass BS and trouble, ALL FOR THE LOVE OF NEW CAR SMELL.  So remember kids, the road is a dangerous place.  If you need to do something, make sure you ask yourself, 'can it wait until I stop for gas?'

  

Smokies 2012 part Duh.....the Artsy Fartsy Files.

This trip to the Smokies was a costly one for sure.  Discounting the cost of staying in a luxury cabin, I managed to pull out all the stops on the beverage front, coming up with a scheme to produce a JimmyB machine version of the buttery nipple.  Mission Accomplished.  I also decided that I would not stop there.  Why not get the items to make Russian Quaaludes, too?  I also lost my best camera to a stupid CANON lens error quirk that they have completely separated themselves from, denying there is anything but a user-abuse problem with their superzoom cameras.  They have buried their heads in the sand and stopped listening.  This was hardly abuse, I pulled it out of the bag, loaded it up with batteries and fired it up to the beeping sound of the infamous LENS ERROR, RESTART CAMERA.  Oh, one more thing.  SUCK IT CANON.

I picked up a great used camera this week, though, a FUJIFILM S200 EXR.  I REALLY look forward to showing the pics THIS CAM can take.  Its a fantastic camera and I got a phenomenal price on it.  But several weeks too late to use at the Smokies. 

So my trusty Canon S5 IS was the only camera that took any photos on my trip.  And I was a bit upset this year that I mostly just took photos....very few real keepers.  So here are a few shots for your entertainment.

BEAUTIFUL ROT ON ALUM CAVE CREEK TRAIL

NICE TREE ON ALUM CAVE CREEK TRAIL

CLINGMAN'S DOME IN THE CLOUDS

CHILLIN SKINK ON THE STRIP

My nephew saw this while we were on the strip

in Gatlinburg, over the railing by the Little Pigeon River 

in front of the Haunted Mansion....scary.

A FULL STREAM ON THE MOTOR NATURE TRAIL

END OF THE ROAD AT TREMONT

Partagas Short 2007 - Smokin in the Smokies 2

No sense in going too far into what I already covered, smoking cigars in a hot tub is best done with crap cigars.  Having done so with this Partagas Short proved that again.  Still, this was a fantastic cigar.  Perfectly aged and bursting with flavor.

I cut it without the camera around, so sorry about that.  I could slip a stock photo in this spot, I could TAKE a new pic here at the house.  But my readers are too sophisticated to fall for such a ruse, lol.  The cigar was perfect on the draw, and offered some of the richest Partagas flavors I have had in years.  Lots of honey- sweetened pepper notes, some leathery, dank flavors and a sweet spicy, lip-smacking core that had me doing two things I know not to:  Smoking it in the hot tub, and smoking it FAST to make sure I got as much taste as I could work in there before it began to gurgle. Luckily, the better draw on this smoke allowed me to fend off the gurgle for much longer than I could with the Secreto that I smoked the night before I had this cigar.  My brother in law began to tell me about the book he was reading, one of the series that includes "Clan of the Cave Bear" and it was fascinating, so I got out of the tub and smoked the rest of the cigar in a rocker on the deck while he told me about the books.  Once we heard our special guest arrive upstairs, I tossed the cigar into the ash-bucket and went to greet him and his wife.  I had to photograph the cigar butt the next night after a rainstorm, so the butt is pretty swollen and looks about like a cigar butt that got wet.

In the end, I will score this smoke a tasty 91 points.  Simply a superb Partagas Short.  These are increasingly hard to come by these days.  I suggest buying way more than one box when you are able to find them.

Diggin on the Smokies 2012

If you read this blog regularly, you are probably sick of me telling you that I love the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  You can HAVE Pigeon Forge, you can almost have Gatlinburg, but that park is a treasure.  You can have a plain hot dog, but with the proper memories, it becomes a real steak dinner.  I have no idea what that means, other than to say when I was a kid, NO TRIP we ever took meant more to me than trips to the Smokies.  

Here is a shot I took on the sidewalk in Gatlinburg.  I saw it and walked right on by.  Then I snapped to attention and thought, REMEMBER when you saw the Sponge Bob Popsicle on the ground melting and you did not shoot it?  DUH.  So I circled back around and took this shot.....poor kid.

I grew up HOT in the deepest part of the deep south.  To cross Lake PONTCHARTRAIN was cooling enough, but to continue all the way to Tennessee and up a mountain to boot, was enough to make me come unglued.  And when I was a kid, commercialization was NOT a bad thing.  I could walk around the Rebel Corner souvenir business for hours, (never mind that I likely only had minutes), driving anywhere was an amazing visual feast...There were bears, Indians, hillbillies, fresh mountain morning air, the smell of tent canvas, a limited amount of clean clothes, lol.  The fresh, moist mountain air.   Individual Kellogg's cereal boxes carefully slit open with a knife to make a camping cereal bowl....CHIPMUNKS.  My sisters, who as any young boy knows, would daily go from tormentor to loved one and back several times a day.  We were all trapped in this place of beauty where our schedule was mostly out of our hands, with all these alluring things to do and buy, and not really having a chance to be a classic tourist with deep pockets.  We enjoyed our trips on a dime and in truth, our parents let us spend a short amount of time on each trip at least pretending we were there to spend money and have a real vacation, at least in the way we imagined everybody else did.

                     Mountain Golf

                     
So when I get a chance to get to the Smokies with my mother and my sisters and their families, its a pretty special event for me.  I only got to review 2 cigars, and to this blog they are both re-runs.  I smoked a 2007 Partagas Short and a 2007 Cohiba Maduro Secreto. We will get to them tomorrow.  


               Grotto falls

We hiked a lot less than usual owing to the rain everyday.  But we did manage to make several great hikes, and spent many great picnic lunches in our favorite picnic spots.  


   The Chimneys Picnic Area

We watched a lot of Olympic coverage, and we ate a lot of great food.  My brother-in-law made some fantastic pancakes and waffles most mornings, this being his identified niche skill.  My other B.I.L. is the ice cream maker.  I am the meat smoker.  Jimmy Buffet is the drink maker.  My sisters do it all and are the planners.  My mother out-hikes me, keeps me from drinking too much with the evil eye, and basically presides over the remaining family with pride and her own enjoyment of the trip.

We also discovered a new machine at the Space Needle Arcade that is really going to help.  My sister and I are both Skee-Ball lovers, since we are 50 or so.  NEVER has their been such a rip off from a arcade ticket perspective.  It's a fun game in and of itself, but if you are looking to get anything more than a whoopee cushion or back scratcher, you'd best find another game.  And if not, plan on emptying your wallet.  Well by some miracle, I had two straight 60,000 hole-ins go unscored by the machine, I am sure it is a scam, or just an unreported flaw in one machine, (I didn't report it either). But I got so mad that I left to search the arcade for another game to play.  I found one that is a TICKET MAKER!  I won't say which one, but I have always thought those 'token pusher' games were pretty cool.  You have bulldozers, race cars, game show ripoffs, all kinds of ways to push tokens over the cliff and into a scorer that converts tokens pushed into tickets.  Well I found one that was just shooting out the tickets for me, and as a result we were able to get a prize SO VALUABLE (lol) that the a prize runner had to be called to the counter to go in the 'back' and get our reclining bear figurine. I am sure the lady was shocked that we did not get a tiny bag of silly bandz and call it a night.  A superball and a army man.  No we pointed at an item in the "other case"....the LOCKED one.  So now that we are clued in, we will play this game on our night on the strip to come home with a memento for Mother to show for our 35 bucks lost down the black hole that is the ticket arcade.

I should have had photos of all this, but my crappy expensive Canon  SX1 IS is now a modern art piece of useless metal, glass and plastic.  I took it down to gatlinburg when I heard that they were going downtown, and I forgot to take batteries.  I could have bought a 4 pack for 50 bucks, lol, but since it was clouding up pretty badly, I left the camera in the car.  Little did I know, I should have bought the batteries.  It would have likely prevented what happened to me with it a few days later.  I ended up getting a "lens error, restart camera", and the camera is out of warranty, and this error is SO WIDESPREAD in Canon cameras that Canon has retreated to lawyers and well-trained customer service reps who deny everything as their response for people, tens of thousands so far, who have also had this error out of the blue.  This was supposed to be the supercamera that was going to supplant the workhorse S5 IS.
Piece of crap.  

               Tremont before the swim

On a side note, I was crossing a Tremont stream to shoot some photos,  slipped on a rock and went up to my neck in water with my S5 IS underwater in my hand.  Above you can see the last photo I took before going in for the big swim.  I simply took out the batteries, opened all the doors and hatches, dried it out for two days, and it fired right up.  So while I am out 700 bucks worth of SX1 IS camera (paid 270), at least I still have SOME kind of superzoom left over, my S5 IS.  What a camera...to go through the water and still work fine.

I will say "stay tuned for it", but eventually the post will appear ABOVE this one, so it's a bit weird to say it, but I will have another Smokies collection of photos and the second cigar review, 
the Partagas Short, all coming later this week.

Cohiba Maduro Secretos '07 - Smokin in the Smokies

Barely Smoking in the Smokies might be the best way to describe it.  A lot of rain, a lot of hiking, a lot of heat and missed opportunities to smoke led to only TWO cigars being smoked in a whole week.  Shocking.  And I was so well prepared.   And honestly, this cigar did NOT get high marks because of, you guessed it, something I DID.  I got in the hot tub and smoked it.  perfect for a quarter inch of cigar, and then I begin to hear a gurgle when I drew on it.  The sweat rolling off my face slid across my lips and onto the butt of the cigar.  Fantastic smoke, always is.  Supremely rich, toffee and coffee flavors with a core of sweet and creamy toasted tobacco.  I love these cigars.  I have one box of these left and I think I am going to keep them long term.  These are about the same size as your favorites like the Montecristo No.5, the Bolivar Coronas Junior and Partagas Short,  with a little extra length.  Or so it seems. It also seems a RG point thinner, but I think I am mistaken.

I think that for a cigar that got a bit panned upon it's original release, this smoke and to an even greater extent, the Genios, have proven to be WELL worth the money for a box.  Not so much a 'Cohiba' as it seems to me a CONSISTENT "EL cigar" that is not a EL cigar.  Basically the same wrapper and supposedly Cohiba innards, these continue to perform well many years after their release.  I have enjoyed nearly every one of these I have had.

NOW, I DID ruin the smoke, but for at least a half inch I enjoyed the smoke immensely, after that, ehh, a bit soggy.  And in the end, the butt stayed out in the rain before I had enough daylight to shoot it.  As such, it is a little bloated and the band is faded a bit.  Based solely on the portion of the smoke I was actually able to enjoy, 89 points.  Could have easily scored in the low 90s.  It was very good.  I highly recommend the Secretos and Genios of the Cohiba Maduro Line.

363 Cigar Case, Final Verdict

I got a chance to test the performance of the 363 Cigar Case on my recent trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  I will sum up the findings on the case by saying it performed well throughout the trip, holding a great humidity level and being small enough to be practical but large enough to hold a few weeks worth of smokes.  The only thing I did not like was the foam that came with the test model.  The entire purpose of the test was to try out a few options for foam that were in the design stages at the time.  The foam with 12 spaces/layer for cigars was WAY too thin to protect the cigars properly and to my mind, not durable enough to legitimately accompany this case in it's retail version.  The maker was just throwing things against the wall to see what stuck, but 12 rows are too many for the case size.  As I said before, other foam is available.

I was shown a new wrinkle after the test that I really like, in fact its a first for me in the cigar case foam realm that I think should separate this case from others on the market.  The foam is a totally different arrangement of more durable thickness and layout plus has a special feature added that again, I have not seen before.  I am sure people who buy cases have thought of this and even modified their own boxes to incorporate this feature, but I think the 363 case will be a winner with this new feature standard.  

So in the end, a case is a case for the most part, this one is certainly as good or better than similar cases on the market, and I see things going well for the case maker on cigar boards across the internet and at Instagram.  If you are looking for a case, check out 363's cigar case, I think you will be pleased with the way it performs.  And while I have not seen the final pricing, you could do worse buying a similarly priced item from Joe Corporation when a real guy is selling a box he created as a sideline.  If you believe we should support our fellow cigar smokers, it's not a hard decision.

The Travel Humi by 363 Cigar Cases - gear review

This is a funny review, you can't buy this box yet, and I am swinging in the dark as to what the company may be named when this box becomes available  All I know about it is that I am taking it to the Smokies with me to "check it out".  It's an  interesting product, in that to a certain extent, if you've seen one you've seen them all.  You have a dense plastic box and foam.  I am so unimpressed with the basics of your typical road box, that I have never used one.  I think they are fine, but to me a plain old cedar box has always been fine and dandy for taking cigars on the road.  Things can get a little 'bangy' near the end of the load and result in some damage if one is not careful.  But it's CEDAR after all, and a fine wood to store cigars in.

And so this box landed on my desk today.  It shows some scratches on the bottom on the outside, but only because it is not a NEW box, but a prototype.  This is a box test and a foam test.  There are 2-3 types of foam available, and I got three 12-cigar sheets and a 'pick and pluck' sheet as a spacer.  I told 363 how many cigars I was taking on my trip, and they sent a spacer to keep my cigars packed in there rather than having a chance of too much movement inside.  That will work out fine.  There is another tray available that features only 7 sticks per sheet, and I actually prefer those, as they are nice and thick and will last a long time, it seems.  These 'dozen cigar' trays to me are a little sparse on the foam and seem to be trying to fit too much on a layer.  But to another smoker, they could be PERFECT, I don't know.  I am not expert in the various elements of the travel box by any means.

You can see the material is a little thin on these trays, maybe ten grooves would be better?  Who knows what this box will feature as a new product.  These again are only a few examples of the sheets that might be featured on a final product.  Likely even combinations would be available.

Its not the padding or the lack of padding that bothers me.  Its the edges, where people likely will lift these, loaded with cigars, to access lower trays.  Seems to me this tray will be torn easily, or end up with a lot of nips in the edges.  

The latches are another feature of this case that will likely work for you.  I am a new owner of a product from Cigar Mechanic, and it's latches tend to be more simplistic, although for cigars, ehh, not sure you NEED a double mechanism, but the case is designed to hold ANYTHING you might have before it is bought by 363 to turn into a cigar product, so I guess the latches are a good measure of quality that is perhaps lost on cigars.                   
  If my stash doesn't end up in the street, though, I guess its a win.   So on Saturday I will pack it with precious cigars on these trays that I have in a humidor now in case they will take up any moisture.  It also gives the trays a chance to air out before giving my cigars a foam chemical aroma or the box imparting a plasticky smell.  And I am not saying there IS a strong aroma at this time.  I just refuse to let them touch my goodies without an airing by default.  My other box aired out in less than a day, so I imagine it will be fine when I leave on Sunday.


So that's the box, I imagine it won't be long before you can buy it at a cigar forum near you.  Let's see if it is better or worse than something you can buy at a big box cigar retailer.  I do understand that sometimes its good to buy from a BOTL, so I think this could be a popular box soon if it does the job...


We'll see next week.

Available through member "363" at the Cigar Asylum and also through bp3six3@yahoo.com and Instagram!

Wonderful Art hiding inside

I am always willing to admit that I like the style of cigars more than the actual cigars themselves.  Most that have had one like a fine cigar, even those who would not say they are 'cigar smokers'.  But it takes a long span of time as well as many thousands of dollars before you get an idea of  how lucky we are that a tenth or less of what was once so magnificent about cigars and cigar packaging is still extant in the market today.  Which is to say it is sad that we have lost so many of our opportunities to see true art and wonder in the packaging of the modern cigar.   We are lucky that we can still see wonderful art and quaintness in a Havana Cigar box vista.  The original designers and manufacturers lost everything to a communist regime, but it seems that the communists were too busy re-organizing things to mess much with a good thing.  Even though the current habanos portfolio feature art little changed since it's original design date, There are so many brands that you will NEVER see a box of, ever.  ALL of that droning on to show you this.

There is no better way to see the vistas on a cuban cigar box than a box of a vitola so small that the entire inside surface is covered with remarkable pictures.  The El Rey del Mundo Demi Tasse is such a small cigar.  You could almost get them into a cigarette case, it seems.  And the box is just TINY.  But what is so cool to me is the imagery.  This Indian God riding in a chariot being pulled by the strangest combination in an animal menagerie imaginable.  (THAT is a tongue twister.)    The inner flap depicts another deity benevolently distributing tobacco to a group of cherubic citizens of her world.  Some seemingly to get to work on, warehousing or rolling the raw tobacco she sprinkles on the little white and black ones, and apparently dropping the finished product of their labor onto the heads of the little Taino Indian people to enjoy.  

I think the Juan Lopez box art might be as great, I REALLY NEED to get my hands on a couple boxes of Petit Coronas.  I know it features a nice tobacco farm scene and beautiful graphics.  If any of you going to the Shack want to bring me JL Petit Corona box I'd appreciate it.

Cigar catalogues keep getting tighter and smaller and it seems like everything iconic is being washed away to make room for the faddish sausages being cranked out by the modern industry, on or off the island of Cuba.  So there are fewer and fewer ways for a person to see a great surprise when opening the box of cigars they have just bought.  I REALLY like the El Rey del Mundo art!