One great cigar on a BAD WEEK

I hate Thanksgiving.

Does that make me a bad American?  Nope.  

It makes me an employee of the company that puts on a large go-kart race every Thanksgiving.  Every year I give up ten days of my life to create webcasts that emanate from the event.  I spend a week in a motel room that scores a 1.5 out of 5 stars.  I am generally in a foul mood for a month prior to the show, up until that moment after the last race is over and all the cables and equipment, covered in filth, are all cleaned, the gear is all packed up, and I arrive home at 2 am Sunday morning.  But with the exception of two 18 hour days at the end of the week, I get to spend some late evenings in front of my motel room in a chair with a paper cup of whiskey and ice and a fine cigar.  On the first of 3-4 such evenings, I selected a 2005 Partagas Serie D No.4.  This one was remarkable for the fact that it was the first of this vintage that I have smoked yet that was not smoked with tape over the damaged heads.  I had 4 boxes of ten and I emptied all the boxes into an old cabinet of fifty robustos...  Among the 40 sticks, there were 3-4 that had severe damage to the head.  I find some packing tape works pretty well in fixing the damage , cures the bad draw and saves the smoke, which I am all for.  And now those damaged sticks are all officially smoked.  

Down to the good stuff.  

I proudly lit the cigar and kicked back enjoying the perfect draw and superb flavor.  Man what a smoke.  These are notorious for their erratic performance in terms of flavor.  If you do not know the 'secret' to their proper smoking time, you end up complaining about them.  If you DO know the ancient chinese secret, you smoke new boxes up fast or put em down for 3-4 years.  Or so goes the lore, passed down from viking times.

This cigar went so well with the Wild Turkey Rare Bird that I hardly noticed the bitter cold.  (For the record, that bottle of Basil Hayden's in the back was NOT killed at the motel.  That one has been around all year, til I finished it earlier in the week.)  I smoked the PSD4 up too fast, but enjoyed it well enough.  I tasted licorice, coffee, mint, cream, pine, spice and leathery goodness.  The draw was perfect and the burn was straight too.  All in all, one of the rare moments of joy in a week I dread every year.