Originally Posted by
calcmandan
Found this forum browsing through tapatalk. Hi guys. I'm a forty-five year old California man. The first cigar I smoked was as a teenager when a neighbor kid suggested we smoke one together. He saw that the local mart where we usually bought our candy had them at the counter. So, we bought one and I remembered it was absolutely disgusting. I was a budding cigarette smoker at the time and it seemed a natural progression. This tarnished my idea of cigars for a while.
Cut to a few years later (1993), I was on my first cruise in the Navy. Forward deployed on a ship in Japan (USS Dubuque), the first port we hit was Hong Kong. Naturally drawn to Kowloon like everyone else, the first few days were spent navigating the narrow streets. Went to my first titty bar, bought stacks of cd's, procured a few fake zippos and, tired of the inherent sleepiness of Kowloon, returned to the island. Within that first hour, the odor of fine tobacco naturally drew me into my first tobacco shop. I was in male sensory overload and had a happy smirk in my face the whole time. They had everything from fancy shaving kits to leather wrapped flasks. A wall of beautiful briar pipes were on display and as curiousity hit me, I walked into what I thought was another room and discovered the crown jewel, the walk-in humidor. I had never heard of them or seen one in my life. The smell was intoxicating. My vision of cigars was the stick I tried to smoke as a teen, swisher sweets, and George Burns.
The assistant walked in and, with a typical british accent, began probing me for the type of cigar I'd like. The MOMENT I spoke he picked up my American accent pointed at the Cuban cigars in their inventory. "Well sir, since you're in Hong Kong I'm certain you've never had a Cuban cigar. Would you like to smoke one here to see if you'd like a box before you leave?" The discussion lasted a few minutes.
Next thing you know, I'm sitting on a leather chair with a glass of really good scotch and wondering how I got there and... Thought about how just six months previous I was spinning pizza awaiting for my bootcamp ship date obvlious to the notion that I'd be in this situation. All I needed was a smoking jacket and a pair of really good slippers I spied in the shop. They had a smoking room and I was in the company of British executive types and bankers of many stripes casually talking in a civilized tone. Everyone had cellphones which, at the time, was rather exotic to me. I was sitting there smoking a beautifully crafted cigar (no idea what it was) that had a spicy and sweet flavor to it. The scotch went very well with the cigar and, if I recall well, was from the Islay region.
I naturally scoffed at the cost for everything, but the experience was one I'll never forget. I couldn't afford a box of cuban cigars and, upon our next visit to Hong Kong, the shop was no longer there. Like many things in Hong Kong, it was a short lived enterprise. I walked away from that experience with the knowledge that cigars were a thing for me if I could only afford it.
A few years passed and I was stationed on the Carl Vinson out of Alameda Naval Air Station. I picked that location for its proximity to my home town of Sacramento. We were in San Diego for a few days to onboard the airwings for our six month WestPac cruise. There I was in the gas lamp district putzing around and walked into a cigar shop. Saw my first Cigar Aficianado. It had Demi Moore on the cover and a big honking cigar in her hands and was amazed that we were in the beginning of a cigar craze in the States.
I walked into their humidor and the sales guy was describing the notes of their lines of cigars for sale to a customer and my ears were all on them. He was using language I'd never heard before but I was very interested in learning.
I walked out of there with a humidor and a box of Excalibur #1's knowing full well that I was going to have a hard time finding a home for it in my cramped space of a Navy coffin locker.
That humidor still sits in my house and is still the only one I own. It's full of Casillas Double Corona. It's a brand that used to be rolled locally but now made in Honduras. They even have a knock-off Short Story that's made by a Fuente roller who moonlights for them for extra money. They pay her extra to make short stories for them. Except, it's a different blend so it's far different but far less expensive.
My taste for cigars are of the full flavor variety, but I typically smoke the Excal #1 if I can get my hands on them. They're getting more rare these days, yet Rocky Patel is all over the freaking place. Can't find a RP stick I can enjoy ever.
So the local brand I smoke is Casillas. Apart from that, I used to really enjoy Match Play before that brand went defunct. Micubano went out the door, that was a great cigar at first but production quality issues and a waning cigar craze made it disappear too. Their cigar boxes were almost always really fresh wood that would seep sap and the cigars would get stuck inside.
On the pipe end, I have a Dunhill straight with a sandpaper finish, two Petersons are both a smooth finish and 3/4 and full bent, and a Savinelli Tris 1/4 bent. The Sav was my first pipe. I typically enjoy british blended tobaccos with plenty Latakia. The full bent Peterson is smoked exclusively with flavored tobacco. Everything else is conditioned and smoked exclusively with british blends.
My peterson 3/4 bent is my daily smoker. I keep that pipe at work where a buddy of mine and I will smoke a bowl on afternoon breaks when the weather is comfortable.
Let's see. On the non-tobacco front, my hobbies include computer technology (which is the field of my profession), science (math major), cooking, privacy advocacy (specifically, I work in the cybersecurity field), and flying (I'm a pilot and own a Bellanca Super Viking named Ms Thang).
I do not have memberships to any social media. Google forced us all to be Google+ members when they were attempting to be relevant, so I created my own mail server and pointed one of my many domain names to it. Gmail's used for spam catching. Mail server sits on a rack wiht my firewall, switches, media/cloud server, and various piles of papers and boxes. All in my den.
That's enough rambling for now. Hope to make lasting friendships here.
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