PigFish

Say Hi to Gino for me my friend! Looks like a grand time! -R

... sounds like little completion for "The Dirt..." -Piggy

... reminds me of that joke about what it would take to reunite the Beatles! -Piggy

How things change

... next step, stoned at Disney. Take a toke off the trunk!!! The most fun is jumping out of rides! Don't knock it unless you have tried it!!! -the Pig

Don't be embarrassed to play the penny slots! What does that mean? It means that on a forum where many may own tens of thousands in cigars, there is still room for the new guy. If you are not new, and your budget is modest, that is okay too. Shine on the 'big' player cigars. Look over the cheap and cheerful. Try some Partagas Chicos. The fact is, you don't have to be a high roller to smoke at a nice level if you don't mind the image of a puny cigar! I don't give a rat's posterior of what it may look like to others when I lite up a Chicos, a PC, or some other diminutive stick. What I care about is how it tastes. I am an advocate of making room for the entry level (cost) cigar. No one got be an old smoker without one time being a new, and perhaps even, low budget smoker! Enjoy your journey. $5... $500, $50K, we all start somewhere. Proudly smoke whatever you smoke!!! F' the image level cigars! Cheers! -Piggy

Happy herf-day brother. Post up a video of the smoking! Cheers! -Ray

There is an ass for every seat!!! -Piggy

Only for plain packaged coffee in 2028🤪

I had a project once down by the beach in the OC. 3 hour drive home. Smoked a Churchill a day back then. It was a ritual. Start the truck. Take off the shoes. Turn the AC on high. Get the windows just right. Clip. Set up the ashtray. Open the bottle of water. Light up... Make a left turn and head for the parking lot (aka the freeway). I feel your pain. Thank God I can (generally) run my project from my home office now! I fly once every week or two, and that is bad enough. Thanks for sharing. -Piggy

While I agree, with knuckle heads running our economy over the decades, we have racked up some 200T in unfunded liabilities. I would not buy our bonds either! -Piggy

There are unlimited ways to ruin cigars. Cigars live in a rather narrow band of conditions when the whole spectrum of our earthly environment is considered. A humidor (IMHO) is a boundary, an isolation device for cigars separating them from a hostile external ambient. The more hostile the external ambient, the better the humidor must be at isolation, and therefore control of the "proper humidor, or conditioned space." There are outliers such as myself that make a study and business of this (when I have the free time). There are laymen, and there are the clueless. Humidors experts (so called) will come in all forms from those truly informed, to those that pose knowing more than they actually know. A ruined cigar is a broad based term. A terminally ruined cigar is physically damaged beyond revival or repair. A ruined smoking experience is simply one where the neglected cigar is smoked at a time where it is not at its best. Best being the 'ideal' percent moisture content. Not my ideal, but "the smoker/owner's ideal. I say if you want to trash a bunch of cigars, and a whole lot more smoking experiences, simply take a layman approach to building an actively cooled humidor. That should about sum it up. I mean if you don't really know how to build one, diagnose one, control one... your cigars are likely better off in an ice chest humidor. Actively controlled micro climates for cigar storage are not really easy to build. But again, it depends on your ambient. Mine, they can run from ambients in the 50's to mid 90's in a 12 hour period. Extreme...? Yes! But I live in a largely desert area. Most actively cooled humidors will show signs of failure (again MHO) when there is a range of temperatures as little as 5 to 7 degrees F. Signs of failure are a personal opinion. There is a mainstream maker of TE cooled coolers marked as humidors. Owning one is a good way to trash cigars. I believe their product just don't work. Yet there are a lot of cigar smokers, and good number of them here that will rave about them. It is a matter of ambients. It is a matter of knowing. It is a matter of faith. Sometimes ignorance is bliss! Cheers! -Piggy

Viewing this a bit more philosophically, there are rituals that surround the 'rites of manhood.' Simmer down snowflakes... this is not a misogynistic piece! Think of smoking a cigar at a wedding, or at a child birth, with your dad at a certain age, or with other soldiers in the barracks. Firearms, often integrated with hunting, are often viewed the same way. To some males, smoking, shooting, hunting, sports and even drinking represent these traditional behaviors. And while not exclusively male, they are still considered by some, rites of manhood. -Piggy

Happy belated Lady Di... Give old Rob a slap on the back of the head just to tell him, who's who! Just don't do it with a shoe!!! Cheers! -Ray

Aging cigars is overrated. Properly made cigars will taste good now and into the future. The adjustment of water content is the only thing I take responsibility for in the 'life force' of a cigar. If a cigar was poorly made, not containing the proper amounts of core tobacco elements, no amount of age will fix it. On the other hand, I do enjoy cigars that are no longer made. This has nothing to do with the age itself. It could be a style of roll, a vitola, the tobacco put into it... but it really has little to do with how long you or anyone else has kept it...! No offense to my mates. I see aging 'guidelines' as folly! Cigars vary year to year, crop to crop, box to box, etc. There are no absolutes about Cuban cigars except as a rule, I find them more individually natured than according to brand group. While I don't prefer larger ring cigars, this does mean that the next one I smoke might be the best cigar I have ever smoked. -tP