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Hanging with my friend Andy on his b'day. Almost forgot it the other day. Padron '64 from a few years back. Solid smoke as always. Andy smoked the hoyo, also a solid smoke. I probably prefer the hoyo, but the padron is a completely different smoke altogether.

Opus X Fuente Fuente. Solid smoke.

Band-less 2021 La Trova

Very excited about these PLPC. Limited access and availability make it more difficult to really explore the CC world and establish a foundation. Oftentimes, it means buying somewhat blind. But I'm really excited about these despite never having tried one. Thanks for the advice @williamthewolf

Afternoon smoke.. Trini Reyes (2018) from our gracious host. Smoking now.. Monte Dumas [UEB MAR18] from our gracious host.

2020 Monte Double Edmundo. Very nice cigar, coffee, cream, semisweet chocolate, twangy.

Boli Beli loose in the humidor probably 2013ish

Montecristo Double Edmundo. Here is the thing about this cigar: I loved it and hated it at the same time. I don't know if you guys would agree with me but it starts absolutely wonderful, full of flavor with that Monty special signature on it: cocoa, leather, creamy, milk chocolate and just a nuance of coffee. Then comes the last third: awful. It loses itself, a peppery tastes comes in messing with the good flavors, the burn ring starts to colapse, the draw becomes tight, ruined the end of the experience. I wish it ended in the end of the second third and I must admit that the regular Edmundo vitola is much better. I feel that this vitola only extends the experience to ruin it. It's a no go for me.

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Have a nice Friday evening with JL 2 MEL FEB 17...

Foam green replica strat. A guy in Spain builds them to exact 60s spec, down to the woods, glues and all logos/stamps. Pickups custom wound with NOS wire and correct materials to 60s spec. Technically a forgery but I am putting paperwork in the case to identify it as a replica in case I croak and my family needs to sell. I really appreciate the attention to detail in honoring the materials and construction that made the originals so awesome. Not mine here but this is what it will look like when it arrives from Spain next week. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Testing the maduro N1. Better than the first one. I think with time these will shine. Prefer the rosado for now. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Cohiba Robusto Siglo VI

Say hello to Cassian Daniel Nelson. I have high hopes for his love of cigars, but I will probably hold off on introducing him to smoking for a year or two.

A 1973 Enduro. When I saw it had under 2k miles and it was titled, it was coming home with me. And I don’t have a motorcycle license 😂

Illusione Epernay. First venture into these. A touch under filled. Very mild, nutty and creamy. Tasty overall. Easy to like.

Having finished this smoke in just under 2 hours I rate it a 96 pointer and the cigar of the year for me. It was sublime!

After a long week with work after hours, here comes my prize: decided to cook steak tartare, toasts, home made cream cheese, duck liver spread, dried tomatoes hummus, cherry tomatoes, jamon e some argentinian cheese. Mojito to drink and some Double Edmundo as desserts. Cheers!

Mag 50 (2018) from our gracious host.

Siglo VI and Jamaican Blue Mountain.

...what other explanation could there be for the release of Montecristo Nudies

The Church in Cuba Will Once Again Have Communion Hosts Thanks to Donations of Flour The nuns at the Monastery of the Discalced Carmelites of St. Teresa in Havana are grateful for generosity and the True Presence. The Carmelite nuns in Cuba will be able to resume making Communion hosts. (photo: Photo by Josh Applegate on Unsplash) CNA StaffWorldNovember 17, 2022 The Carmelite nuns in Cuba announced that thanks to the donations of wheat flour they have received in recent days, they will again be able to make the Communion hosts to supply the island’s churches. In a Nov. 14 statement, the Discalced Carmelite Sisters of Havana expressed their joy for having “experienced once again that the barque of the Church is the Lord who leads it.” The Monastery of the Discalced Carmelites of St. Teresa in the Cuban capital had informed all the dioceses Nov. 2 that it could no longer produce any more hosts because it had run out of wheat flour, a product that has been in short supply for months in the island. Just days later, Father José Luis Pueyo of the Diocese of Villa Clara told the online news outlet 14ymedio.com that they would have to break their remaining hosts into several pieces in order to provide for the faithful. However, on Tuesday, the nuns expressed their surprise to see that the news of no flour had gone viral, even reaching remote places. “The impressive thing about all this is how it has moved the hearts of so many people of goodwill who, like the widow in the Gospel, have offered little or much so that the work can continue,” the nuns said in the statement published in Vida Cristiana, a Jesuit-run weekly. “Flour has come to us from our simple townspeople, from institutions, from Miami, Puerto Rico, Spain, and also the allocation that we have from the State,” they reported. The Carmelite sisters said that “the One who multiplied the loaves has shown his power with the multiplication of the flour.” “Now we resume work to be able to offer this service to the Church that is on pilgrimage in Cuba as soon as possible.”

No one likes me no matter what I am. I was raised in CA. Now I live in the South. We left because my parents were old, taxes were high, and water (literally) was becoming scarce for a lot of people. But, there are great people everywhere. I miss California and I appreciate Tennessee. Gender or no gender or all the genders these places are equally crazy. I suspect its the same everywhere and I can probably name something equally ridiculous from each of our glorious 47 states. Only other countries are crazier than what we do here in the states. I'm kidding. But I am worried that humans keep trying to differentiate themselves from one another by focusing on the absurd and outrageous. There are so many great things in San Fran. As a youth, I saw my first playboy magazine in the gift shop of the Fairmont hotel and I remember encountering my first truly not-well homeless person later that same day as I boarded a classic trolley car. Two major milestones that made me appreciate...reading....as well as my own relatively sane and lucky lot in life. It's a city of glorious highs and horrible lows and it's always had that dichotomy. Like the rest of heavily populated areas of Earth. I also remember when the price of monthly parking spots in SF entered the $0,0000 comma club and you could still encounter Joe Montana out in public (not wearing sketchers). I don't care where you are, there are crazy people doing crazy things. But there's beauty everywhere. The thing that I see differentiates this generation of Franciscoians and their predecessors is the influx of specific types of money and affluence. Whether good or bad, the tech crew in SF has brought a new generation of $$$ and affluenza that has made the Rice taste less like Roni. I hope you enjoyed SF. You should visit Tennessee next where there's equally crazy shit that is marketed as less crazy shit simply cause it's not from the "Land of Fruits and Nuts". Meanwhile....check out this chicken-wire sculpture of Tennessee's beloved Ms. Dolly Parton that was actually made by someone from SF who's probably a looney tune. It takes all kinds.

Not Nacho, I think he only builds 50s Fender styles. I’ve never had the pleasure of playing one but they are legendary. This was made by Dominick Kensch. He has a website: Precbsguitars.com It took a while to get it, about a year but it is finally en route. I ordered a lake placid blue bound tele from him too which he is aging up as we speak. He gets some flak from the vintage snobs because they are so accurate they could be sold as true vintage. A luthier in England built me this exact 59 Lea Paul replica (he has since passed unfortunately). He even had the CAB plastic pickup surrounds made and used hide glue, vintage correct analine dyes. It is a work of art with the finish checking, fingerboard aging and of course the tone through a 58 Deluxe. Legend has it one of his replicas got sold as real for 250k and gunplay followed when the truth came out. Gotta love guitar nerd lore! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

To stop trolling/fake account/hackers, etc, you should have to provide a valid passport, birth certificate, finger prints, cornea scan, blood/stool/urine samples and a map of your colon, before you are allowed online.

Big cars, little cars, tall cars, small cars, 5 Teslas, and all other forms of real or hypothetical rolling stock to include, without limitation, all: trucks, suvs, cross-overs, RVs, el caminos, rancheros, or otherwise. Things with steering wheels, steering yokes, steering rudders, driving controls (by wire or skynet), and/or which can be driven, operated, tracked, crashed, cornered, parked, steered and/or geared but not necessarily piloted or captained when such must always be performed in an exclusively non-terrestrial format. Mans, autos, dual clutch, pdks, pdfs, paddles, 3-on-the-tree, and even cvts. D series Rovers, Rangey Rovers, Rovers that don’t work or which don’t work even less are all to be celebrated. Rovers that do work but only because they have not yet been built are all equally glorious. Ralph Naders Pinto as well as the Pope Mobile and Homer Simpson car. Modes of earthen bound transport with two wheels, one wheels, none wheels, three wheels or any multitude of wheels shall all be sufficient. Source of propulsion need not be considered and trucks donning nuts, Carolina squats, coal rollers, or which happen to be perfectly androgenous are likewise to be appreciated. I do love cars. All of them. Here's an on-going collection with a bunch of car related stuff I’ve seen over the years. First up: a few pics of the current collection from Cars and Guitars from WG Vintage down in FL. I was told that the Harley was the first Harley adventure bike off the line. I have no reason to doubt it. I welcome all to share their car related content.

Great visual tour Holy Havana! Cuba’s places of worship – in pictures https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2022/nov/18/holy-havana-cubas-places-of-worship-in-pictures

Great review. As you describe, this is the epitome of a Cuban cigar to me. These are once a year treats selected for a perfect weather day with Pink Floyd on the Bose. Love em

Partagás Short (ASR NOV18).

Recent Siglo VI and some espresso

My most recent of many. Tactical Frog panda dial chrono run in a solar quartz movement. Love the look and snagged it for 165 USD. Totally punches above its weight class.

🥇

Purchase October 2022 2009 R50 Volkswagen V10 twin turbo diesel. Voted dirtiest car in the world 2010. .We were just made to be together

Can we do some sort of poll of the absolute must buys? Like the top 5-10 cigars to go for? This thread is great but gets you dizzy…analysis paralysis.

Lots of stuff I've been wanting to try.

Smoked one last night and although it burned a little wonky in the last third it didn’t get unpleasant in flavor. I retroed to the end and never got the pepper that you did. I agree that I prefer Edmundo but I enjoyed the DE.

You will see all 4 seasons in 1 day. 😂😂

Ramon Allones small club corona, for the first time. Excellent burn and construction but nothing there to luxuriate in.

You mean one of these?

At an auction a couple of weeks ago, I capriciously left a stupid low bid on an old LGB train set and I ended up winning it. Cannot recall a more fun and peaceful endeavor fixing the cars and track up to get it running. Now I’m just sitting on Craigslist looking for odds and ends trains and track. Too fun. I think I purchased it under the auspices my son would love it but clearly I am having the better time.

A box of San Cristobal El Principe. Fruity notes at cold and throughout (candied fruit, dried fruit). Toasted wheat through the nose. Breakfasty. Nutty notes too.

Little Monte 5, RyJ Mille Fleur, and finally my 9th ever NC and the only one I’ve enjoyed, Long Live the King. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

2016 cab and after dinner 2013 cab

I had to get another box (sadly last one at the shop), this is probably the cigar of the year. @liquid360 good thing you ordered a few.

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20221115-isla-de-la-juventud-cubas-remote-nature-paradise Isla de la Juventud: Cuba's remote nature paradise By Claire Boobbyer16th November 2022 From pirate haven to ecological hotspot, Cuba's "Treasure Island" is a far-flung gem home to some of the Caribbean's rarest animals. A A pirate hideaway, a one-time US colony and a biodiverse hotspot home to endangered crocs, parrots, sharks and turtles, Cuba's Isla de la Juventud is an enigma. The Caribbean nation's largest offshore island lies 60 miles south off the mainland and is a comma-shaped arc of palm and pine trees, citrus groves and marble hills that few visitors ever see. In centuries past, real pirates of the Caribbean slipped into the island's coves, with boats bearing illicit booty. Today, visitors come from the port of Batabanó, 56km south of Havana, on a three-hour ferry ride that costs $0.50 Cuban Pesos (£0.35) and requires reserving a month in advance, or securing a seat on irregular flights. Those who make the journey usually come to dive off the south-western tip, Punta Francés, staying at the island's one hotel. Or, they tour the island's panopticon prison, Presidio Modelo (now an eerie museum), where Cuba's late Communist leader Fidel Castro was incarcerated in 1953 for attacking army barracks – an event that triggered the 1959 Cuban Revolution. But beyond its few attractions, the island's sugar-soft beaches, unique culture and history, and protected wildlife havens offer a vastly different Cuban experience than the crumbling colonial facades and raucous rum bars of Havana. Isla de la Juventud is a biodiverse hotspot that moves at a different speed than the Cuban mainland (Credit: Claire Boobbyer) When Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic for a second time in 1493, he dropped anchor close to the island that would later prove to be the perfect refuge for pirates. From the 1850s, Francis Drake, Henry Morgan and their ilk ransacked the Spanish Crown's treasure fleet as ships, bulging with gems, silver and spices, sailed past La Isla enroute from the tip of South America to Havana. Because of this, La Isla was dubbed both "Island of Pirates" and "Treasure Island". It was even thought to have inspired Robert Louis Stevenson's classic book, Treasure Island. In the late 1970s, Fidel Castro opened dozens of universities on the island for foreign students, and in 1978, the island was renamed Isla de la Juventud (Isle of Youth) from Isla de Pinos (Isle of Pines). The schools closed in the late 1990s, but their legacy remains in the island's name. Back when Columbus' caravel sought wood and water on the island, his men glimpsed no other human soul. Ship logs reveal the sea was "covered" with so many turtles of "vast bigness", the air thick with an "abundance" of birds and "immense swarms of butterflies… darkened the air". Columbus would still recognise much of the remote southern third of the island today: a landscape patchworked with swamps, mangroves, beaches, coral seas, limestone forests and caves painted with prehistoric drawings, all safeguarded in the 1,455sq km region called South of the Isle of Youth Protected Area of Managed Resources (APRM). Within the APRM's marine protected area, other vulnerable creatures such as Antillean manatee, hammerheads, elkhorn coral and marine turtles seek sanctuary in the sea. Today, much of the island is a protected nature reserve (Credit: Claire Boobbyer) To enter the protected area, travellers must first obtain permission from the agency Ecotur or a local B&B and pass a checkpoint at the northern limit so officials can monitor the trafficking of wildlife, people and drugs. Three times a week, a bare-bones bus jangles three hours south from the island's capital, Nueva Gerona, through forest rooted in limestone karst. Within its tangled embrace is Ciénaga de Lanier (Lanier swamp), refuge of the critically endangered Cuban crocodile. The elusive crocs were almost wiped out in the 20th Century by fire, drought and hunting. A few specimens were discovered in 1977 and a reintroduction programme launched in 1987. "We know American crocodiles and the introduced spectacled caiman are there, but in the last two expeditions, our experts haven't seen Cuban crocodiles in the wild," said Yanet Forneiro Martín-Viaña,senior conservation specialist for Flora y Fauna, which manages the island's southern APRM zone. Forneiro Martín-Viaña is confident though. "We continue to search for [Cuban crocodiles] and reintroduce more individuals into the swamp," she said. "We know this area has great potential for the habitat of this species." The coarse sand of Guanal Beach, on the south coast, is veined with beach morning glory vine. Trails of the stabilising plant erupted to replace 10km of casuarina, an invasive feathery-leaved Southeast Asian tree that Flora y Fauna cut down over a 10-year period and recycled, converting the slain trunks into charcoal for export. Guanal Beach is home to just-hatched endangered green turtles (Credit: Claire Boobbyer) Across more than 1km of beach, long, lean sticks poked out of the burning-hot sand, marking a veritable "X" for treasure – yet, not the glittery kind, but a natural bounty. Empty water bottles, placed upside down on the sticks, were stuffed with paper notes indicating turtle nest sites, the dates eggs were laid and the expected hatching dates. Some 250 nests of endangered green turtles at Guanal are under guard this year. According to Dr Julia Azanza Ricardo, a turtle expert and professor at the Higher Institute of Technologies and Applied Sciences of the University of Havana, Guanal is one of the most important nesting areas in Cuba. However, climate change is threatening their future. Turtle gender is linked to the temperature of the nest during incubation, and the rising temperatures are resulting in fewer males being born. "More than 90% of turtles born in Cuba are female, Azanza said. "In a short time, we expect to reach 100%. When we started monitoring nest temperature 15 years ago, they were 28, 29, 30 degrees. Now it's 32, 33, 34. It will only take a rise of two degrees to reach 100%. If all males are wiped out, then it's the end of local populations and then the end of the species." Solutions, Azanza explained, include vegetation shading by planting certain species of bushes, moving nests to cooler spots or watering the sand. Cocodrilo, where Villa Arrecife is located, is the most remote inhabited spot in Cuba (Credit: Claire Boobbyer) West of turtle country and 86km south-west of Nueva Gerona is the village of Cocodrilo, the most remote inhabited spot in Cuba. Founded as Jacksonville after English-speaking Cayman Islanders settled it in the early 20th Century, 122 families now live in single-storey concrete and wooden homes facing the sea. Twenty-four-hour electricity only arrived in 2001. Here, conservationist Reinaldo Borrego Hernández, known as "Nene", runs a tourism and conservation project, Consytur, with his wife, Yemmy. Nene's mission is to preserve and protect the coral reef, wildlife and nature of his home village. "I've lived in this natural environment all my life, and my wish to protect it is in my blood," said Nene. By staying in Nene's B&B, Villa Arrecife (one of only three B&Bs in Cocodrilo), visitors help fund conservation work focused on collecting rubbish from beaches and the seabed, capturing lionfish – an invasive species – and serving it to guests, and growing and planting new branches of critically endangered staghorn coral. Nene's mission is to help protect the coral reef and wildlife of his home village, Cocodrilo (Credit: Claire Boobbyer) "Lionfish get into the mangroves, seagrass and the reef, and have very few predators," said Nene, who has a Masters degree in coastal management. "They compete with local species to eat small fish and crustaceans, so capturing them limits their numbers." One morning at Americana Beach, a few kilometres west from Cocodrilo, we filled a net bag with 8-10kg of plastic bottles, flip flops and take-away containers from the beach. Later, we dived 15m down through crystal-clear water. We swam over coloured fans, moray eel, monochrome spotted drum, yellow French grunt and iridescent princess parrotfish before touching down on the seabed amid a large rocky field of multi-branched staghorn coral, grown by Nene these last few years. We picked fragments of pale orange coral, the width of a fat ballpoint pen, from the seabed. Nene hacked off blackened ends, dead from disease or microalgae. We wrapped thread around them before diving up to a special "tree" structure to tie the fragments to its long-limbed branches. Nene explained that each fragment is asexual and produces a polyp that forms another polyp, and so on. At one year old, the coral reproduces sexually and their planula float to the seabed and the cycle of producing polyps begins again. After a year, Nene will search for a rocky spot with no macroalgae and few predators and plant the new-growth coral. Overfishing has left the reef bereft of much of its previous fish life, Nene said, allowing algae to flourish and suffocate the corals. Nene has planted an underwater "tree" to help staghorn coral thrive (Credit: Claire Boobbyer) "We want to increase the number of juvenile fish on the reef, and staghorn coral offers refuge to young fish," Nene said. "By restoring and protecting the reef, we increase the diversity and number of fish." Staghorn coral grows about 1cm a year. It's a slow process, but Nene hopes the work he started will outlast him. "My dream is that more people come to stay so that we can include and pay the young people around here. That will incentivise them to care for the sea and the coast," he said. "And they'll be able to continue my work when I'm gone." Unlike other islands scattered around the Cuban mainland, the no-frills Isle of Youth is relatively undeveloped. Some locals claim the island is abandoned. But within this castaway island, endangered creatures have sought refuge since long before anyone was looking. Natural disasters, invasive species, over-fishing and climate change threaten its delicate ecological footprint. But with help from eco-minded visitors, Cuban scientists and conservationists are setting a benchmark to ensure nature reclaims and thrives in this remote, secluded landscape.

that is the best you can do? name a kid i'll never meet? i'm not sure i'd give up a monty C for that. you need to do way way way better.