Smoking on the Red

03-28-09, Shara and I have been waiting for this night all year. Last night was Smoking on the Red, a cigar event. It was fantastic. There was a great crowd despite some bad weather in the area. There were about seven manufacturers there handing out samples. There was a man there hand rolling cigars associated with Torano. Shara was really facinated with him rollong the cigars. I bought two extra Toranos to get one of the hand rolled cigars.

I purchased a ticket for myself and Shara, so I ended up with double the samples. You presented a coupon to each manufacturer and they let you select one or two samples. Toward the end of the show some of the vendors got a little liberal with their samples and gave out a few more. I also came away with a Gurkha hat and a Torano ash tray. The goody bag they handed out at the door was a coozy stuffed with matches, a lighter, cutters, Henry Clay mints, and a few other goodies.

There were a lot of nice sticks there. That evening I smoked a Torano Exodus 1959 and a Cusano Habano LXI. Troy, a friend of Kerry's smoked a Tabak Especial Dulce. We all tried it and really liked it. We decided to do a box split. Shara rounded everything up for us and we bought it. The box contained 24 sticks, so we each got eight.

Friends and cigars. You just can not beat that. Patrick in the top picture and then me and Kerry. Do you think we had fun? Oh yeah. As we were leaving, another friend, Twan, gave me a very special cigar. I will have to save it for a special time. Shara and I already can not wait until next year. She had as much if not more fun than the rest of us. When she bought the box for us she got a free Drew Estates hat. It looks like a hat Castro wears.