Hey all,
As most of you know I attended the Famous Smoke Shop Second Annual Cigar Expo and BBQ this past Saturday. This was my first cigar event and i must say it was completely worth it. The only complaint i had was the heat. Of course because i attended it was the hottest day of the year so far, the temperature actually hit about 98 degrees in PA yesterday which put a little of a damper on eating and drinking (alcohol) but we didn't let the heat spoil our day, we still had a blast. My girlfriend and i got there right at noon, checked in and grabbed a beer. We then proceeded to get in line for the vendor handouts where we were given very nice shoulder bags to carry all the goodies in. Then it all started! we were handed cigars left and right! some gave one, two and sometimes three cigars, some vendors let you choose one from their line and some let you choose based on your preference of mild, medium or full bodied sticks. During our mind blowing excursion through the tent of glory (i named it the tent of glory) i had the opportunity to meet and shake hands with Jonathan Drew and Rocky Patel. We also got to meet the CAO Flavourettes and I got an autographed picture from Playboy Magazines Miss May 2007 Shannon James (the girlfriend loved that part..lol). By the end of the tent i think we ended up with about 42 cigars each (and she doesn't smoke cigars). I actually had to send about 30 home with the girlfriend to put in her brother's humidor because i had no more room. I just added the ones i have to my virtual humidor, i listed them all as being purchased on 6/7/08 so check out my humidor if you get a chance to get a glimpse of the kind of stuff they were handing out. Then we ate and drank and i looked through my loot like a kid looks through his halloween bag! While we sat they started raffling off stuff like crazy. We both bought a bunch of raffle tickets when we first got there and i would up winning a box of 20 Alec Bradley Tempus Centuria's. They are a churchill size and come uncellophaned, the manager of FSS handed them to me and said he didn't know too much about them because they are pretty new. All i know is that they look and smell fantastic and from what i read online the size i won is the most highly rated.
Anyway, for anyone who is close enough to Pennsylvania i would reccomend attending next years event, i know i'm going to try and make it a yearly thing. It would be fun to get a few people together and represent
CG.com. I had a blast but i know ot would be even more fun with a group of people, especially fellow BOTL. I didn't get to take as many pictures as i wanted to, but the ones i did get are on the girlfriends digital camera so i'll try to post those as soon as possible. Take care everybody.