Other Hobbies apart from CIGARS ......

[gmacz]

Cycling, road and mtb.
Cars and bikes.
Walking- Glens, hills, beach etc.

[cbob]

Hobbies OTHER than cigars

Hmmm... well, I like to travel; mostly to Cuba ... to buy cigars-sometimes even to Spain. I'm also trying to learn Spanish... because my favorite torcedor really doesn't speak much English. Then there is the malt whisky collecting -many drams go very well with... ah... cigars.
Books!! Yes, I have quite a library of books about... OK... about tobacco and Cuba and cigar catalogs and books in Spanish by Cuban authors where the hero doesn't even smoke cigars... but his boss does.
So... you see, cigars aren't my only hobby!

[JOAO LA PEZ]

It's been a busy day and ended up with no time for a smoke so i thought i would put up some pictures of what i do to fishing reels

[Monty72]

Football- I'm a full time fan, season ticket holder and proud to say part owner of Shamrock Rovers. My kids are also season ticket holders.
Mountain walking-do a decent walk every Sunday and I'm off to climb Kilimanjaro in October [anyone here done it?]
Beer - love buying and testing real ales. I keep a record of those that I try. I was in Bruges last week and it was like dying a nd going to heaven
Recently bought a pipe and I'm loving that-light up once a week.
Big fan of Laurel and Hardy and Humphrey Bogart-I collect books and alll sorts of memerobilia [can never spell that] on them. I have a small bar at home that is a shrine to them!!

[larrysson]

I'm really boring...my profession and my hobby are one in the same. I love my work so much, that when I have free time I find myself in the workshop. There are time when I can't work, like when my hands need a break for a day, and then I do what I have to do (we live in a 200 year old cottage that requires constant maintenance)!

[Benji]

Whisky and lots of it

[oboegeoff]

I'm a professional oboist, so you could say that I work with my hobby...otherwise I play golf off a 9 handicap, fly fish occasionally, and love to bash the roads with my Triumph (street triple) and do the odd track day. All summer activities you'll notice. During the winter my young son plays ice hockey, which takes a lot of ferrying around to training sessions and matches, so I could list being a fan of Lerum's under-12 ice hockey as an interest... I'm partial to a drop or two (aren't we all?) particularly whisky, rum, cognac, wine, oh hell, I'll drink just about anything!!

[Spoony]

I'm a big football fan and enjoy following the mighty Spurs (not enjoying it so much at the moment, we cant seem to buy a win). As I live in the north east it's hard to get to Spurs games so I try to get to as many Whitley Bay games as I can. I like walking with my wife, reading and cooking and the occasional day/night in the pub as I'm a big real ale drinker.
I love music and have pretty eclectic tastes ranging from metal and punk to hip-hop and drum and bass and I try to get out to gigs and clubs when I can but the clubbing is getting less and less frequent now. I've hit thirty and feel like I look more like some kids dad who's come to pick them up rather than a club goer.
I also like a nice piece of street art and have various prints by kozyndan, elph, sage vaughan and banksy in my collection. I'd love to be able to buy more but I live in a small house and I have run out of wall space.

[Monty72]

I'm a big real ale drinker.
.

I love ales myself. I would be a Guinness drinker in the pub [most pubs in Ireland only do 1 ale on tap] but I love nothing more then buying a few bottles of real ale and sipping away at them. There are a lot of small brewerys starting to do spring up across Ireland and they do a great selection of ales. I attended the Irish Craft beer festival last week and some of the ales on offer were fantastic. I think the mindset to ales and craft beers in Ireland is starting to change so hopefully in a few years we'll have more choice then we do at present.

[Pipe Dude]

Mine are:

Pipes and baccies (I'm a Mod. on what is probably the biggest pipe forum on t'internet). 80+ pipes, 400+ tins of baccy stashed. 7th in the last British Pipe Smoking Championships. Hence my user name.

Motorcycling. I'm an Observer for the I.A.M. (the bike lot, but also passed my car I.A.M. test). I've got a BMW R1200RT and a Yamaha Fazer 1000 (for a couple of track days a year). I'm a bit of a petrolhead. My car (in my avatar) is a Nissan 300ZX twin turbo, modded to approx. 350bhp.

Video games. Been playing 'em since Pong. Used to develop games for a living (for Sony).

[Bad-Yeti]

I've got a BMW R1200RT



Used to develop games for a living (for Sony).

Point 1) Nice

Point 2) were you the guys who wrecked SWG?

[Pipe Dude]

1) Ta

2) SWG? Not guilty. Far too recent. I got out of the industry in 2001, just after the Dreamcast failed.

3) Love your Ducati collection. I'm very tempted by the new Panigale but must... try... to... resist. Is that last one a Desmosedici? Whoa! Good luck getting it!

[Bad-Yeti]

1) Welcome

2) Phew or i'd be havin' a few stern words with you

3) Panigale Dribble as for the RR it belongs to a friend of mine who is a London Banker, he never uses it and said he may sell it so i've given him a decent deposit so if he ever does I get first dibs, he's scared himself stupid on is though so has gone off it LOL

[Simon-JG-hr]

So then, apart from smoking I enjoy...

Skiing is my first love. I try to ski at least four weeks a year, but the last couple of seasons have been one-weekers due to a serious knee injury and resultant operation. I'm an instructor and a race coach, so thankfully I get paid to go skiing for the most part. Did my knee in the first week of the season last year (actually the second day, but ibuprofen, masochist tendencies, and stupidity saw me through the rest of the week...) Wasn't able to get any work this year due to the uncertainty about my op recovery time. As it was, I was playing squash within three weeks (another hobby), and skiing about six weeks later (my first ski holiday for about four years!) Even my consultant was impressed at the recovery time (or bloody mindedness, one or the other).

Apart from skiing, I've always played, watched, and/or refereed rugby. Being from Gloucestershire it's in the blood. Had great fun playing, but haven't managed as much as I would have liked due to a combination of moving to Plymouth and a serious back injury several years ago. In 2008 I was sent to referee in North America's top rugby tournament, and refereed a game with eight of the US Eagles players who had given England a good run for their money at the previous year's World Cup - that was a bit of a highlight (tremendous trip too). I also try to get out shooting as often as possible. I have a place on a syndicate, but sadly don't get to use it as often as I would like (my father enjoys using my unused days though...)

It would be fair to say that I keep myself well occupied through the winter. As such, combined with the weather, I generally have cigars right on the back-burner through those months (as anyone following my almost comatose blog or Twitter accounts may already have guessed).

During the summer months I spend most weekends sailing. Occasionally some friends and I have a weekend jolly to Dartmouth or Fowey from Plymouth, but mostly I'm navigator on an American racing yacht based out of Cowes. Brilliant fun, and another way I've managed to somehow wangle doing something I love for free. I also love watching the Test cricket (or spending an entire fortnight at the Cheltenham Cricket Festival ).

This is probably starting to get boring (sport, sport, more activities etc), so will briefly move on to my other two main hobbies: alcohol and comedy. I too am a massive real ale fan (two-term President of my real ale society), I also love whisky more than just about anything (which might explain the ever-increasing collection in my flat). Alcohol does have a fun side too though, recently leading to me agreeing to stand for the Monster Raving Loony Party at the next General Election. I am also in the painful process of setting up a Comedy Club in Plymouth, which should be good fun.

Plus the usuals - cooking, reading, travel etc etc.

Now, for a quick question...

7th in the last British Pipe Smoking Championships.

This, I am genuinely interested in! How are positions awarded in a pipe smoking competition?

[Pipe Dude]

Now, for a quick question...
This, I am genuinely interested in! How are positions awarded in a pipe smoking competition?

It can vary, but for that particular comp. we all paid something like ?25 for an entry ticket. For this, we each received (on the day, at the venue - the Old Silhilllians Club, Solihull, W. Midlands) a brand new Northern Briars Roxcut bulldog pipe (stamped with BPSC 2007), a wooden dowel tamper, 3g of tobacco (can't remember what it was - might have been Amphora Red) and 2 two matches. When the whistle went, we had 5 mins to prepare the baccy and pack the pipe. When the next whistle went, we had 1 min to light the pipe - the stipulation being that both matches were to be used within that minute. When the next whistle went, we had to smoke our pipes and make the tobacco last as long as possible. There were judges wandering around and you had to be able to produce a puff of smoke at their request - if you couldn't, you were out (since it meant your pipe had gone out - though nearly everyone was honest enough to self-police this and admit defeat when their time came). To prevent 'hot coal chasing' - a technique where you move a single glowing coal around the bowl to unlit areas - we could only use the wooden dowel to tamp and only then with the pipe in our mouth (which effectively makes you blind to the burn and helpless to do anything about it anyway - even if you look in the bowl between puffs (which was allowed)).

I managed 37mins and when I dropped out only 6 were people left (to my great surprise - it was my first and only comp). The winner managed something like 1hr 20m.

I won a pipe worth about ?250 and a couple of tins of baccy for my efforts, so it was a good day. The above comp. was going to be the 'last ever' one due to the change in smoking laws, but they are resurrecting it again this year using a marquee with 2 open sides at the venue (Newark Showground, Notts.) to get around the indoor-smoking-in-a-public-place ban.