It seems to happen frequently — though never intentionally — that I end up pairing cigars and libations with color-coordinated labeling. One recent example was the Calumet Farm 10 Year Old Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey alongside the L’Atelier LAT56 cigar. I didn’t even notice the matching aesthetics until I was taking the requisite Instagram photo.

In truth, the choice had nothing to do with appearances. Both had simply been sitting around far too long without the attention they deserved. I smoked one of the LAT56s shortly after picking them up in August of last year, and the bourbon bottle had been gathering dust since mid-2023.

The Calumet Farm bourbon was one I purchased on a trip a few years ago and enjoyed before it eventually migrated to the back of the shelf. Pulling it out again reminded me how pleasant it is. Bottled at 100 proof, this 10-year-old bourbon offers a well-balanced mix of vanilla, caramel, and butterscotch as its core flavors. A mild spice with hints of honey and fruit sweetness rounds out the sip. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable “classic” bourbon profile.

The L’Atelier LAT56, a creation of Pete Johnson of Tatuaje fame, is a hefty 6 ½ x 56 cigar that somehow feels even larger in hand. This limited-production stick features an Ecuadorian Sancti Spiritus wrapper — a hybrid of Criollo and Pelo de Oro — over Nicaraguan binder and filler. The smooth roll and gold band give it an understated elegance.

The cigar opens with a mix of pepper and nutty cocoa and maintains that flavor balance consistently throughout the smoke. It’s a solid medium-bodied cigar with a steady burn and satisfying smoke output. 

The pairing of the LAT56 and the Calumet Farm bourbon proved to be an unexpectedly delightful match. By the end of the nearly two-hour session, I decided both deserved a spot closer to the front of my stash so they wouldn’t be forgotten again anytime soon.

Cheers!

It seems to happen frequently — though never intentionally — that I end up pairing cigars and libations with color-coordinated labeling. One recent example was the Calumet Farm 10 Year Old Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey alongside the L’Atelier LAT56 cigar. I didn’t even notice the matching aesthetics until I was taking the requisite Instagram photo.

In truth, the choice had nothing to do with appearances. Both had simply been sitting around far too long without the attention they deserved. I smoked one of the LAT56s shortly after picking them up in August of last year, and the bourbon bottle had been gathering dust since mid-2023.

The Calumet Farm bourbon was one I purchased on a trip a few years ago and enjoyed before it eventually migrated to the back of the shelf. Pulling it out again reminded me how pleasant it is. Bottled at 100 proof, this 10-year-old bourbon offers a well-balanced mix of vanilla, caramel, and butterscotch as its core flavors. A mild spice with hints of honey and fruit sweetness rounds out the sip. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable “classic” bourbon profile.

The L’Atelier LAT56, a creation of Pete Johnson of Tatuaje fame, is a hefty 6 ½ x 56 cigar that somehow feels even larger in hand. This limited-production stick features an Ecuadorian Sancti Spiritus wrapper — a hybrid of Criollo and Pelo de Oro — over Nicaraguan binder and filler. The smooth roll and gold band give it an understated elegance.

The cigar opens with a mix of pepper and nutty cocoa and maintains that flavor balance consistently throughout the smoke. It’s a solid medium-bodied cigar with a steady burn and satisfying smoke output. 

The pairing of the LAT56 and the Calumet Farm bourbon proved to be an unexpectedly delightful match. By the end of the nearly two-hour session, I decided both deserved a spot closer to the front of my stash so they wouldn’t be forgotten again anytime soon.

Cheers!

We had an great weekend at the Wings Over Water Birding Festival last weekend. At least right up to 9 AM Sunday when I got very sick as we were trying to leave. It resulting us us staying at the campground for another day while I slept and got dragged to Urgent Care by my wife. Details and bird pictures are in the blog post.

It was a weird virus. I was down and out on Sunday, felt pretty good on Monday, then just got stuck Tues - Friday and could not beat it. I was able to work, but I was tired and cranky and generally felt blah all week. I seem to be over it now, finally.

We stopped by the Government Center this afternoon to drop our ballots in the ballot box. As I passed the Republicans they asked me if I needed a sample ballot. I stopped, turned, looked at the woman and said, "I'm not voting for fucking Nazis." Then I put our ballots in the box and returned to my car. That moment was the best I felt all week.

I booked us a tiny house on AirBnB to stay in for the Hammock Coast Birding Festival in February. So I have reached the planning vacations to go birding stage of old white guy life.

Fall is definitely in the air in RVA. I even had to turn the heat on last night, as we had a frost warning. It was the kind of morning that when younger would have resulted in my rolling out of bed at 10 AM, if not later. However, I can not sleep past 7 AM anymore. I used to wonder why my dad was always up at 6 AM on the weekends watching CNN and drinking coffee. Now that I'm at that age, I totally get it.

As you may have seen on the Fediverse, I got my health insurance renewal. My monthly premium for TrumpCare is going from $825 to $2155. That's about 160% for those of you that understand math and percentages. I'm working on a full blog post about it, but the fact that this entire country has not picked up torches and pitchforks and stormed the White House (or a golf course, where the are more likely to find the laziest President in US History) is a dark stain on all of us.

And now I need to end this, as that last paragraph has kind of ruined my mood. If you need me tonight I'll be drinking beer and watching the World Series. I'm rooting for the Blue Jays because the Canadians winning the World Series will certainly cause Trump to say and do something epically stupid and embarrassing.

This post composed while listening to the Earth to Grace album by Massive Wagons.

And that is it for this week. Remember, in a world where you can choose to be anything, you can choose to be kind.

Trip: 56
Nights: 187-190

We took off Thursday afternoon, headed for the Outer Banks. I love the Outer Banks, but hurricane anxiety keeps me from ever living there. The point of this trip was the 2025 Wings Over Water Birding Festival. We attended last year, and I suspect this is an automatic annual event for us now.

This year's festival was hampered by the government shutdown, as many of the tours were planned on Federal property. Our expert guided trip on Pea Island National Wildlife Sanctuary was canceled. However, the land was open to visitation, just not organized group events. So we still hit Pea Island 3 different times over the weekend, and on several occasions randomly ran into very experienced birders who were very generous in letting me tag along and learn from them. Birders are really great that way.

We got into Oregon Inlet campground after dark on Thursday. When planning my arrival time I forgot to account for just how far east the Outer Banks are from RVA. It was also brutally windy so by the time the camper was set up we simply retired inside for the night. I'm going to guess that wind gusts topped 50 mph that night. The camper was rocking, but it was because of the wind.

Our Friday AM tour at Pea Island Visitor Center was canceled, so we headed over there on our own a little later than the tour would have started. I learned later that I just missed a professional bird guide who was there 30 minutes before we got there. The challenge of the Pea Island ponds was that there were 7500 ducks on the pond. Two of them may have been really interesting, but I lack the waterfowl ID skills to pick them out. I picked out thousands of Northern Pintails and and American Wigeons though. After a lunch break at the camper we went back across the bridge to Pea Island, this time to Bonner Bridge Pier. I was able to ID 11 species, although as I learned the next day, there was way more variety of gulls and terns there than I could ID on my own. For dinner on Friday we had seafood at the cafe attached to the marina across the street from the campground. It was really good, but when accompanied by a beer and glass of wine, and a 20% tip, it was not cheap.

The wind was down to a moderate breeze on Friday night, and we passed the evening playing cards and went to sleep early due to a 730 AM guided tour on Saturday.

The Saturday AM tour was centered around the Bodie Island Lighthouse, where we picked up both a Virginia Rail and a King Rail. The King Rail was a lifer for me. After the tour there some of the group met up unofficially at the pier and then continued on to the ponds, where I absorbed much information about duck and gull identification. I'll probably retain none of it, but I felt smarter that morning. At the pier we found a couple of Clay Colored Sparrows, who should have been somewhere between North Dakota and Mexico. They were just a little off course, but it was another lifer for me on a bird that should not be at the Outer Banks, ever. I overhead the guide mention he had another tour in the afternoon, and I asked him if he or anybody else would care if I crashed it, given all the cancellations and no-shows due to the canceled tours. He was totally okay with it. That afternoon we found every tern and gull you can expect to find at the Outer Banks, except the ironically named Common Tern. Many of them were lifers for me. Also that afternoon we thought we had a Neotropic Cormorant. After much deliberation and looking at the Sibley's guide and in the scope, it was decided we did indeed have a very out of place Neotropic Cormorant. Given the number of birders at the Outer Banks that weekend, it was mere minutes after we reported it that the more sightings came in. There was a healthy debate but ultimately they appear to have decided that it was a abnormally small Double Crested Cormorant, or possibly even a hybrid. I've been watching Ebird and nobody is claiming the Neotropic. So that is one lifer I did not get this weekend.

The Oregon Inlet ares is a good 10 miles beyond the main tourist drag of Nags Head. So it was about a 20 minute drive to any other restaurant, all of which were more expensive and had worse reviews than the cafe at the marina. So we did take out from the cafe for dinner to keep the cost down a bit. Saturday night was, as usual, spent playing cards and enjoying the cool ocean breeze.

Sunday was go home day. If this was a normal weekend, I'd end the happy story here. But this, as it turned out, was not a normal weekend. I did not feel great when we got up, but as guys do, I ignored it and pushed on with packing up the camper and heading home. We pulled out at 9 AM and at 9:01 AM I stopped the camper and ran to the nearest campground bathhouse as I felt sick to my stomach. I did not vomit, and when the nausea passed a few minutes later I headed back to the truck. As I left the bathroom I got very lightheaded and dizzy and felt like I would pass out in seconds. I immediately sat down on the porch of the bathrooms, slumped against the wall between the men's and women's doors, with my headed slumped over, breathing deeply and slowly as I tried to maintain consciousness. My wife came looking for me after about 12 minutes, and I think I was bowing to the porcelain god for about 5 minutes, with means I was on that porch for 5-7 minutes. I am sure I heard the doors open and close 4 to 6 times. Not one person checked on me. I get ignoring the drunk on the streets of San Francisco. But if somebody is immobile on the bathroom porch of a NPS campground at 9 AM on a Sunday morning, they probably need help. Way to go my fellow Americans.

With Michelle's help I got back to the truck and we decided that grabbing a campsite and staying another day was the prudent course of action. I clearly could not do a 3:30 drive, and Michelle was not comfortable towing that far on unfamiliar roads. So after moving the truck a few times to find enough of a cell signal, I booked the campsite right next to the one we left 20 minutes previous, and backed it in. Check in time wasn't until 3 PM, but with the shutdown we had not seen a Ranger all weekend, and I fucking needed to lay down. I was asleep by 930 AM and did not wake up until noon. At noon I had a fever in excess of 101F so my wife gave me no choice about a trip into Nags Head to the nearest Urgent care clinic.The COVID/RSV/Flu test was all negative, so they concluded it some virus and that all I could do was treat the symptoms. At that point we made a back up plan if I could not drive home the next day. Plan A was to see if we could get some sympathy from the marina management to let us leave the camper there for the week. It's the off-season, they had the space. If they said no we were going to simply try to book a campsite until Saturday, leave the camper there, and go home. Luckily, after another 90 minute nap, a dinner of chicken noodle soup, and going to bed at 9:30 PM, I was feeling much better on Monday morning. I drove home with no issues and even booked 4 hours in the home office that afternoon. Being self-employed means my annual paid sicks days are zero.

As I type this on Wednesday evening my fever is still persisting. I was only outdoors with people on Saturday, so I have no idea what I picked up or where I picked it up. It was still an epic weekend though. I got 86 species in two days, 16 of them lifers. I'm at 179 species for the year, passing my 158 of last year. 2023 was 116, and 2022 was 81. The trend line here is obvious, even without a graph to visualize it.

Trip: 55
Nights: 185-186

The government may be closed but the Park Rangers are working without getting paid. The two Rangers at the ranger station at Otter Creek Campground at about mile 60 on the Blue Ridge Parkway were in good spirts as I checked in, and I thanked them for being there to keep the campground open.

Otter Creek is the lowest point on the Blue Ridge Parkway, only about 600 feet above sea level. You will be 3000 feet up rather quickly driving either north or south from the campground. We arrived on Friday evening, about 30 minutes ahead of friends that were camping in the neighboring campsite. Otter Creek was renovated recently. The asphalt is in great shape and the paved campsites are level-ish. We had a creek side campground, although the water was mot moving at a speed to produce any sound. After our traditional campsite arrival dinner of WaWa subs that we picked up on the way, we retired to the campfire with our friends.

On Saturday morning I went hiking, picking up the Otter Creek trail at the campground and following it south about 2.5 miles to Otter lake, where I looped the small lake and then returned the way I came. The trail is right on the creek for much of the hike, with several stream crossings and 2 tunnels to pass under the BRP and some other road. It's a pleasant hike with minimal elevation gain.I got back to camp around noon and then that afternoon we took a scenic mountain pass drive to Lexington, VA, where we settled in at an outdoor table on a beautiful 70 degree day at the Devil's Backbone Lexington brewery. It was Teddy's first trip to a brewery and he was a good boy. He snoozed under the table. Unfortunately the brewery was closing at 4 PM for a private event, so all us peasants got kicked out for whatever wealthy person or group could afford to monopolize sizable brewery with a full kitchen on their busiest day of the week. On the way back we stopped at an ice cream shack, where my small dish of ice cream turned out to be about the size of both my fists. It was a lot of ice cream. So my dinner on Saturday ended up being tots, beer, and ice cream. I regret nothing.

Once we got back to the campground my friend, who is an electrical engineer, helped me with some wiring issues in the camper. The guy that installed my upgraded solar controller routed it oddly, and probably was costing me a bit of power in voltage drop by not connecting the controller directly to the battery on the shortest route. That is fixed now. Saturday night was a repeat of Saturday, beer and fire.

Sunday was go home day. The campground is 2.5 hours from home, so not a bad trip for a weekend.