The Early Bus... Now Departing

We're on the Early Bus again today. I’m not quite sure what’s up with my sleeping habits of late but we’re not all that worried. What woke me up this morning was a brief but somewhat noisy thundershower that rolled through P-Ville just before 0530. Rain on an RV’s roof creates quite a racket, ya know, enough to wake even the heaviest of sleepers… and maybe the dead… and that would be me, Gentle Reader. So we rolled out, fired off the coffee pot and took a peek out the window to see there were some great cloud formations and the beginnings of what looked like a brilliant sunrise.

It was.

I took 68 pictures, most of which are throw-aways as I’m still having focusing issues with the SLR. This is beginning to piss me off.

For Ann and others who may be interested… All shots were taken with the 50 mm lens in shutter priority mode, f/1.4, at ISO 100. Image 17: 1/250 sec., Image 31: 1/160 sec., Image 34: 1/320 sec.

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Customer service is NOT dead. Witness the following, which is pretty much self-explanatory (addresses redacted):

From: Buck Pennington
To: Tim Blythe
Date: Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 3:13 PM
Subject: Order

Hello Tim,

Today must be a busy day for all y'all. I placed a call to you about an hour ago and left my callback number and haven't heard from you yet. I've tried to contact you a couple of times in the interim and got an "all reps are busy" message.

Anyhoo. I want to place an order for a box of Acid Deep Dish 5.0x58 @ $XXX. Please use the regular credit card (Master Card ending in 8473) and the usual method of shipping... i.e., second-day air.... to my Portales, NM address.

The last time I ordered the representative screwed my order up and sent me a box of Def Seas which I kept rather than return, mainly coz I have yet to meet the Acid I didn't like. That said... I really WOULD prefer the Deep Dish this time around.

Thanks,
Norman (aka Buck) Pennington

Tim’s reply:

From: Tim Blythe
To: Buck Pennington
Date: Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 8:29 AM
Subject: RE: Order

You got it, Buck. Sorry for being so hard to get a hold of. I'll get this shipped out so you have it tomorrow!!

Thank you and enjoy!

Tim Blythe
Cigar.com
(800) 357-9800

OK… I kinda-sorta figured Tim was using a little bit of poetic (i.e., marketing) license when he said “so you have it tomorrow.” He wasn’t. My cigars arrived yesterday afternoon, shipped out from Cigar.com via next-day air AND including a three-cigar Acid sampler thrown in, gratis. It really is a pleasure doing bid’niz with Cigar.com, and most especially Tim.

Yes. This IS a testimonial.

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As noted in yesterday’s post, we were anticipating our 100,000^th visitor here at EIP. And so it came to pass at 1934 hrs last evening:

A googler… looking for the ever-popular MC-12W.

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I'm thinking it's a good day to cruise out to the base. We need to do a beer and commissary run, anyway.