I am one of the handful of humans left in this country that does not smoke cigarettes. Personally, they make me sick. I have tried to grasp the excitement of enjoying a Marlboro, but the taste of a cigarette literally nauseates me – give me a cigar on the other hand, and I’m in Heaven.

I love cigars. While I would not consider myself an aficionado, I do love to sit down with a good cigar any chance I get.

The person I have to thank for introducing me to the art of cigar smoking is Al Bold Eagle. Al is a wrestler I used to work with who was a big time cigar aficionado – so big in fact, that he would only smoke cigars from the one place you can’t get them from, (I’ll give you a hint – it rhymes with tuba). One day in 1993 after a wrestling show, Al offered me a cigar. I told him I don’t smoke. "You don’t smoke cigarettes," he told me. "Try a cigar." Boy was he right. I tried it, loved it and have been smoking cigars ever since.

My cigar smoking continued, although infrequently, from 1993 to 1998 until I got involved with a company called World Class Cigar Expo. In May of 1998, they hosted a Cigar Expo at New York City’s Jacob Javits Convention Center. After doing some pre-Expo articles for them in the paper I was working for at the time, they offered me a pass for all three days of the Expo. So I went and asked if I could cover the Expo for my TV show, Hole In The Wall. While I enjoyed smoking cigars and looked forward to meeting some of the industry’s biggest and best cigar companies – nothing could have prepared me for those three days.

In a 72-hour period, I smoked more cigars than I had in five years. Every time I was even close to finishing one, someone would hand me another. They say people chain smoke cigarettes, but cigars? I smoked so many in those three days that the night of the last day of the Expo – my throat swelled. And if that wasn’t bad enough, when the Expo was over, I wound up with more cigars in my house then Fidel Castro.

Then, before I could say "Robusto", three months later, World Class Cigar Expo asked me to go to Atlantic Beach, North Carolina and do press work for the 1998 Summer Smoke on the Beach – all expenses paid. Let’s see: a free summer vacation, and all the cigars I could smoke? – Needless to say, I went and had a great time – and once again wound up with a swollen throat and a few hundred more cigars to add to my already abundant collection.

Between those two events and the 1998 WBAB-FM Radio Blues and Brews Fest and Smoke Magazines 1998 Cigar Dinner, I was a full-blown cigar smoker. I had a humidor, cigar lighter, cigar cutter – and enough cigars to start my own distributorship.

It’s been almost seven years since my first stogie and I still enjoy lighting up a cigar and puffing it with a glass of good red wine. For those of you who smoke cigarettes, no offense to you – or the Marlboro Man – but they do nothing for me. I suggest you abandon your $3.80-a-pack habit and pick up a nice Corona, Robusto or Torpedo and see if you will ever go back to a "pack of butts".

And for the other cigar smokers out there – here’s to cigars. May they always light up our lives.