Attention REO noobs!

[Rhapsodies Fire]

Now is YOUR chance to take a shot at winning an rba for your device. One of our generous Reonauts has graciously & anonymously donated five RBAs to the top five stories written by Reo newbies.

To qualify, you must have purchased your first REO in the last 180 days. This can and will be verified.

How this will go down.
You will write your best story on one of three topics and post it in this thread. You may only enter once. Multiple entries will be deleted.
1) Your vaping Story.
2) Porcupines & power tools.
3) Your best Reo based filk (Filk: The art of changing published and/or known music lyrics to fit a specific theme. Different lyrics sung to a well known tune.)

This will be judged by a panel of reo-veterans. Some who know you and some who don’t to keep it impartial.

The prizes:
5^th Place: an A7
4^th & 3^rd Place: a Reomizer each
2^nd Place: a Hornet
1^st Place: A V1 Chalice

The disclaimer: These may be lightly used and come with no warranty, implied or otherwise. These are a gift and should be treated as such. If you don’t like it, please don’t ask me for an exchange or trade.

You have one week to submit your stories. Then the thread will be closed. The winners will be announced in the thread. The winners will send me their addresses and I will send out their prizes.

Ideally, we would prefer that if you already have a chalice, you would kindly allow someone else to have a shot at it. That is the idea behind this whole thing; to help the noobs who are interested in trying RBAs get them since some of them are rather difficult to acquire.

And most importantly...please DO NOT comment in this thread. This is for contest entries only. If you post a comment, expect it to be deleted. If you feel the need to express your feelings about this, please do so in the lounge thread. You are also welcome to PM me if you have any questions or concerns.

Your time begins now.

*Edit: I will take pictures and post here when they arrive.

*Edit: The answer to the question of buying used is the donor doesn't have a problem with it. Simply provide the link to the closed classifieds post for verification. Hopefully that will be sufficient.

 

[FEEDER]

These lyrics, need to be sung to the MONTY PYTHON SONG, IM A LUMBERJACK

OH IM A REONAUT, & IM OK
I SQUONK ALL NIGHT, & I SQUONK ALL DAY

I WISH I WAS AS CLEVER, AS MODFATHER ROB,
COS THEN ID HAVE A WOODVIL,
ALWAYS IN ME GOB

OH IM A REONAUT &IM OK,
I SQUONK ALL NIGHT, & I SQUONK ALL DAY

no offence rob, just a laugh
Frank

 

[super_X_drifter]

This one is sung to the “Beverly Hillbillies” theme song. Run…I hear banjo music 

Now this here’s a story ‘bout a man named Rob
He took a slab of wood and he made himself a mod
The thing was so damn good he knew what he had to do
He shipped it off to Clyde and he asked for a review

Oklahoma, Mod Destroyer

So Clyde really liked it, yes he thought it was a hit
Posted walls of text stating that it was the sh_t
So Rob got to thinking “you know what I’m gonna do”
Open up a modshack and start to mass produce

REO’s that is, Woodvils, VV too

So skip ahead to now, and his business is robust
Several different models, it’s a mod that you can trust
He’s working on a new one that that’ll put the rest to shame
I only use REO’s ‘cause the others are all lame.

Please let it be noted that If I win anything, I would like to donate it to the next person down the list. I wanted to participate to try to give back! (And because I love inserting my own lyrics into popular songs).

 

[serenity21899]

Around last November, money got a bit tight and my husband informed me that my cigs were no longer in the budget. Ok then. I tried several times to quit cold turkey, but minus the cigs, I instantly become, well...not so nice to be around. Then he asked some people at his job about their ecigs and reported the info back to me. OK, I still get my nicotine, maybe this would get him off my back. I never intended to quit, btw.

Went to WalMart and got a Mistic. Didn't like that one too much but went online to see what else was available. Got the 100s Blu Kit, which worked better, but has it's issues. However, after a few days into it I was no longer smoking. Managed to stick with the Blu's for a couple of monts.

I found a local vape shop, and learned a lot from them. The guy at the shop let me try his box mod (forgot what kind it was now). I thought it was wierd looking and vowed to never buy one. I also found this forum, and moved on to Ego Twists. Much better than cig-alikes, but still didn't quite cut it. However, around this time, I realized I really like vaping, and it became a hobby for me (but I had no intension of quitting in the beginning).

My husband bought me a Provari for Valentine's day, which I use with a carto tank. Through watching the many YouTube videos, I learned about Reo's. Since I like carto tanks, I figured a bottom-feeder would work well for me, since it is similar in how it works. Beginning of this month, I got my Reo, and I love it. I like non-fussy stuff. I now have a preference for box mods (which I told myself I would never buy). I then started my DIY advendture, and that has worked out well so far.

I also told myself I would never build (i.e. RBA's). I found a Reomizer in the classies and got it. Have had it working for a few days now. I am actually still undecided, but I would like to give some of the other RBA's a try.

After 4 months, I sometimes still cannot believe I am not smoking. I have my sense of smell and taste back. My husband no longer feels the need to reseason everything I cook now. I stopped coughing and feel better overall. This whole ecig thing has totally changed my life, and I'm darn glad to be here.

 

[vsummer1]

I started smoking in Jr. High school because it was what everyone else was doing. My parents didn't smoke, and in fact my mother detested the smell and anything to do with them. Her father had died of lung cancer, and never smoked a day in his life. I never met my grandfather, he had died years before I was even born. My parents had bridge parties and people were allowed to smoke in the house for them, but otherwise smoking was not tolerated in the home I grew up in. Even Mom's best friend smoked out on the porch, and she was a chain smoker. None of my brothers or sisters smoked, just me. So I didn't even have role models really. Just friends, and peer pressure.

It started out as just smoking with friends, but as soon as I got my own place I had the freedom to smoke whenever, wherever I pleased. The second job I had was as an administrative assistant to sales people at Core Mark. Who is Core Mark you may wonder? They are the ones who supply the retailers with cigarettes. While I worked there they started the generics and it was my boss who traveled around introducing them, doing the displays, pushing them into the world. And all the while I was at my desk as support for the cigarette pushers. Samples were part of the job, so not only did I smoke at work I wasn't even paying for them. It had become a part of who I was. And unlike where I grew up, it was the culture where I spent more waking hours than anywhere else. And that is when the addiction really began.

I continued smoking after I left that job even though I now had to pay for them. I even smoked when I had pneumonia I was in so deep. I remember telling the doctor that the only thing that would stop my coughing was taking a few hits off a cigarette. The doctor was very displeased with this, and told me that the smoking "paralyzed" my lungs and that is why the coughing stopped. I was told to take the prescribed cough medicine and not to smoke; but of course I didn't listen. I still smoked. Eventually I would get better, and even though I knew the smoking was damaging it didn't matter. For a few years I would get bronchitis after every cold, and spent at least one month out of every year coughing miserably. And still I did not stop smoking. I realized I should quit, but just could not break that addiction.

I tried to quit many times, using the standard methods: I tried cold turkey (that never lasted even one day!), I cut down slowly, I tried the patch, I tried the gum, I tried the pills. I TRIED!!! And failed over and over again. My husband would joke that I was going to be the old lady dragging around an oxygen tank with a cigarette in my hand. And I really believed that was going to be the case. I continued to smoke for 35 years. I smoked in my car, I smoked in my house. I smoked in restaurants, planes, bars, and there were no rules against it. We had our very own sections! I was enraged when they limited my places to smoke, yet like all smokers just rearranged my life to accommodate my habit.

It limited my friendships to people who were smokers themselves, though I didn't realize it at the time. In college I have one of those clear memories we get, one of those haunting memories that shouldn't be particularly memorable, but keep nagging at us anyway. It was a cold day, and I always kept a sweater in my car. I pulled it out and noticed it smelled of stale smoke from being in my smokey car so long, but wore it anyway. Now bear in mind that I smelled it, and I smoked, so it must have been awful to others; I didn't think anything about it really. Until one of the girls in class candidly stated, "You stink!" and moved away from me. That is when I realized that I really didn't have friends that didn't smoke; the smokers tended to befriend each other and the rest of them kept away from us. Most likely because the non-smokers really didn't want to make friends with people who stank! I went home and washed the sweater, but that revulsion she felt left the memory with me. I never left a sweater in the car for any length of time after that, and made an effort to not stink. I doubt those efforts worked, but I do hope they lessened my impact on others.

I even knew which bars allowed smoking. Those were the private clubs. I am a member of the Eagles, the Elks, the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and am a Moose. If someone asks me, I will tell them that I joined them because I traveled for a living and it is a great thing to have a built in support system that was safe in any city I went to. That may be true, but when I joined them I didn't travel and it was because you could still smoke inside them.

One day I was at the VFW and one of my smoking buddies pulled out a black thingy with a blue tip and inhaled. I asked her about it, and she told me about electronic cigarettes. She said they worked to a point, and helped her smoke a few less. I thought that sounded pretty nice, since by now I was waking myself up at night hacking up a lung. And of course in the mornings I hacked up both lungs as I lit my first cigarette anyway. I went to the online site and ordered a Blu kit. And was pleasantly surprised that I could actually use one of those to cut down drastically on cigarettes. It was a miracle!

I thought my Blu kit was all there was. I even heard that Walgreens was stocking them, so thought I would check them out to see if it was less expensive than buying online. It wasn't, those 5 little cartos were even more at a retail store. But I knew where to get them if I ever ran out. I did some searches online to see if I could find a place to get them less expensively, and ran across a you-tube video showing how to refill them. So I found a vendor and ordered the juice. I thought I was pretty smart outwitting those Blu people!

And in my searches I kept seeing this forum. I was irritated that it showed up in all my searches. I had no interest in a forum on these things. Until I burned a few cartos out and even though I was refilling them, they got pretty nasty. I was still buying new ones more than I wanted to. So I did some more searching to figure out what else I could do to stretch those things out so I wasn't paying $3 per cartridge. I finally made a mistake in my searches and called up a thread on ECF. I had a lot to learn!

My learning curve here was pretty fast. I had 510's, I had eGo's. I got a ProVari. I found the classifieds. I was amazed and confused. I wasn't smoking cigarettes! So I was eager to make sure I kept not smoking cigarettes. I finally realized I wasn't craving a smoke and that these electronic cigarettes were working. I bought box mods, I bought PV's. I met people like me! A support group full of nicotine addicts who were willing to share tips and tricks. I learned to DIY, I learned to coil an RBA. Yet I was still in search of the right PV. I met with another vaper who I knew had a REO, and asked her to bring it with her to lunch and checked it out. It was intriguing having everything so nice and neat in a package that wouldn't leak, that made backups a battery box instead of 3 different set-ups.

When Hola listed a brand spanking new REO that was kickable in the colors I wanted I snapped it up out of the classifieds. And introduced myself to the REOnaughts, who were gracious and generous and full of fun. Which leads me to today, happily vaping on my REO's, playing in the REO lounge and NOT smoking cigarettes. So why am I entering this contest if I am happy? Because the only RDA I have is an A7, and I would love to try a new style of RDA but blew my budget on the four REO's I now have. In fact, I wouldn't even have the A7 if not for the generosity of a REOvillian in sending me one with the wick to put in it (all I had was mesh). Thank you Kay

And thank you REOvillians for being so open and friendly, so helpful and encouraging. And of course for this contest.

 

[dchest02]

The first time I tried a cigarette I was 10 years old. Nobody pressured me into it, I was just a curious child that watched many people smoking. Unfortunately for me, the "adult" that gave me that first cigarette did so without so much as a bat of the eyes. I didn't cough, or choke, nothing. I just didn't get it. A year later my mom got a divorce, found a new boyfriend, and we moved in with him and his three kids. Cool, I had immediate friends. The first day we were left alone the house turned into a hangout for all the "bad" kids. That's when my smoking career started.

Fast forward 25 years, I have been smoking a pack a day since I turned 16, and I was sick of it. My smoking actually was up to a pack and a half every day. I heard about a local store that was selling electronic cigarettes, and since it was tax time I had some extra dough. I walked in and said "I want to buy whatever you recommend to me as I know NOTHING about these things." I dropped $96 on an Echo-E kit and a 30 ml bottle of 24 mg Dekang USA mix. I was SO excited I didn't wait until I got home to fire up my new toy. Filled the cartomizer the way the lady showed me, hit the button, and...was immediately sickened by the taste.

That night I went to the Google and started to type electronic cigare...then auto complete kicked in, and the first entry was ECF. I clicked the link, and my journey really began. Within an hour I had placed an order with three different juice vendors. Each day after that I found myself on ECF for at least 4 to 6 hours a day. My ECF account was actually getting more use than Facebook. I would still visit that local store for new cartomizers, and to ask if they had the new thing I learned about the day before. As time went on I realized that I was learning so much that my knowledge had surpassed that of the store owner. This fact was proven when I went in and asked for some Boge cartomizers, and the lady had no idea what I was talking about.

Now, one year, one month, and twenty four days later I have a Provari, a Vamo, a Chinese GG clone, a Reo Grand, a bunch of rebuildables, and I am making my own juice. I have gotten all the guys on my shift to quit the stinkies, and start vaping. My wife, who was a skeptic now vapes. I have enough gear that I routinely give people cartomizers, or juice when their supply runs out. I buy every new vaping gadget that comes out, so I have something to base my recommendations on. My wife laughs everytime she see's me with a new toy, or fiddling with a new shiny mod. I always have people asking me to recommend them something for their wife, son, friend, etc. I have spent more money than I ever did smoking, but it is well worth it in my opinion. I always tell people I'm saving lives, one at a time. Some people stick with it, some don't, but it always makes me smile when I see someone that I got into it still vaping their face off after some time.

 

[TheAngryBovine]

Summer of '88. Two 13 year olds stealing Marlboro 100's and Victoria Slims ultra light menthols from their parents, thinking they're cool trying to smoke without coughing, hiding in the garage level storage locker of a pink condo building in suburban Seminole, Florida. Yeah, we were cool... Ripped jeans, mullets, and Bon Jovi t-shirts.
'92. Spring. Graduated to Camels. No filter. I'm a real man! Pack a day, even! Couch surfing, lotsa friends, all mall rats. Ripped jeans, Metallica t-shirts. No, no more mullet - my wife says it's hippie hair. That woman never got into metal I guess.
'95. I'm 20. Bad credit, bad job, bad taste in music. Awesome hair, still. 1 pack a day... Hey, I just got into the service industry; it's stressful! (And cool)
Double ought. 25. Blaming my parents on raising me in the service industry. But now I can cook... And suck down a 100 in 2 minutes flat. Pack and a half a day. The head is shaved... A fact my Jewish mother loves.
2010. Summer. Oh s&#t, she's pregnant!!! How did this happen? I'm always careful! 2 packs a day. Time to start paying attention...
2011. Spring. The ring. The kid. How did he turn every last bit of everything I ever gave one .... about and flip it upside down? Thank god he looks like his mother. 2 packs. Houndstooth. Serious chefs don't wear jeans. More cigs on the weekends. (More stress)
2012. Summer. How did this 20 pound lump of flesh, this whirling dervish, make me forget about EVERYTHING i thought mattered? I feel old. I need more time. Back hurts. Can't breathe when i tie my shoes... Time for a diet. And slip on shoes. Hell, I can't laugh without coughing. Why does it seem like time is moving so much faster? One word... Gray. Ish.
Late 2012. Wife's in Georgia with Coop!!!! Woohoo, time to party! Quinn gives me his Blu to check out at the bar. Good idea... He's been smoking as long as I have. Tastes like Cooper's diaper smells, but a good idea all the same. Buy a couple. Find ECF. Find what works for me.
2013. Still 6-8 cigs a day. Closer every day, though. I diy, don't care about my hair, and can finally wear jeans that aren't "mom style", thank you, Dr. Atkins! Cooper just turned 2 three weeks ago. He's the best part of me. If I'm lucky, Steph lets him stay up late so I can see him when I get home from work. When she doesn't... Well, that's when I'm noisy when I get home.

oops. Forgot, http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...ified-threads/371822-us-fs-reo-mini-70-a.html

 

[TheAngryBovine]

oops. Forgot, http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...ified-threads/371822-us-fs-reo-mini-70-a.html

 

[somewhere21]

Here we go, and thank god for the anonymity of the internet. Well it may be I have a two year old too.





The sun was setting that day, one spring day in the woods, the light just making it through the pine trees and hitting the forest floor. There was a silence there, and then just a sound, a soft little sound. You see, a new little porcupine was born here, in a small nook under a granite boulder set down long ago by the ice sheet that covered this part of the world. You must be thinking now, “Well why would I care about a new porcupine?” and maybe you shouldn’t. Yet you may want to read a little more, and perhaps this story may change your mind.
This porcupine’s father was a master woodworker, with teeth that could chisel and shape wood into any form. Now a porcupine’s teeth generally are used to eat the bark and such from trees and also greens, and of course he used them for that, however he had figured out that they also could make useful items for around the home and such. Porcupines feared the fisher, which if not properly looked out for, would attack them. Father had developed a door system, that when installed at the den entrance, would help protect them.
Now back to the little porcupine that they named Junior. He looked every bit like the rest of them, and he was a feisty little youngster. He grew and grew, until one day the time came to venture out and find some bark to eat. He waddled with Mother and Father out into the forest, until they found a young sapling.
Father said, “Now this tree you must never eat Junior, for while it looks delicious, one or two bites will fill your stomach and make you feel like you won’t have to eat for a week, but soon you will notice that you are hungry again, and all you want is to eat this type of sapling again.”
So off they went. What Junior didn’t know was that many porcupines had become sick from eating too much from the sapling, and were becoming sick. Many years passed and the day came when Junior was alone in the forest and he came upon the tree his father had warned him against eating. “Well one nibble won’t hurt me” he thought.
Well, sufficed to say, Junior spent the next few years with a hunger that didn’t fill him, and was quite unwell at times. He only wished that he did not take that one nibble. One day, while walking among some pines, he saw a flash from a bush. Looking closer, he saw a very strange object that was quite foreign (Now to us, it was just a Dremel Power Tool, battery operated of course). After some effort, he was able to pick it up and examine it. It was round and shaped like a big stick, with a little round drum at one end.
“Well look what you found!” said Squirrel, who was peering down “You know someone must of lost that!”
“What does it do?” Junior asked
“It makes things smoother, I see some of those tall folks near town using them.”
“Well how does it…..” and then Junior pressed something and the little drum spun very fast.
“Exactly” said Squirrel.
Junior went home, and stashed his new find, and went out to look for some food, or more specifically, some sapling. He was about to take a nibble when he heard a loud “CAW CAW” from above. Crow was sitting above him.
“Now why do all of you eat that sapling bark?” Crow said
To which Junior replied “Because I need to, I’m very hungry”
“Well, the wood is just fine, quite good, but the bark can kill you!”
And with that, Crow flew off.
Junior sighed and ate his fill, or non-fill, depending on how you look at it. While waddling home, he thought about what Crow said. The bark will kill you.

“That’s it! I must find a way to just eat the wood!” which of course is very hard for a porcupine to do. He went home and thought and thought. He then proceeded to think some more. When he woke up the next day, he clumsily bumped around and heard a thud. It was the object he found from the forest.
“That’s it!” he yelled, and went off running (as fast as a porcupine can) into the woods, object (Dremel that is) in hand. He found a sapling and carefully breaking off a piece, turned and pushed until a loud “WHIRLLLL” overcame the quiet woods. It took a while, and actually it was a long while, but by holding the little drum to the bark, quickly the wood was visible and all the bark was gone. So Junior ate the wood and went to his boulder hole.
The next day was amazing, and the next year even better. Junior still ate sapling, but with his magical plastic, metal, and whirling object, he did not feel sick. Even Squirrel got in on the fun. Since he knew where the tall folk kept lots of the little boxes that apparently kept the object going, he frequently “borrowed” some, and put back the spent ones.
Time went on, and while Junior’s father was a master woodworker (who could have stripped the bark from the sapling, however the risk was too much), Junior became known as the master smoother. He helped many of his forest friends become healthy by supplying bark free sapling wood.
The End

Now Reader, you must be wondering what is the moral of the story is. Well quite simply, always make sure you keep your batteries charged, and keep your eyes out for squirrels and porcupines.

 

[fatherdano]

OK Now.....

I tried to explain this contest to Judi. I told her it was REO boobs. She protested and insisted I put on my reading glasses,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

REO noobs??


Our stories of nicotine addiction and struggles are not what I want you to read about.

I do want you to know of the simplistic and effective story of Me and the Reo.... Its as interchangeable as the cartos and batteries that we are all familiar with.
I won't tug at your heart strings with pictures of our 6 boys or claims of how big our dog is(he is soooooo big)j/k

I will tell you though that I've been smoke free for 11 weeks and that even though I came to Reoville looking for advice, I have found the most caring bunch of people you could imagine.

My vaping story? Lets just say its an ongoing Romance!!!



P.S. Yes that is the mother of all 7 of my children. Molly is our little girl who monitors us from above(she was #4 )

 

[Rhapsodies Fire]

Okay...the votes are in and tallied.
1st Place is RedHatPat
2nd Place is somewhere21
3rd Place is vsummer1
4th Place is super_X_drifter
5th Place is Fatherdano

Please send me your contact information via PM and I will get these out to you before the weekend.
Also, just an aside...everyone got voted for more than once. It was close and was decided by decimals.

 

[Rhapsodies Fire]

Fatherdano still waiting for your PM