From Craig

This (hopefully) brief email is to thank you so, so much for all your hard work in bring information to light for us, the masses, and in particular, to me and my wonderful wife. I’ll try to be brief, as I know you’re a busy man, but I will likely fail. Sorry about that.

I know you think of yourself as just some guy on the net, and are humble as the day is long, but you helped two people in Wilsonville Oregon throw out their cigarettes. Credit where it is due, you didn’t do it alone. Richard Mallard, Matt Culley, Ruby Roo, GrimGreen, etc. you folks are all fantastic advocates and are changing people’s lives. Seriously. You’re changing lives. For the rest of my story, read below. I hope it doesn’t trigger a nap or something.

I was a smoker off and on (mostly on) from the time I was 17 until a few months ago (thirty years, as I’m 48 now). I quit a few times, twice cold-turkey, and once using a well-reputed cigg-a-like company’s products (V2, in case you wondered). The latter wasn’t particularly satisfying, and in all cases I eventually went back to cigarettes, usually within a year or two.

I smoked the organic tobaccos, fooling myself into believing they were “better” for me, but I knew it would eventually kill me if I kept going in the direction I was headed. No male in my family had lived beyond their mid-fifties for over a century, and I woke up one morning realizing that milestone was just around my celestial corner. Heart disease, cancers, were all in the road map I was staring at.

I finally decided I needed something different. Something satisfying, intriguing (I’m a computer science and engineering guy for 25 years now), and above all, something that I truly enjoyed to the point I would find returning to cigarettes hideously loathsome. Vaping, real vaping, was it. Being an engineer, I started doing research. Tons of it. I searched videos, read articles, reviews, research papers. Name it; I investigated it in one form or another. Without ever setting foot in a vape shop I honed in on your reviews particularly, as they are monstrously informative and frequently very engineer-centric. My wife was interested as well, and was willing to give whatever I settled on a try. And so….

My first real vape rig:
– SX Mini M Class,
– Kanger Subtank Mini

Wife’s Rig:
– Aspire Nautilus Nano Kit with 1000mah battery.

It took me about two minutes to warm up to the new style of vaping. The moment I hit home I knew, I **knew**, this was it. I finally found it. Something that I was confident from DAY ONE would work. I’ve not touched a cigarette since. My wife wasn’t truly satisfied with here smaller rig, but didn’t want something that had complicated bells and whistles like my rig. She was still 50/50 on cigarettes. She was willing to try a small box mod and a larger atomizer (22mm) like mine. She wanted something she could forget charging for a day or two and would still have power to spare. A little more research, including more time in your videos, and I settled on a rig update for her:

Wife’s Rig (Part Deux)
– ELeaf I-Stick 50W. (the VW/VV is super simple on this mod)
– Kanger Subtank Mini (she wanted a larger tank that hit harder)

Running a 1.5ohm coil she only has to charge the thing about twice a week, and absolutely loves it. The flavor, the hit, all good and she’s no longer 50/50-ing with cigarettes. She’s 100% in the vape world and loving it. We’re both currently at 6mg (in fact, started there), and very happy with that.

Finally, clouds-bro’ was fun, but really just wasn’t my thing. I needed something different as well. Mind you, I didn’t need it, but I certainly wanted it, and perused mouth-to-lung satisfaction. Once again, I turned to research; once again, your videos. Not shocking, I decided to give a Kayfun v4 (authentic, directly from Svoemesto) a try. It is amazing (and occasionally frustrating). I currently run a 28-awg kanthal 7-wrap micro-coil at 1.4 ohms and 15 watts. Great battery life, tremendous flavor, thick, dense vapor (you used the term “juicy”, and it is quite-accurate). It is a complicated atomizer, and frankly I accidentally flooded the air-flow-control at least a dozen times in the first week alone. I finally found a process that works very well, and am now simply amazed by this device. The only real drawback is the weight when coupled with my SX Mini M Class. Good God that’s a dense rig for such a small handful.

Thank you Phil. I mean that. THANK YOU. I simply cannot wait until a vape expo comes somewhere near Portland Oregon and I can finally meet you and thank you in person.

Craig