Smoked my first bowl of the season today; "Peterson Connoisseur's Choice", which made me realize that I need to do this more often. To be fair I don't get too much taste out of the actual smoking, but the whole ritual around it really puts me in a relaxed state. The filling, the tampering and the lighting, all major parts of the Art of pipe smoking. Once that's done, you need to keep the pipe going as well, and it's not as simple as fire and forget. If it was, it wouldn't have been known as the art of pipe smoking and it probably would have been known simply as smoking. At the moment I probably have to relight five to ten time per bowl, but practice makes perfect. Pipe smoking is a bit of a contradiction, the smoke tastes the best just before the bowl goes out. Then if you relight it, it's a simple matter to get the smoke belching, but that hot smoke is not what you want, so you have to wait for that ellusive state of smoke.

The reason why I've taken up pipe smoking is that my dad used to do it, so he had a bunch of pipes lying around at home, and let's face it, pipe smoking is cool. Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, James Cagney in Citizen Kane, they maybe didn't smoke a pipe, but they sure wanted to. I just love how second hand, used pipes aren't called that, they are known as "estate pipes" and are actually worth a bit, since a new pipe is frowned upon until it has been broken in. So since my dad had half a dozen of estate pipes lying around from the sixties and seventies, I heard the call, and I haven't looked back.