NT

When I can, I have a small "cellar" stock of tins and about 10 mason jars with a various assortment. I am currently enjoying Lane Limited and Frog Morton on the Town. I also have a fondness for Peterson Gold. I get a local mix called Snowflake which I suspect is just a knockoff of Lane Limited.

I started making my own pipe on the lathe I use for making pens but life got busy and haven't gotten back to it, it's been about a year now.

Have you guys tried to buy generic tobacco and flavor your own. I have a bag of cheap tobacco and put a few drops of whiskey every once in a while in it, it's got nice flavor now.

I have a pipe and have smoked it several times and enjoy it a lot when I do. It's more of a "fraternal activity" so if I don't have someone to smoke with it just isn't the same.  

I have about 35 pipes, about 1/2 are Meerschaum. I smoke pretty much all day, usually a meerschaum, although I do have some nice briars.
When I have my daily cocktail I smoke one of the special pipes, which are those that are too expensive (or too big) to carry around, and match the tobacco to the drink- ie one tastes better with scotch, one with whiskey etc. I am also starting to match different tobaccos to different pipes.
When my Dad and I built a cottage years ago I dug up a meerschaum while digging the foundation. The stem was wood, and rotted away. I showed it to some collectors and was told it was 135-150 years old.
Interestingly, when I bought life insurance in the late "70's, the company did not consider pipe smoking as dangerous, and gave me the non smoker's rate.
I even have a couple with screens on top so I can smoke while riding.

How can you tell if a man smokes a pipe?

By the holes in his shirt and the dirty thumb.

Be careful if you pipe smoke while riding. I was coming home one day on my Jawa 350 and felt a burning sensation on my leg. I had not properly extinguished the pipe when I put it back in my pocket. I ended up with a large blister, a pipe that stank of burnt flesh for a day or two and a hole in my trouser pocket. I also used to enjoy Borkum Riff, particularly the Ultra Light. Beautiful when it came from Sweden, when "The Swedish Tobacco Company Auckland" got involved the quality went to hell. Borkum Riff priced itself off the market here.

There is just something about the whole experience that is soothing, it calms me, allows me to reflect. I never took to cigarettes but always enjoyed cigars and pipes. I smoke pipe more in winter inside, cigar I like to sit outside in summer. I feel there's more diversity with pipe though, so many varieties and flavors of tobacco, much more than cigars.

I just wish I had learned how to relax earlier in my youth...