My wife broke several bones in her ankle Thursday, and this involved typical long hours in the emergency room, real pain for her and psychic pain for me. Nursing her, it was a no-brainer I missed the TAPS pipe show, one of my favorite events. But there was no way I was going to go off for the hours it deserves to do a pipe show. So once she was comfortable as we could make her, and filled with some of her favorite ice cream, I went to the smokingpipes.com site for a virtual pipe show, no pipe friends but plenty of pipes and blends. Prospects included the Peterson Around the World 105 billiard, their Dublin Edition 105 billiard, and several Savenelli Oscar Lucite shapes, and six or eight other pipes that I've admired. But finally, partly from thrift, but more from a kind of magnetism, I got back to a homely little English estate saddle stem billiard, unsmoked, that I swear I have been visiting for over a year. It's a Plymouth, some kind of working man's factory pipe, and has been offered for more than a year, I'm sure. I finally unburdened SP and other pipe shoppers from this little cooker and hope it works out. It has a few spots and scratches, but they say the drilling is good, and it is extra light weight, good for clenching, after all its years of drying out. I bought a bit of Old Joe Krantz, a long-time favorite CD burley blend. Salutes to all who made the TAPS show, and I hope to be there next year. Puff-puff. Right now, a Pete Killarney 999 Rhody P-lip packed with Lane English Luxury.
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