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Mixing tobaccos

I’d heard – well, read, since I know virtually no one personally who smokes a pipe – a lot about Haunted Bookshop. This is a Cornell & Diehl tobacco blend that a lot of people seem to love. The local shop carries it in bulk, so when I bought my Savinelli pipe and he offered a couple of samples to try out, Haunted Bookshop was one of them.

I did like the taste. It’s not an aromatic, and the so-called “room note”, or how it smells to those being exposed to your demon second-hand smoke, is not as sweet but isn’t bad.

The tasting, however, did not end well. I tried a small amount, maybe half a bowl, of HB followed by a similar small amount of Bayou Morning, a Virginia Perique blend. Now, this is pretty serious stuff, for me at least. Lots of tobacco flavor, no sweeteners or flavors. It’s definitely no Captain Black. That’s fine, but I was unprepared for the massive nicotine hit. After years of not smoking at all, then slowly starting to smoke a little aromatic blend on a pipe occasionally, my nicotine tolerance was about zero. I enjoyed the smoke, but not the two hours of sweating, clammy nausea that followed and had my wife wondering if she should call an ambulance because I was having another cardiac event.

I put those two tobaccos in jars next to the Latakia blend that I like, but only occasionally. One thing I like about pipe tobacco is that it seems to be like wine… stored properly it only improves with age, for the most part.

This morning I decided to try a little experiment. I mixed up a batch of about 2/3 black cavendish (Lane Ltd. BCA) with about 1/3 Haunted Bookshop. I packed a full bowl in my Bing’s Favorite, deciding to let the new Peterson rest a few days. So far I’m quite pleased with it. The BCA tames the HB down quite a bit, while the HB gives some flavor and character that the pure cavendish lacks. It burns well, and my wife tells me it smells good. No tongue bite at all, it’s not the least bit harsh and the nicotine content is low enough to not bother me.

Now obviously I’m not the first person to figure this stuff out, but it’s interesting to figure out what works for me and what doesn’t work so well.

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Peterson Kildare

Picked this beauty up in Belfast, Northern Ireland today. I looked at a lot of pipes in the shop, and this one was really my favorite. There’s no substitute, really, for checking pipes out in person to see the grain and everything else. For instance, Lisa liked one with a beautiful smooth finish and striking gold acrylic stem. I liked it a lot too, but there was a place where the black end of the filter holder in the tenon showed through the acrylic part of the stem. I knew that was going to bug me every time I looked at that pipe.

Peterson silver mount Kildare smooth #120

This one is a smooth silver mounted 120, a nicely sized billiard with a P-lip stem and 9mm filter. The shop owner was nice enough to throw in a Peterson pipe tool along with the pipe and filters I bought. In fact he threw in the filters and pipe cleaners, too. Nice guy.

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Peterson Atlantic Rusticated 221

I was in London for a couple of weeks around Easter 2022. I had not taken a pipe along with me, kind of on purpose. I did take some tobacco and a lighter, but not a pipe. I figured that if I had time, I could visit one of the pipe shops in London. With my work schedule I didn’t have the time to get to any of them while they were open. I did, however, find out that Selfridges has a James J Fox tobacconist in the store. That was a short tube ride and walk away, and they were open late, so off I went.

They had a small selection of pipes, and this one caught my eye. It being JJ Fox, in Selfridges, in London, I overpaid shamefully. That said, I love the pipe. It a favorite of mine that I use regularly. That said, it seems to have an issue with condensation and gurgling that sometimes cannot be overcome even with the Peterson “system”. I don’t know if it’s the shape or something else. (see edits below)

Rusticated Peterson Atlantic 221

Update Jan. ’24: I still like this pipe. The gurgling issue is partly the shape, and partly (the bigger part) a case of very poor drilling. The draft hole in the shank is drilled way off, intersecting around the very end of the tenon. This causes a large amount of turbulence in the airflow, and causes the moisture to condense out of the smoke. Of course there’s no way to get a pipe cleaner down there without removing the stem, so one either just deals with it or ends up with a large, soggy dottle — or both.

The peanut gallery is by now screaming, “But you just need to smoke slower!! Dry out your tobacco!” I can assure you — doing both these things will still result in a healthy gurgle about halfway through the bowl. I may do some work on the upper end of the draft hole one of these days when I’m feeling adventurous, but for now I just put up with it. I’m happy that Peterson is kind enough to hire the blind, I just wish they didn’t give them drills. 🙂

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Ashton Consummate Gentleman

I was looking for a tobacco to try some Latakia. Boy, did I find it!

I was attracted to Consummate Gentleman by the tin and the name, to be honest, as well as the description. I wanted to try a Latakia blend. I’d also never tried a tinned tobacco before, just bulk tobacco bought by the ounce. OK, I take that back! I’d bought a 100g tin of tobacco at the Danish Pipe Shop in Copenhagen, and loved it. It’s a totally different type of tin, though.

Just opening the tin was a new one for me. The lid wasn’t coming off with any normal human amount of force. It’s pretty well vacuum sealed. Finally figured out to use the tip of a butter knife to twist under the lid just enough to break the airtight seal and let some air in, then it opened up easily.

I was immediately struck by the strong, distinctly smoky aroma. Wow! If you like Laphroiag or Lagavulin you’ll probably like a Latakia blend. It smells a bit like a smoldering barn. It’s the kind of aroma that your male friends will love, and will cause most women to recoil in horror. There’s a paper liner in the tin to keep the tobacco from being in direct contact with the metal, as is the case (I believe) with all of the flat, vacuum sealed tins of this type. The tobacco was tightly packed and required a little rubbing or digging to get it to separate. Once I got some in hand, it seemed quite a bit less moist than the aromatics I’m used to. Some of them can feel downright oily or goopy; this was not overly dry, but I didn’t think I’d have problems keeping it lit.

Undaunted by the strong aroma, I loaded up a MM corncob and tried it out. It’s definitely a change from a milder aromatic like the Ted’s #1 (also known as RLP-6) that I’m used to as my daily smoke. There’s a lot of tobacco flavor in this one, rather than syrupy toppings. The Latakia adds a distinct smoky flavor that I didn’t find overbearing or too strong.

My wife was sitting a few feet away and said the smoke was tolerable, but not pleasant as is the smoke from the aromatic blends I’m usually smoking. As I figured would be the case, I didn’t have trouble keeping it lit. It’s not unusual for me to need to relight my pipe pretty often, but I think I made it through half a bowl of this with one or maybe two relights.

All in all, I like it. I won’t be making it my daily smoke, but just like a good Islay Scotch there are times when you’re just in the mood for a little bit of smoke in your life. It’s something different, and I’ll be keeping it around. I think this will be perfect for a nice little clay pipe I’ve got with a smaller bowl. I’ve got the tobacco in a jar for now, not knowing how well it will keep in the tin and paper.

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Lane Ltd. BCA (“Dark Horse”)

My local shop has a blend they call “Dark Horse” that I found out is bulk Lane Ltd BCA. It’s a nearly jet black Cavendish, with virtually no tobacco smell — the tin note (or bag note, I guess) seems to be mostly sugary, with some rum or whiskey. You smell the casings (toppings?), not the tobacco. I tried a bowl of it last night in my Peterson Atlantic 221. It’s quite mild and inoffensive to the point of being too mild. It’s a little boring, actually. There’s smoke there, but really not a lot of character. I don’t think I’ll make this a regular smoke in my rotation, but it might be nice for taking some of the edge off of a Virginia or VA/Perique blend that’s otherwise just too stout for my taste. Time will tell. I’m glad I tried it, but so far it’s not a real “keeper” for me. I’ve read a couple of reviews that say it gets better the more often you smoke it; I’ll use up the ounce I bought and see how it does.

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Savinelli Bing’s Favorite Limited Edition Arlecchino

There is probably only one thing that the late Bing Crosby and I have in common. I’ve got none of his talent and I don’t golf, but I love this pipe.

Savinelli makes a line of “Bing’s Favorite” pipes in various finishes. I was visiting my local shop, Ted’s Tobacco, partly to look at some of the Savinelli pipes I knew he carried. I was mostly interested in the 320KS shape, a chubby “author” bowl design. What caught my eye was this polar opposite. The Bing’s Favorite is a billiard with slim, elegant lines and a long shank. There were several in the case with various colored stems, but this one is the very unique “Arlecchino” stem that I love. When I saw pictures of the Bing’s Favorite on line I thought the stem would be a little longer than I would like; I was wrong.

I’ve smoked this pipe a number of times and it’s been wonderful. It accommodates a 6mm filter, either the standard Savinelli balsa or a cut-down Medico or Dr. Grabow paper filter. I get no gurgling or tongue bite at all. I love the size, the balance, the feel of it. I’m fond enough of it that I’m seriously considering buying a regular Bing’s Favorite in a smooth finish with the regular stem.

Savinelli Bing’s Favorite Arlecchino
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Pipe smoking

I’ve smoked a pipe before at various times. The first was back in the very early 1980s for a while. I started up again back around 2016-2017, and in fact picked up some absolutely wonderful tobacco at the Danish Pipe Shop in Copenhagen. I hadn’t smoked one in probably a year or so until earlier this year, when I stopped by Ted’s Tobacco again.

Once upon a time, we had some pipe shops in Omaha that also carried a few cigars. I’m reaching back to the 1970s and 1980 here… the days of David’s Briar Shop at Westroads. You could also likely find pretty fresh pipe tobacco at your local grocery or drug store. You could even buy pipes, albeit cheap ones, at one or two of the local drug store chains.

Those days are, of course, long gone. I don’t recall the last time I encountered another pipe smoker, either around here or while traveling (not counting the pipe shop staff in Copenhagen). I can find four shops in Omaha that sell pipe tobacco now — and all of them clearly sell cigars as their overwhelmingly major primary business. Of those four, two are way too far away to be practical — one is in the Old Market, the other on the northern edge of town. One, Ted’s Tobacco, is only a few minutes’ drive from my house. that’s where I’ve done most of my shopping for tobacco and pipes. Of the five pipes I currently own, two came from Ted’s, two from Missouri Meerschaum, and one I bought at Selfridge’s in London.

I’ll be posting more about the pipes and the tobacco I have tried and like, or dislike, or simply can’t smoke, as time goes on.

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A year’s worth of updates

Time flies when you’re ignoring a blog, right? I’ll catch up.

  • The Mercedes is gone. After everything I’d fixed on it, when the transmission decided it didn’t want to work reliably any more — screw it, I was done. It was an awesome car to drive, but not so much fun to own. I replaced it with a much newer 2018 BMW 540i Xdrive, which has been wonderful.
  • Still flying occasionally, but nowhere near as much as I should or want to.
  • Nothing’s happened with the Mustang, other than getting the engine put back together.
  • We’ve picked up a couple more rental houses; that enterprise is going pretty well overall.
  • We switched from Visible to T-Mobile. Visible had great service when we signed up; it slowly degraded to barely usable. TMO has been better, but not great.
  • I just dumped CenturyLink. Our CenturyLink fiber service has been down since Wednesday morning (it’s Friday now). It took me three hours to get through to a human there, on the phone, who told me they could have someone out Saturday morning. Absolutely appalling service. We were up and running on Cox within an hour of leaving the house to go pick up their equipment.
  • Now I remember why I didn’t like Cox’s equipment… zero flexibility, no control over your own local network at all. You can’t even set your own DNS, so my Pi-Hole is not functional. I’ve got new equipment coming this afternoon. New cable modem, router, and mesh wifi.
  • I left my long time employer (a bank) a little over a year ago and now work for another bank.
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Fast & Fun

Oddly enough, I had never in my life been to a drag strip. When I was young, there was only one that I knew of in the area, in Scribner. I never did get out there, because once I learned how to drive I had other things to do that seemed more pressing.

I’ve been threatening to take the Mercedes to a drag strip since not long after I got it. After finally getting most of the issues worked out, I decided a couple of Saturdays ago to just do it. I drove down to I-29 Dragway in Pacific Junction, IA. It’s a 1/8 mile track, which I was initially not too happy about, but honestly I think it was a good place to start out. It’s $10 to watch, $25 to race on a “Test & Tune” night, which is most Friday and Saturday nights.

I got there early and checked out some of the other people showing up while waiting for tech inspection. Once the tech shed opened up, I got in line and got my tech inspection card filled out and a number (0773T) on the windshield. I didn’t know what to expect, but the staff there were super friendly and helpful. The track manager offered to make a couple of runs with me to show me what to do, so I took him up on that. Not more than a couple minutes after finishing up with the inspection, I had my very first timeslip in my hand! I ran the eighth mile in 8.6741 seconds, and had a trap speed of 85.28 MPH. I did better, and I did worse, but over the next couple of hours I had a ton of fun and got to meet some super nice people.

I’ve still got a LOT of room for improvement, of course. My reaction time is horrible, usually over half a second. I have found that with the Merc’s big V-12, it doesn’t pay to get on the throttle too early or too much; all it does is spin the rear tires and get the traction control working hard to control wheel spin. Turning traction control off… well, I learned not to do that! Lots of noise, not much “go”. Maybe I’ll learn to better control the torque and be able to turn off some of the babysitter functions, but for now the best recipe seems to be stage, get the RPMs up to about 1200-1500 on the yellow, and when the last yellow comes on release the brake and nail the throttle wide open, and keep it there until you pass the finish line.

I soundly trounced a 5.7 Challenger — no surprise there. Almost kept up with a couple of new-ish, supercharged Camaros, including a ZL1. I don’t know whether they were just running slow or what, but for the most part the Rocket Sled can hold its own despite its enormous heft. Maybe next time I’ll take out a little weight… I didn’t even remove the spare tire, let alone the little cooler in the back seat.

All in all… it was a really fun night, and I can totally understand how it could become a real addiction. And where else will you get to see a Monza with a monster V8 crammed into it?

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Misfires — fixed??

I’ve been fighting an intermittent misfire issue on my S600 for quite a while now. It started as a misfire code P0309 (“Misfire damages TWC”) as well as a few assorted other cylinders from time to time. I was also seeing occasional random misfires at idle, mostly on the left bank of cylinders. I changed the spark plugs and insulators, which made no difference. I replaced both coil packs with rebuilt parts from V12ICPack.com, Clark in California. Annoyingly, the errors persisted. I replaced the VT, the 180V/24V DC-DC converter that supplies the coil packs. No difference. By now it was OK, as long as I never floored it — anything over about 5000 RPM would throw a misfire code and shut down one or more cylinders.

I was talking to Clark via email — he doubted it was the coil pack. I disagreed, but was open to other ideas. I looked at the possibility of a bad head gasket, vacuum leak, bad throttle body, anything — but nothing made sense.

Then one night I was on my way home. The car had been running just fine that evening, I even had heat after replacing the valve for the second time. I drove about 12 miles in city traffic, the last 4 or so on the high-speed expressway at 55-65 MPH. No issues. When I got off at the ramp, though, everything went straight to hell. Very rough idle, no power, check engine light on — obviously the engine had shut down multiple cylinders. It took three restarts to get it to come back. The scanner showed misfires on all the left bank cylinders. That happened several more times over the next couple of days, always at idle… but even a very brief push of the throttle would also cause the same sort of multiple cylinder shutdown. It was very obviously badly broken. I am not proud of the words I used during this time.

To shorten a very long and painful story, I pulled the left coil pack and VT, and shipped them both off to Clark. At this point either it got fixed, or the car was going to become a really big gray BBQ grill. While the coil pack was out I got a slightly bent wheel repaired and a tire replaced (thanks, Omaha potholes!). Clark eventually did find an intermittent bad part and fixed it. I got the coil pack back, put it in, and went for a drive… seemed OK. Then the next day I again got a slow start, cloud of white smoke, rough idle, and misfire codes — this time on most of the right side cylinders!! The damn thing was possessed by evil spirits.

As it turns out, it seems that the last round of trouble may have just been a tank of really bad gas. Maybe combined with fuel and spark adaptations being really screwed up, I don’t know. All I know is, the bad idle performance started immediately after I filled the tank with gas from Sam’s Club, and disappeared half a tank later. Since then I’ve driven it for a week in city traffic, on the highway, and we even drove it to KC and back for a raid on Ikea. Zero trouble. Idle, full throttle, long cruises, city driving… I finally, at long last, have my car back.

I think.