I've always been drawn to pipes. Always liked the smell of pipe smoke, plus there's just something about pipe smokers I like... can't really put my finger on it, never could but let's face it: we're pretty awesome ...but I digress. Anyway, I tried pipe smoking years back but all I knew about was Captain Black and other wet, goopy aromatics and cheap, deeply bent, briar pipes. It was a recipe for gurgle and tongue bite and 100s of matches per bowl... so I gave that up in favor of more maintenence free tobacco: enter cigars. Trouble is, Swisher Sweets taste like hell. Not only do they taste like hell, but you can taste that not-so-fresh hell in your mouh for 3 days. Backwoods are better but constantly leave bits of tobacco in your mouth. That sucks so I decided to do some research on better cigars. Enter Puff dot com and all you enablers who used to frequent there. Well I discovered better cigars and how to store and smoke them and all was well. That is, until I met the other enablers on the pipe side of things. There I discovered corn cob pipes that don't gurgle, tinned aromatics that aren't wet and goopy, English blends, VaPers, latakia, orientals, ropes, twists, flake, etc etc etc etc... plus good briar pipes, meerschaum, clay pipes etc etc... and how to, and how not to smoke a pipe. So yes, I still do enjoy a decent, long filler cigar but since pipes were always my 'first love' so to speak, I usually gravitate toward that side.