Every bowl is an adventure, many wonderful and some stinkers.
Last year I visited my pipe mentor, Dave, at his beautiful house in New Mexico. I'd packed an unopened tin of Rattray's Red Rapparee in a gallon zip lock bag for the trip. When I travel, I use gallon size bags so that they can catch tobacco when I pack a pipe.
We were sitting on his front porch in the desert night and I popped the Red Rapp with a delicious hiss and I dipped my pipe in and started to fill it while we continued to reminisce. I opened the new book of matches, tore one off, and lit my pipe.
The smoke became memorable when I realized that I was on my fourth charring match. Now, to be fair, it was dark, we were outside and there was a bit of a breeze and I was using paper matches but this wasn't lighting as expected and neither are these valid excuses, I just list them for the comic effect on a night about to go terribly wrong.
Finally the pipe was lit but it tasted like the Martian version of Red Rapp and it was burning anyways except north- south. Our conversation continued but I was increasingly perturbed, there in the company of my mentor, to be using match after match and then my fears were realized, he realized.
"Having some problems with that bowl?"
I simply nodded but inside I was crushed and I put aside the pipe with the tobacco not half finished (this was not smoking). I zipped the bag and left it, the pipe and the matches on the table when we retired for the night.
The next morning was brilliantly clear and bright and my gear lay where I'd left it the night before. Inside the bag was a tin of Red Rapparee that was unknown to me, despite all my experience with that venerable mixture, it was a pale yellow (or so - I am color blind). I turned the zip lock bag to see the label that clearly stated, "Black Virginia". The waxen book of matches told the tale best, for there remained only a single match left unused.
Excellent post @Branzig and thanks for the inspiration to write my own tale of woe.
