Thread: Considering taking up pipe...

Hello gents!

Lately, I've been talking to my wife about how I'm gonna smoke a pipe when I'm older. I've wanted to do that for a few years now, after a life-long hatred for smoking. My parents were cigarette smokers, and cigs still disgust me, but ever since a friend gave me a cigar to try, I realized why people started smoking in the first place. It was GOOD - the taste, the combination with the wine we had that night (I think it was a Menut from Priorat), and the action itself...
Anyway, my wife asked - why not now? and I had no real answer (beside the health issues)...

So why pipe, you ask? Well, a few reasons:
1. I'm a PhD student with not much money to spend. Nice cigars are expensive here in Israel, and buying online is a risk, because of costumes that will make me pay taxes and make the whole thing a drag..
2. I'm weird, and I like meditative, long lasting, awareness requiring things... I LOVE shaving with a SR, and I think I'd like to smoke a pipe.
3. It's cool, it's manly, and it's a lost art that should be preserved, just like wet shaving...

So I read a little, and I'm confused.
I figured I need a corn-cob pipe, which costs nearly nothing and enhances the tobacco taste, in order to see if I even like smoking a pipe... What I don't know is - which?
Also - which tobacco should I start with?
Bare in mind - I've never smoked ANYTHING except that "sip" from that cigar I mentioned. I'm practically a tobacco virgin...
If it helps, I know I like a pitted single malt with a touch of salt (like Tobermory), I like a good gin or an old Rom (Angustura 1824.. mmm..), LOVE Cognac, getting used to Armagnac and my cocktails are Dry Martini and Old-Fashioned. Also I drink my coffee as an espresso, and I like it bitter, with a mild sweetness to it (no sugar, of course..)

And a last question to the beard\mustache carriers among you: Does pipe smoking makes the hairs yellow, like a cig?

Sorry for the long post... This is a rather scary thing for me to do :]

Originally Posted by Haim

I'm practically a tobacco virgin...

Don't pop the cherry, pipe smoking is not as harmless as it seems.

Just spend your money on razors. From a nicotine veteran, it's not worth the money. My great uncle had almost all of the muscles from his tongue carved out from 2 bouts of mouth cancer. Almost lost his jaw, even the eating was difficult and embarrassing for him.