I am a retired child rights advocate and over the last 30 years I have worked in various countries in Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and most recentlyin Central Asia (Uzbekistan). I retired in May and am now in Amherst, MA

My first pipe was purchased at Georgetown Tobacco in 1973 while attending Georgetown University during the summer of Watergate. Smoked for about 5 years off and on...a source of serentity and companionship and burnt tongue due to inexperience. I had my pipe wherever I went as a friend but gave up smoking in Nepal during Peace Corps days. Throughout the years through many exciting adventures, picked up an old pipe and had a bowl out of nostalgia but never really started up in earnest again until 2007.

While in Sarajevo in 1994 began smoking cigars and became somewhat of a cigar aficionado. Life after Sarajevo in Geneva, Switzerland was a paradise for a cigar smoker and lover of Habanos and I built up quite a collection of great cigars...Cubans, Dominicans and Nicaraguans. In 2007 while on a business trip to Colgne,Germany, I ran into Peter Hierlicks a beautiful pipe shop and couldn't resist buying a pipe. I spent the next two hours smoking my new aquisition in a beautiful cigar and pipe lounge and have been an avid pipe smoke ever since.

While in Kosovo, I added significanty to my pipe collection (now about 40) and enjoyed a pipe in the morning watching CNN and one or two in the evening after a hard day. During my career, my pipes were my welcome home from an often hectic day. Now that I have more times on my hands, they are a way to mediate and reflect on my interesting life.

I am married for 34 yrs.to a wife who tolerates & sometimes even enjoys my pipe smoking lifestyle and have two sons, Kit, 30 andTim, 28.both non-smokers

Pipe smoking to me is a meditation. Cigar smoking is a social event. I usually now enjoy my pipes only at home and miss the days when one could smoke a pipe in a restaraunt, coffee shop or pub but I guess that is the sign of the times.