Holland revisited

Spent Thursday and Friday in Holland on a business trip. Tried to acquire some Dutch tobacco (no not THAT kind) but didn't have the time to step into a tobacconist's...

At the airport I searched through the former "tax-free" shops (no more for us inside the EU) but the would only sell one brand called Amphora which I thought looked a bit dodgy. I wanted Troost slices which had been recommended to me on the smokersforum.org. Also, they only old it in five-packs which made me more hesitant to buy since I had never tried it (still have most of the SweetDublin 100g tin that I got from another airport).

So I decided to buy a couple cigars instead. In the walk-in humidor there was plenty to choose from, but hefty prices, so I ended up buying a three-pack of MonteChristo #4, and a liter of BlackBush.

Not bad all things considered but still, no Troost...

Rate my rack

Cruised eBay and found this. I bid the starting bid and got it! For $9.95! Only thing was I bought it from the US... Shipping this heavy piece cost app $23 ...
Ah well. I needed a pipe rack and this one looks SO good! It's cheaper than any ordinary rack I've seen even including the shipping so what the heck.

The one that got away

Yesterday I sat in front of finepipes.com looking for a birth year Dunhill, just for fun.
Then I saw it - the 1962 Cavalier, and Samuel had even named it a "computer pipe".
I don't know if I told you , but I make my living out of IT and computers and this pipe had that name and was from '62 and...

I sat for five minutes in agony looking at the pipe and the price tag, to and fro.
I decided to just add the pipe to my order basket, only to see how that felt.

That felt mighty good I can tell you, brethren and sisthren of the briar, so I decided to go to the checkout just to see how THAT felt! This gave me a few alternative payment methods and before I knew it I was at my PayPal account and suddenly the $225 price tag didn't look that bad.

It didn't take too long 'til I had convinced myself that I really had earned a birthyear Dunhill - and a Computer Pipe at that! I pressed the Buy button with pounding heart.
I got a rush of adrenalin and at the same time a terribly guilty conscience - you may be familiar with the feeling - guilty pleasure. After having ordered the pipe I just had to shut down the computer and go to bed - the strain was too much.

Woke up with a gnawing feeling from spending all that money on that weird/beautiful pipe, maybe I shouldn't have ... But of course I deserved it! Went to work and couldn't help but take a peek at finepipes.com to see if it had changed its status to "Sold" like all the other nice pipes there, but no? It was still for sale?

I hurried to hotmail to send a mail asking Sam to update the page, only to be met by this email from him:

"Unfortunately, you have fallen victim to a problem I had with my site that required me to back all the pipes up from an archive. In the process, some of the pipes that were already sold were listed as unsold, of which the Cavalier was one."

I'm going through some mixed emotions right now, for sure...