Chicago Pipe Show

Monday, May 4th, 12:26AM

For those of you who are interested, the show has officially ended.

I arrived here around 10:00AM Friday morning after getting out of bed at 4:00AM to catch my flight at 6:00AM.  I know this may come as a shock but the flight was delayed.  Nothing major though and I arrived at the Chicago O'Hare airport only about an hour later than scheduled which isn't bad nowadays.  After finding my way to the rental car pickup(an adventure in itself) I drove straight to the show sight for the preshow show.  After drooling over pipes, talking to friends & acquaintances that also made it and smoking a pipe or two I made it to my hotel around 5:30PM.  Just enough time to kick off my shoes for a few minutes before heading back for the welcome dinner at 7:00PM.  After eating, drinking, talking and more smoking I finally made it back to my room around midnight and got to bed at about 2:00AM.  There's nothing quite like a 22 hour day to kick things off.

I crawled out of bed around 9:00AM and made my way back to the show where I scoped out pipes I thought would be good for the shop and placed bids on a few pipes in a silent auction.  Miracle of miracles, I won!  As a matter of fact I had the high bid on three auctions(all that I had actually bid on) one of which was for a gorgeous little piece carved by Joao Reis, a young up and coming pipe carver from Portugal who moved to Denmark to study under Kai Nielsen.  I smoked that pipe four times that night and it smoked like a dream each time.  I paid $230 for it (half of what it would normally sell for) and I couldn't be happier.  After the show there was more talking and (obviously) smoking.  Saturday was another long day that finally ended about 4:00AM but it was a lot of fun.

Sunday was buying day for the shop.  I picked up some very nice pipes that will start around $49 and go up to $495.  They included pipes from Erik Nording, Genod(a nice little french pipe), Jobey, and Radice as well as others.  They'll be on the shelf and on the site soon so keep an eye out.  The show ended at 5:00PM followed by (you guessed it) more talking and smoking.

The show was fun and interesting.  I saw a ton of cool pipes and met some great people as well as getting to hang out with people I already knew like Steve Monjure of Monjure International, importer of Ardor, Rinaldo, Brebbia and other pipes.  If you're not jealous you should be.  Now it's time to wind down, relax and catch up on some sleep.