“P” wax inlay

  Brew a fresh pot and fill your HAND-MADE, PUB pipe or perhaps two  favorite Petes! PG & TOBACCO BLENDER MARTIN KOLLMAN I met Martin Kollman  at the Las Vegas Pipe Show a couple of years ago after corresponding with him via email for awhile and then enjoying some of his fabulous No Name Tobacco Works blends, which he creates at an astonishing rate but consumes at an even more prodigious pace! I finally had to ask him, between his work as an academician, tobacco blending, hiking all over Colorado, cooking for his family and entertaining his friends and fellow pipe smokers if he could squeeze a few minutes into his schedule to tell us a little bit about his blending as well as how he got into Peterson pipes. Here's what he sent for us: Biographical sketch: Growing up on a farm/ranch straight out of a Gunsmoke episode, Martin Kollman was the chief peon of the family farm and learned that if someone else made it, so could he, or at least fix it. Some how he made it off the farm and fell in with a bad crowd in academia and ended up being an educator/administrator in postsecondary colleges and universities along I-70 for the last 30 years. The lessons learned on the farm served him well with the mentality of if someone else can…., which led him to take up scuba diving, fly fishing, whitewater rafting, riding motorcycles across the country, and smoking a few pipes along the way. He finally landed in No Name, Colorado with this lovely wife and two tax deductions just outside of Glenwood Springs, CO, where he started blending his own tobacco and enjoying pipes along the Colorado River. Local Culture of Pipe Smoking: Colorado is the west in the truest sense, with a lack of interest in rules and a “you do you” motto stamped on a lot of bumpers.  That being said, the nearest pipe tobacco shop is 90 miles west in Grand Junction and the local, as well as excise tax, are quite high, so most tobacco comes from the internet and shipping is often a challenge. There are a number of pipe smokers from CO that I have met online, but only 3-4 regular pipe smokers in the valley that I have run across. A lot of the old guard who used to enjoy a pipe back in the day and a few neighbor ladies who wanted their own corn cob pipe rather than just cigars when they drink their whiskey on Saturday night are the only ones who have shown interest. Most people enjoy the smell and ask questions, but you can’t smoke indoors in Colorado, so all this usually happens on one of my walks. This is literally out his side door and down a few yards.  We pity Martin, right? Life as a pipeman: I get a lot of crap for sending pictures to my pipe smoking friends from this part of the world with…