System pipe

 Last call for remaining Pete Geek Pocket Jars Need another or even your first? See directions at end of post.   Video by Gianluigi Fiori for Kapp & Peterson / Used with Permission Next Sunday is the 125th anniversary of the System pipe. Now’s your chance to enter the 2023 System Day Challenge and earn either your Certified Pete Geek certificate or a new merit badge for your CPG. Directions at end of post! As we approach the 125th Anniversary of the System and System Day 2023 I thought I’d take the opportunity to offer my own take on the practice of smoking the System Pipe, more personal and detail-oriented than the one I wrote for the Peterson book. Do add your input, insight and criticism in the comments section, as I know Pete Geeks have often companioned their Systems for decades and have advice and tips of their own. Oh, and new jargon alert:—POBSAP = Problem Occurs Between Smoker and Pipe. Just so you know. 1. Brush your teeth before smoking. This is not to be taken like the advice your mother gave you before going to bed. It’s not about cavities. It’s about enjoying the pipe you’re getting ready to smoke. It’s a piece of wisdom given to me by Doctor of Pipes Steve Fallon, who you may know of as “Pipe Stud,” whose vocation is selling pipe tobacco and avocation is smoking it. I thought it was curious when I read it in one of his blog posts until the time when, a few months later, I tried it. A clean palette, even one with a bit of fresh minty tooth paste taste about it, can receive the flavor of tobacco in a way one that’s just been satiated with a meal containing hot onions, Hatch chiles and cabernet can't. There’s good reason, Steve said, that wine  tasters rinse their mouths between tastings. I wish I'd learned this forty years ago.     Pete Geek Tobacco Mats 2. Use a genuine Pete Geek Tobacco Drying Paper. I know plenty of pipemen who don’t use any type of tobacco mat or plate. Many scoop their tobacco out of the tin or jar and simply stuff it into their pipes, allowing shreds and flakes to fall any which way. Others dump it into the lid of a tobacco tin and go from there. Still others use a leather mat or ceramic dish made expressly for the purpose. But the Thinking Man deposits his leaf onto a Pete Geek drying paper because he’s getting ready for the best part of his day—time with his Peterson and one of his favorite tobaccos. When he sees the Peterson art on his tobacco mat, he’s already entering the state of mindfulness known among Pete Geeks as “Peteopia” (P-Topia). And, being a Thinking Man, he knows that a paper tobacco mat can be lifted and curled into a funnel to slide the remaining tobacco back into the jar or tin while the unthinking, wasteful…