Adventures of a Pipe Traveler

David Senik has written a book reminiscent of Charles Kuralt's "On the Road" books that focuses more on the traveling and people involved than it does pipes and pipe smoking. He does mention numerous pipe shops throughout the country (most specifically Paul's Pipe Shop in Flint, Michigan).Senik was an over the road trucker whose work was primarily in the oil fields of Texas, the logging industry in the Northwest, Michigan, and Southern California. In the latter locale he hauled vehicles for photo shoots. These vehicles were often vehicles that had not reached market and were guarded like Fort Knox. David meets an amazing array of people who seem to leap right off the page as people you would like to meet.Senik describes himself as a "high end pipe collector" which doesn't seem to be the case. He seems to be more in the upper lower or lower middle range to me. He seems to be like most pipe smokers: more interested in the quality of the smoke than the price of the pipe. His tastes in tobacco are eclectic. I thought he was going to make the journey that most lifelong pipe smokers make. Start out with aromatics, advance to Englishes, and finish up with VaPers. While he did advance to Englishes and VaPers he never abandoned the aromatics. He certainly demonstrated a love and appreciation for good tobacco.This is an enjoyable book and I do recommend it to my pipe smoking brethren or those that like "on the road" stories. The book has one major flaw and one minor one that a reader should be aware of. Apparently the book is self published as there is virtually no editing. There are numerous misspelling, the wrong use of homonyms (there instead of their or two instead of too), and a seeming love affair with Cartman's favorite word "kewl", The grammar and punctuation could use some work, also. The other problem was David has the politics and outlooks of a person who has been a blue-collar guy all his life. In just a few causes does he reveal his very conservative leanings, but they are out of character with the rest of the book and unnecessary. The two or three paragraphs on Janet Reno were way over the line and should have been stricken from the book.So I look forward to Dave's next book and encourage him to get an editor.

A great book about a trucker and his pipes and cigars. One of the most interesting books I have ever read, and I read a lot.