I got to thinking today about some music I'd written, and couldn't find it on any of my backup disks.  Was it gone forever?  No.  Back when I first started the old blog on Blogspot, they didn't yet allow free image hosting.  I had an AOL account at the time so I uploaded some stuff there and linked it to my blog.  Even though my last AOL account expired about 4 years ago, the stuff I uploaded is still there, and can be found via the web if you know what to Google for.

So I just downloaded all the stuff I feared I'd lost.  I'll probably post about it sometime soon.  But I also found this:


That's an impressive, no-nonsense kind of pipe, isn't it?  It looked like it was carved out of...whatever that black rock is that's kind of sharp and pointy, and has something to do with volcanoes.  Man, I completely forgot the name of that stuff.  It had a great bowl, plenty of volume.  But I never could get used to that squat shape, and the bit was very wide.  It always felt a little awkward to me.  So I sold it.  Sometimes I kind of wish I'd tried it longer, but I'm sure someone out there is still enjoying it.  The only nomenclature on it was "Old River."  I don't know who made it, but it was definitely a unique-looking pipe.