The Vernon Vig National Pipe Smoking Contest on Saturday featured 28 participants. It was exciting to see the final two participants, Eric “Toby” Cabrera from the Long Island Pipe Club and Barry Tannenbaum of the Great Northern Pipe Club, sitting at the same table, going for 20 minutes longer than the third place contestant, before Barry finally went out. Congratulations to Eric “Toby” Cabrera for winning this year’s contest with a time of 1 hour, 2 minutes, and 39 seconds! Furthermore, Toby has already agreed to represent the UPCA in the World Championship of Pipe Smoking later this year in The Netherlands. More on that in the next few months! We would also like to congratulate the winner in the International Division, Guoqing Zhang, with a time of 34 minutes, 20 seconds. And Jules Ewart was this year’s winner in the Woman’s Division at 27 minutes, 05 seconds. Congratulations, Jules! The Merchant Service contest pipes were well-received. We thank them for their high quality work. The UPCA will be selling all remaining contest pipes. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if interested. We would also like to thank Iwan Ries for donating the Spilman Mixture. And a huge thank you to everyone who donated to the prize table. Once again, we were able to ensure that every contestant went home with a prize. The generosity of the community amazes us every year.
On Sunday The Karloski National Fast Smoke Contest was a direct competition between new UPCA Secretary Michael Bergstrom of the Seattle Pipe Club and Greg Polla of Merchant Service and the Hudson Valley Pipe Club. It was also a direct competition between corn cob and briar, as Mike used the contest pipe provided courtesy of our always generous sponsors at Missouri Meerschaum and Greg brought his own table pipe. The tobacco was Frostika 1800. In the end, the mighty cob was victorious, with Mike finishing in 7 minutes, 14 seconds.
Full list of finishers and times can be found in the documents page. www.unitedpipeclubs.org/content.aspx?page_id=86&club_id=90797