Ryan Alden, a long-distance truck driver, had been restoring estate pipes for a while when he had an epiphany: "I thought, well, if pipe restoration is so much fun, making new pipes must be even better."

How does driving 18-wheelers across the country prepare a craftsman for pipe making? One certainly shouldn't perform both simultaneously. But a skill required by both vocations is persistent, focused concentration. Pipe makers can't be distracted when they're shaping meticulous linework on a Blowfish, and truck drivers can't be distracted when they're responsible for a speeding, multi-ton potential catastrophe. It takes practice, but the best in both professions become so zen-like that they learn to subsist on tobacco smoke alone, sometimes for months.

Long distance driving is also an opportunity for thinking. Whatever is important in our minds is analyzed during a drive, subconsciously or overtly, and our understanding of a subject can increase simply by letting it simmer while performing other tasks. Driving is an incubator for ideas, and when most of your ideas revolve around pipe making, driving can provide epiphanies. That's what happened with Ryan Alden.

Ryan made a good living as a truck driver, but he didn't like spending so much time away from home. Interested in pipes for virtually his entire life, he had read Alfred Dunhill's book at age 13, after which he made a pipe for his older brother. Then, at age 15, he made a pipe in shop class when his shop teacher wasn't paying attention. He was a pipe smoker early on and never lost that enthusiasm.

And when he started making pipes, it was even more difficult to leave his workshop, so he started alternating professions.

"I'd spend a month or so at home making pipes," says Ryan, "but they couldn't match the income from driving, so when I ran out of money, I'd go on the road again for a month." He did that for about a year before he decided to become a fulltime pipe maker. That was in 2013, and he's still a fulltime pipe maker, so he's doing something very right. Few attain financial pipe making independence. Anyone who can make a living as a fulltime pipe maker is very good at pipe making. Even so, few are as good as Ryan Alden, which is perhaps why demand for his pipes outpaces his production.

Driving is an incubator for ideas, and when most of your ideas revolve around pipe making, driving can provide epiphanies.

He started like many. He bought and made tools and devoured the information on pipemakersforum.com. He worked hard to apply the techniques described there and to modify those strategies with his own solutions and innovations. And he talked with and visited pipe makers. "Rad Davis was a big help," says Ryan. At pipe shows, Ryan would bring his pipes to Rad, who would critique various aspects. "Rad would say, 'fix this; what were you thinking here; this is ugly; this doesn't make sense; this is terrible.' And I'd take those assessments and improve."

He also spent "hours and hours, so many hours" on the phone with pipe maker great, Mike Butera. "Mike must have become tired of my voice," says Ryan, "but he was always willing to invest whatever time I needed and to talk with me endlessly about whatever was giving me trouble." Ryan visited pipe makers everywhere when he was still driving trucks, such as Premal Chheda and Bill Shalosky in Columbus, Ohio, learning tips and strategies. "I guess I learned different little techniques from 40 or 50 different pipe makers and put them together in my own way. But for every hour I spent in another maker's shop, I spent 100 hours in my own, screwing up pipes, until I started getting them right."

Ryan's best guess at his production number is around 200 pipes a year, but he doesn't keep track and it's just an estimate. He's always just working on the next pipe rather than assessing his production numbers. The number of pipes is unimportant when compared to the individual quality of each pipe, which is where Ryan's concentration always seems to pool. He tends to make pipes one-at-a-time rather than in batches. "I can concentrate all my energy on that individual pipe that way," he says. It may not be the most efficient production strategy, but it makes him happy with the results.

Time-tested shapes with artisan engineering and attention to detail, in mainly sandblasted finishes, make Alden pipes irresistibly affordable for the level of craftsmanship offered.

Of course, he handcuts his stems, which is labor intensive but worth the effort. Alden pipes feature vulcanite mouthpieces as a rule, but acrylic or Bakelite may be special ordered. Decorative fitments are fun for him to experiment with, too. "I have different spalted woods, rosewood burls, boxwood, bamboo, things like that. I never really stick to the same fitments for too long." He likes to keep things different, so he's continuously changing decorative features.

While his pipes are creative, he doesn't spend exorbitant sums on top-quality briar; he maintains a briar inventory of well-grained wood, but not of the stratospherically priced super grades. As a result, about 95 percent of his pipes are sandblasted rather than smooth. "I'm fine with that," he says, "because it keeps the prices down where they're more easily attainable." He does an occasional rustication, but they are rare, even more rare than smooth Alden pipes. "Smooth pipes," says Ryan, "are actually surprises for me. I rarely expect one."

What many smokers appreciate is Ryan's dedication to traditional shapes. He makes lots of Billiards, Lovats, Authors, Apples, Rhodesians, Lumbermen, with occasional Freehands and more wild shapes, but he's grounded in the classics. Time-tested shapes with artisan engineering and attention to detail, in mainly sandblasted finishes, make Alden pipes irresistibly affordable for the level of craftsmanship offered.

Ryan lives "in the middle of nowhere" in East Texas, where "there are more donkeys than people." Like truck driving, it's a solitary life, except for his family. He works seven days a week and lives a life of pipes. And we should all be glad he gave up truck driving, because pipes of this caliber at his price point are rarities. We don't want him sharing his time with truck driving. The more pipes he's able to make, the better off we all are.