The Pen Addict 102/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	102
Title:	Shopping Brad and Business Brad
Release Date:	April 17th, 2014
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 102
Audio File:	Audio Episode 102
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 102
Length:	5454 min <br />0.9 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to episode 102 of The Pen Addict podcast on 5x5. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined, as I always am, by The Pen Addict himself, Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: What's up, Myke?

Myke Hurley: Hey, buddy.

Giveaway Announcement

Brad Dowdy: It's been an exciting, exciting week here since we've last spoke. I'm excited about this podcast. There's so much going on, it's kind of ridiculous.

Myke Hurley: I'm glad that we did it a little bit later in the week, just so I could calm down a little bit.

Brad Dowdy: That's right. Maybe that's why I'm so anxious about today. It's been two whole extra days that we pushed back. That makes me not sleep as well, Myke.

Myke Hurley: I know that if it's bad for us, it's worse for our listeners. My gosh, I know. Because they're hoping to be winners today.

Brad Dowdy: I know, especially when we owe them something, like kind of a big deal giveaway that we did. And we make them wait two more extra days. At least they can blame you for it, right? I didn't have anything to do with this. Yeah, this was completely my fault. Yeah, way to go.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I know.

Brad Dowdy: So all your nasty grams can go to at iMike on Twitter.

Brad Dowdy: But hey, let's get straight into it. These people want to know who won. Our giveaway, again, from episode 100 was easily the best thing we've ever done on the podcast. It was so much fun. It just made me feel grateful to be in this community and to have all the support we had of all the vendors that sent us all the prizes for this and that wanted to participate in this. So we appreciate if you check these guys out that donated all these prizes. We're awesome. But first thing I want to do, Myke, let's talk about the questions and answers, and then we'll go into the winners. Yeah. Sound good?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, let's do it. Sweet. Go ahead. Yes, I was going to say before we announce the winners, but I'll say it now because I started. If you hear your name, then email us, I think, would be the best way to do it. And then if we don't hear it back from people, then maybe we start reaching out. Would that be fair?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so what I was thinking is I'm going to give it like two or three days just for people to listen to the podcast. I'm not going to break the news to them without them listening. If they catch it and they're surprised by it, that would be more fun. Exactly. But after about two or three days, I'll start pinging people, say, hey, you might want to listen to episode 102. Just kind of give them a hint.

Myke Hurley: Either go to 5x5.tv slash penaddict and hit the contact button or send an email to thepenaddict at gmail.com if you are a winner. And only if you're a winner. I mean, you can email us about other things, you know. Always. But don't just all email and be like, I'm a winner because we know who the winners are.

Brad Dowdy: I have your details. We got NSA level stuff going on in this Google Docs spreadsheet.

Myke Hurley: It's the only way to do a competition, to employ the NSA.

Brad Dowdy: That's right. All right. So we got five winners, but we had five questions. I don't want to get too far. And we had 602 entries in this, by the way, Myke, which is mind boggling.

Myke Hurley: I hope that we get at least enough that we can have a couple of people per package, you know, potentially to win. Maybe 20 responses.

Brad Dowdy: All right. So let me give the answers real quick. A lot of people had a lot of fun with this, and we're going to talk about some of the fun answers we got, too. But what are the pins that shall not be named? And Myke and I had a challenge in an early podcast. It was in episode 20. You know some of these people, Myke?

Myke Hurley: Why don't you ask me the questions? Okay.

Pen Trivia

Brad Dowdy: And I'll see if I can get them right. All right. You ready? Yeah. Put on some Jeopardy music or something. What are the pins that shall not be named?

Myke Hurley: They are the Vanishing Point and the Retro 51.

Brad Dowdy: Ding, ding, ding. Yes. Correct. Correct. What pin would you sign a birth certificate with?

Myke Hurley: The Visionaire.

Brad Dowdy: Visionaire. What is Brad's all-time favorite Field Notes Colors release?

Myke Hurley: Oh, man.

Brad Dowdy: You know this one.

Myke Hurley: I feel like I have a couple of...

Brad Dowdy: Just below zero? No. No. But, you know, I don't think anyone ever guessed that one, which is funny. A lot of people guessed Drink Local and Night Sky. A lot of people mocked me and said Shelterwood, which is pretty funny. I got a lot of Shelterwood, you know, answers. But it's grass-stained green. That was my second. In all honesty, that was my second. Yeah. Grass-stained green. All right. I'm pretty sure you'll get these next two. What is the brand of Myke's iPad and notebook case?

Myke Hurley: Rotofaden Taschenbergleiter. Interestingly, very quick aside. So, do you remember I mentioned the Moleskine shop that opened up? Yeah. They have, like, a bunch of really strange products in there. But they also have, like, iPad cases. And I was thinking about getting one, but they don't have pockets. And now I'm really used to pockets. Like, for example, I'm traveling tomorrow, and I have all of my travel documents and my passport in my Rotofaden Taschenbergleiter.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I think I would like that pocket access as well. Multiple tasks per item. All right. Myke has missed two episodes of the show. Name one person who filled in for him.

Myke Hurley: Anna Reinert. And the other person is Stephen Hecker.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. It's funny, that answer. A lot of people got that right between Anna and Stephen. And then we had two people with a ton of write-in votes. Mr. Ed Jelly and Mr. Myke Dudek. It was kind of funny. Oh, really? Yeah. Because they've been guests on the show, but they've never just hosted with myself and them. We got a few. The Dude, right? And I'm like, no, not The Dude. He's definitely been there. He's definitely been on the show, but he's never hosted. Just Anna and Stephen. And then what pin tops Brad's wish list for 2014?

Myke Hurley: Nakaya. Yes, sir. You got it. I always get Nakaya and the Miki mixed up.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It can happen. It can happen. So we've covered the answers. Let's get to the winners. Because that's what people are really going to listen for. Yeah. And as long as they've downloaded, we're good if they just delete it after they hear if they've won or not, right? I mean, we just care about downloads, right? We don't care if they really listen.

Brad Dowdy: Exactly. I mean, it's all downloads, downloads, downloads. Hey, but if you miss the second half of the show, you're going to miss something. So, all right.

Brad Dowdy: The winner of giveaway package one is... Ray Newberry from at FP Quest. Yay!

Myke Hurley: Yay!

Brad Dowdy: Yay! Ray wins the Anderson Pens Takaya Staccato Black Broad Nib Fountain Pen, which is a really sexy pen. And, you know, each package kind of had a primary item. And then everyone is getting... Everyone who won is getting a product from Doan paper. Like Ray's getting the Doan Large Utility Journal. He's also getting a Word Notebooks 3-pack. He's getting a bottle of Cult Pens Diamond Ink, a pack of Cult Pens Diamond Ink cartridge, a pack of NotCo Dash cards, and a sticker pack from NotCo. So, everyone's getting kind of that whole second bit of good. So, but the primary item for this one was the Anderson Pens Takaya Staccato Black Broad Nib Fountain Pen, which is actually good. So, everyone picked their favorite package. And when Ray won, I looked and see which package he wanted, and that was his first choice. And congratulations, Ray.

Myke Hurley: The winner of giveaway package number two is... Chris Depew. At Chris Depew.

Brad Dowdy: Yay!

Myke Hurley: Yay! Congratulations, Chris. You are the winner of giveaway package two, where the... As well as all of the parts that we mentioned before, the Doan, the Word, and the Diamine stuff, you also are the winner of a JetPens Pilot Prera and JetPens Pilot Hiroshisuku Ink of Unknown Origin.

Brad Dowdy: That's right. They're nicely wrapped. I think that might... I didn't sort the sheet and count afterwards. I think package number two might have got the most likes, if you will. That might have been everyone's kind of favorite package. That's the mystery. Mm-hmm. The mystery package. All right. Giveaway package number three. It's Mr. Carlos Franco. It's at C.E. Franco 2 on Twitter.

Myke Hurley: Yay! Congratulations! Woo-hoo!

Brad Dowdy: So this is cool. Carlos chose the Karas Customs Render K Copper Package, which is pretty awesome.

Giveaway Winners

Myke Hurley: Congratulations, Carlos.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Not everyone has that pen yet. That's a newish release from them.

Myke Hurley: And it's just a great pen, irrespective of what material it's made out of. And the winner of giveaway package number four...

Brad Dowdy: Mr. Ron Gilmore. Woo-hoo! At Gilmore 70. He won the Kaweco Cult Pens mini fountain pen, which is totally cool. Plus all the Doan, the Word, the Diamond Ink, and the NotCo stuff. So these are going to be some large boxes I'll be shipping out. So I'm pretty excited about loading these up and getting them out to everyone once they realize they've won. Because we're not going to tell them. You're going to have to listen to see if you won these packages.

Myke Hurley: And finally, giveaway package number five goes to...

Brad Dowdy: Lori Sanders at Uncle Lori Knits.

Myke Hurley: Congratulations, Lori. You are the final winner from the 2014 Pen Addict 100 giveaway.

Brad Dowdy: And Lori won the package with the Groove from Myke Dudek and the Field Notes XOXO Fuchsia from Myke Hurley. I think that might have been the package I picked. I might have picked number five. It was hard to choose. It's the Fuchsia, man. I know.

Myke Hurley: So, Lori, you will receive two separate packages.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. Yes. So you will need to help me out with the information. We will get that sorted out. So thank you, everyone, for being involved in this giveaway. It was, I don't know, mind-boggling, mind-blowing, I guess.

Myke Hurley: How do you feel, Brad? Because I kind of... I may have shown my hand a little bit here. How do you feel about doing this every year?

Brad Dowdy: That's a good question. I didn't think about it.

Myke Hurley: It would be kind of cool. Maybe not at this scale.

Brad Dowdy: I was going to... That was exactly what I was going to say. This was pretty large, and this took a lot to put together. I think we could definitely do something every year, though. I think that would be really cool. We'll have to figure something around a certain time of year where we can make our date an annual thing and do something like that. So that would be cool. I think we could totally do that. Because this was fun. I liked the involvement, getting the listeners involved in a fun kind of way, not in a chore or a task kind of way, but just something fun like this, answering fun questions about the show. We got some funny answers, too. Did you get to check out any of these?

Myke Hurley: I've skimmed some. I haven't looked at them in the detail that you have, though.

Pen Quiz Answers

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So I want to point out a couple that I got a kick out of.

Brad Dowdy: Roel, I guess Roel, R-O-E-L. He and the questions he answered. And I'm sorry you didn't read Roel, because I'm going to still talk about you. So I want to read these questions and the answers that we did. And I can just kind of, I'm like picturing his face as he's filling out this form. So what are the pins that shall not be named? Gosh, these are hard already. The Pilot G2? I know Myke likes that one, or at least he used to.

Brad Dowdy: What pin would you sign a birth certificate with? Oh, I honestly missed that one. Jetstream or Uniball DX? Brad mentioned those as a solid go-to from time to time. You can tell he listens. He's totally trying. He says, what is Brad's all-time favorite Field Notes Color release? I know this one. It's a grass green letter-pressed edition of some sort, right? See? He knew it. He knew it. He says, what is the brand of Myke's iPad notebook case? I have no idea. This is getting to be really sad. I promise I started about four weeks ago listening to perhaps every third episode from the beginning. He's like trying to explain while he's missing all these now. It's like he's got into it. He's like, I'm too deep in now. Like, I can't back out.

Myke Hurley: I have to start apologizing.

Brad Dowdy: He says, Myke has missed two episodes of the show. Name one person who filled in for him. Anna, right? From the desk?

Brad Dowdy: So, that was right. Good answer.

Brad Dowdy: And, what pin tops Brad's wish list for 2014? I lose. I don't know. He likes micro tips and the high tech C, but I can't say. I know this one. Uniball as a brand? Sad.

Brad Dowdy: So, we had lots of fun answers like that. I mean, people, you know, that's why we weren't going to, it was not graded at all on whether you got the answers right, but that you showed some effort and had just kind of a concept of what the show is about. And someone like Roel, you know, who hasn't listened to everything, he just, he killed all those answers. I thought that was just really funny. And then we got, you know, we got a lot of people trolling me on the field notes one with Shelterwood, which a lot of people got a lot of kicks out of that. Some people were like hyper exact, giving out the exact episode numbers where we talked about the questions. Wow. We had several people do that where in episode 21 was the, the pins that shall not be named one episode. So, there were several people who did that, which was kind of impressive. That caught me off guard. I wasn't expecting that at all. We had lots of Rotor Faden, Tash and Big Leiter, interesting spellings there.

Myke Hurley: Yep.

Brad Dowdy: Some people just wrote, what, I forget the name of it, but someone just wrote 75 consonants. They just wrote that down.

Myke Hurley: There was probably quite a lot of like the German thing.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. A lot of the German, that's that German one. I don't know how to spell. So, Toffer, on the, on the field notes trolling, he said, America, the beautiful or something else that isn't as good as Shelterwood. So, I got a lot of those.

Brad Dowdy: And, oh, and, and Toffer's, the, the fill-in guest. He says, not Toffer.

Brad Dowdy: He said, he should get Merlin fill-in one day to yell at everyone and get all angry. And then, what pin brand tops Brad's wish list for 2014? Again, from Toffer, I honestly don't care. He doesn't like Shelterwood. His taste is probably horrible. It's true, actually. Yeah, that is true. That is true. I'm still feeling pretty good about the whole Shelterwood thing, though, to be honest with you.

Myke Hurley: I'm feeling very, I'm pretty good about having used them.

Brad Dowdy: All right. So, that was, I just wanted to go with some of these fun answers, because I got a kick out of them. Yeah. As I was, I was reading these. And there's, there's a lot more out there. But thank you, everyone, for, who took the time to enter this. And, congratulations, winners. Be sure to get in touch. And, yeah, we're definitely, we're not going to spoil this. I hope, I hope everyone listens. And then maybe in a few days, we'll reach out to, to the winners and say, hey, by the way, have you listened to episode 102 of the Pen Addict podcast? You might want to.

Brad Dowdy: So, our, our t-shirts were a big hit too. Can you believe we sold 149 t-shirts?

Myke Hurley: I honestly was, I, I don't know what I was more surprised about, selling 149 t-shirts or getting 600 responses to the, to the quiz. But, to every single, I think it's a t-shirt. Yeah, I think so too, actually. To every single person who bought a t-shirt, thank you so much. Because, um, that actually ended up being something that I didn't think it was going to be. And that has, uh, definitely plumped up my pen budget for the rest of the year. So, thank you for all for doing that. It's actually genuinely supported both of us.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. Yeah. That's a, that's a big deal that you guys, um, chose to, to purchase that t-shirt. That really helps Myke and I out, um, put on this show. And, uh, thank you all so much for doing that. It was, that, that definitely blew my mind more than the 602 responses to the, yeah.

Myke Hurley: Cause I didn't expect that, but you bought so many that it actually became significant. So, thank you so much to everyone that, that bought a t-shirt. Yeah. And if, you know, if you wanted one and couldn't get one, for whatever reason, we still appreciate the thought, you know?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, maybe there'll be a chance, you know, uh, down the line, we might do something else. We'll have to see. I mean, I would, this one,

Myke Hurley: this one was done as like a last minute idea that I had a couple of days before the show. And I really wanted to do something fun for like the, the, the, you know, the, the people that listen, which is why we did the kind of jokey thing, but I would like to do a more, uh, designed and styled t-shirt at some point in the future. So we will definitely, if you, if you missed out, we will do another, another show at some point. Um, definitely not as orange.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, definitely not as orange, not as orange. That was, that was just part of the, the whole running, uh, whole running theme and just having fun and, uh, commemorating the episode. So that was the other reason I admit, it meant something to us. So, uh, we did it that way.

Myke Hurley: The t-shirt was kind of three jokes in one, which was another reason why I didn't think with so many, but we did. So thank you. Thank you so much.

Brad Dowdy: All right. So that, that's a wrap on our, on our big episode 100 giveaway special. Um, it was, it was well worth it.

Myke Hurley: It's gone on for so many weeks. I'm kind of sad that, that it's, it's over. Yeah. Yeah. I need to look on now. But I have a little piece of followup. So do you remember I mentioned about night sky? Yep. And then I had a mysterious benefactor get in contact with us.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Like you didn't have, you didn't get as many as you wanted, like originally. So they sold out, right?

Myke Hurley: Our mutual friend and just general benefactor in kind, Mr. Thomas Hall. Wow. Got in contact with me and, uh, Tom sent me nine packs, nine, three packs.

Myke Hurley: I think there was a break in, uh, field notes headquarters. And, uh, Mr. Hall ran out with arms full of, basically, he explained to me the reason. Cause I was like, one, why are you willing to give me all of these? And two, why do you have them all? And basically, uh, Mr. Hall really wanted a black field notes. That was what he wanted. Um, and the grid system was nice, but wasn't necessarily what he wanted. So when they released pitch black, he bought those instead. Cause it's black of a regular grid rather than like the crosshair grid. Yep. So he bought, bought a bunch of packs cause he knew it was a book that he wanted, but then he didn't get to use them all because they released pitch black and he just bought those instead. And then we can get those like forever potentially. So, uh, I now have a, a box showed up full of them. And also a Tomo river paper, a five notebook, which I'm yet to try out. So, uh, that's awesome. And also I now have like six packs of shelter wood as well. Cause all of those have shown up. Nice. So I am, I am full of field notes right now, even more than usual.

Brad Dowdy: You are loaded up. Yeah. I didn't know Thomas had that big of a field notes problem. That's pretty awesome.

Myke Hurley: I think I have a significant field notes problem. Yeah. I'm looking around my desk, Brad, and there it's seriously, there are just piles. And I actually mean piles of, of field notes books like in cellophane. I mean, I go through about one a month at this rate. I'm never going to get through them. Yeah. It just won't be possible. Even if field notes goes out of business in like 20 years, I will have more than, than I will ever need, but I can't help it because I love them so much. Oh, the video, the video. Did you see the video? They have any video?

Brad Dowdy: A new one?

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: For what?

Myke Hurley: For 2013 seasonal additions, America, the beautiful night sky and drink local.

Brad Dowdy: Oh no, I'll have to go check it out. Cause I know I've seen some people linking them. I saw all of a sudden a few links going to the field notes, you know, about how they went through every edition. I didn't realize that was a new one. So cool. I will check that out.

Myke Hurley: I'll put it in the show notes, which are five by five. Dot TV slash pen addict slash one zero two.

Brad Dowdy: Cool. That sounds great. I'm, I will have to go watch that tonight. Now. Yep. All right. Well, we got a, we got a big show. We got a big show, not just from the giveaway stuff, but we had the, I had the Atlanta pen show this past weekend and it was epic. So, um, I want to talk about that. So, um, let's talk about our new best friend. Pen Chalet,

Pen Chalet Sponsor

Myke Hurley: our friends at Pen Chalet have come back to sponsor another episode simply because quite, quite frankly, all of you guys that went out and supported them last week, they were absolutely blown away. As were we with the support that you gave, you went over and you, you did what we asked and you checked them out. And I think they sold out of Pelicans after, of the, the, the fact that they did that amazing deal. And I'm going to tell you a bit about Pen Chalet, but they have another amazing deal guys, just for you this time. So Pen Chalet, in case you missed them as Pen Chalet.com. That's P E N C H A L E T.com. Pen Chalet sell authentic, amazing roller balls, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils, and so much more. They have all of your favorite brands, all of the brands that you hear me and Brad talk about every week, like Monteverde, Pelican, Pilot, Namiki, Sailor, and Kaweco, and they are, of course, an authorized dealer of all of them. Pen Chalet offer very fast and extremely reliable, customer service. They run special discounts twice a month, including closeout specials every two weeks. So you're going to get fantastic deals on all of those incredible brands. They're always adding new styles of pens. Every single month, they got new incredible stuff, beautiful pens that you can go and check out there. And as well as all the brands that I mentioned earlier, Pen Chalet also sell a bunch of limited edition pens, as well as all the pen accessories that you're going to need, like carrying cases, pen holders, refills, fountain pen converters, and so much more. Pen Chalet offer free shipping, on orders over $50 in the continental United States. So if you're buying the sort of pens that we buy every week, and you're in the continental United States, you're going to get free shipping, right? Because, I mean, you know, we're always spending incredible amounts of money on this stuff. But they also ship internationally too, and they have very reasonable shipping rates. And as I mentioned before, one of the great things about buying from a US company that have good shipping rates, like Pen Chalet, is that you can take advantage of the exchange rate. Pen Chalet have very low prices, on high quality pens, and they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So go over to PenChalet.com, and use the code PenAddict, to save 10% off your order. But don't forget to click the podcast link, at the top of the website, and enter the password, PenAddict, or one word, for even more savings, as well as your 10% off. Now, we mentioned a few. We looked through last week, and we picked out a couple of the offers that they had, which is including the Pelican. Now, the Pelican is gone. They just sold out of it, because of you guys. And they still have a bunch of those great offers, as well as just the, you know, the fact that you get 10% off anything. They have a bunch of special offers. I think they do have a couple of 205s left, actually. But a bunch of colors are gone. So you can still go and get a Pelican M205, if that's what you're after. And they have pilot metropolitans and stuff. However, these offers are available to a bunch of people. But because of the great, incredible response, that you guys gave last week, the guys over at Pen Chalet, are doing a special, Pen Addict only, offer. On Aurora. And I'm going to say 2TU.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I'm going to guess it's the 2, Aurora 2.

Myke Hurley: They have a rollable and a fountain pen. Now, I think that I'm familiar with the brand, but I am not, I've never tried this pen out myself. You haven't either, Brad, have you? I haven't. However, this pen looks fantastic. So there's a rollable and a fountain pen version. The retail, $145. You can get the rollable for $84 and the fountain pen for $87. It's a savings of 40%. And then you can also get your 10% off on top of that as well. Now, I'm a fountain pen guy, so I took a look at it and the first thing I noticed was the blue resin version.

Brad Dowdy: It might kind of have a conniption over the blue. What a color. It's really bright. It's really good looking with the chrome accents. I like that.

Myke Hurley: So it's a stainless steel nib.

Myke Hurley: It has like an interesting, like they use resin for the blue ones, so that feels great. And they have a black satin finish on the sort of, they have a black and a black and chrome version, so that's going to have like a real, I guess, a nice soft touch.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's the one I'm kind of eyeballing. That looks pretty good.

Myke Hurley: So the black satin is $87, and the one with the chrome cap and the resin is $96, but they're 40% in both instances. This is on the fountain pen off of the original retail price. So go and check this out. Like, I think this looks fantastic, and Brad, you mentioned that you wanted to, you're now going to get one, so thanks for supporting the show.

Brad Dowdy: Aurora has always been on my radar. They make really classic styled fountain pens, right? I mean, they're just straight up good looking pens. This is to me,

Myke Hurley: the boardroom pen I always mention. This is what this looks like.

Brad Dowdy: And just for the price, it's really good. I mean, Aurora is an Italian brand, for those who aren't familiar with it. They've been around a long while, and they're a very well respected brand in the fountain pen community. And it's just one of those brands that, you know, I haven't gotten into. Like, I did at the pen show. I picked up another brand. I haven't gotten into another Italian brand. Aurora's have always been on my radar just because they make really good looking pens. So, I'm definitely going to be checking this out.

Myke Hurley: So, thank you so much to Pen Chalet. It's penchalet.com for supporting 5x5 and the Pen Addict. Don't forget, you'll get the special deals by clicking the podcast link and entering Pen Addict. And also, if you just use the code Pen Addict at checkout on anything that you buy, you'll get 10% off. Thank you so much for their support again of this show. And thanks to all of you for helping support this show by supporting Pen Chalet.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, seriously, thank you so much, Pen Chalet, for coming back again. We really appreciate it. And the listeners are just, wow, for supporting them and supporting this podcast. That is really, really special for you guys to do that. from Myke and myself. We really appreciate it. Yep, you bet.

Brad Dowdy: So, I had a busy weekend, Myke.

Brad Dowdy: Do we even have time for me to go over this whole topic? I mean, it's going to be a long topic. You ready for this?

Brad Dowdy: I sure am. Oh, do we have... But we have one thing to get to before I do that.

Myke Hurley: That's why I was getting worried. I was like, oh no, he's forgotten. Sorry. I know,

Brad Dowdy: I'm good at that. I'm good at skipping that. I just wanted to tease you that time a little bit. Oh, right, right.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, yeah, of course,

Pen Blog of the Week

Brad Dowdy: of course. Our pen blog of the week is going to sound familiar to listeners of the beginning of this episode. It's Mr. Ray Newberry, the winner of giveaway package number one, writes a blog called Fountain Pen Quest. That's how I knew Ray. When his name came up, I was like, I know that guy. He writes Fountain Pen Quest. So, Ray does a great job. If you go over to his site right now, I think it kind of, I think his header rotates, but he's got the Edison Menlo, which is an awesome pen in his header image. But Ray does a really good job doing, it's pretty much all Fountain Pen, Fountain Pen's an ink reviews, and he has a lot of, he's got a wide-ranging collection. Some new pens, some old pens. He like reviews a lot of Esterbrooks and a lot of the different nibs that come with Esterbrooks that we've talked about before. He reviews some of the brand new pens that we talk about. And he's just got a really wide-ranging collection. He's got a lot of ink, so he does a lot of ink reviews. And he does it in a really, really nice format. His photos are always great. His reviews are very informative. And I've kind of, I've been following his blog, I don't know, for maybe a year or so. And I'm always excited when Ray puts up a new post because I know I'm going to enjoy it. So, thank you, Ray, for writing Fountain Pen Quest so you guys can check it out at fpquest.com. And we'll have that in the show notes too, but it's just fpquest.com. You can get there real easy and make sure you go check out all of Ray's reviews.

Brad Dowdy: All right. So, pretty much my biggest pen weekend of the year was last weekend, the 2014 Atlanta Pen Show, which, starting in January is when I start getting anxious for the show and I start talking about it. Oh, it's coming soon. Oh, saving my money. It's coming soon. So, by the time it gets here, I'm like, you know, can't sleep at night. I'm all anxious to go. You know, I pack like two days before, make sure I have everything I want to take and, you know, which really isn't that much. But, you know, I'm, I ain't a retentive that way. But, I had the best time this year, Myke. It was, you know, the more you do anything, just like this podcast or pen reviews or anything, this is now my third show and the more you do something like that, the more comfortable you get. So, I remember the first year I was kind of like a deer in the headlights and I was a little shy and naive and, you know, probably didn't get the experience that, you know, I could have if I was a little more experienced. It just comes with time. And then, by the second year I built up the confidence in what I was looking for in pens and the ability to talk to other people and have discussions about pens and likes, dislikes, wants, needs, things like that. So, by this year, you know, I was ready to just kind of open it up a little bit and, you know, just kind of have the freedom to go in, talk to anyone, do anything and just kind of, you know, just kind of play it real loose and casual and, you know, get some things done that I wanted to do like meeting specific people and just have more of a fun, free time and it was everything I hoped for and more.

Brad Dowdy: I wrote in my review for The Pen Addict, for me, the biggest, my biggest takeaway of the whole experience was it wasn't about the pens at all. It was really about the people I met and the conversations I had and the friendships I made at the show. I mean, I just, I walked around just talking to people and I just feel like I never wiped a smile off my face. It was so much fun and I encourage anyone who's in range of a pen show to go and take it in. The people you meet and deal with at shows like these are genuinely awesome. They're really great. They're so willing to help and then for me to have this added thing of the Pen Addict blog and podcast where I can, you know, mention if readers are coming there and, you know, I'd love to say hi and meet you to have that extra benefit of meeting all these new people that are just visiting the show and that have read the blog or listened to the podcast in the past and just say hi and have a conversation with them is just, it was so, so cool. I mean, I'm going to be redundant but I just had the best time. It's hard to even explain, talking about it, it's hard to explain in words but let me just kind of go through what the day was like for me if that's okay, Myke and we'll just kind of talk about it from there and let me know if you got any questions that sound good? Yeah,

Myke Hurley: I loved your post by the way.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, thanks, thanks. It was, I tried to do it a little bit different. I tried to do it more of like a play-by-play of how my day went as opposed to, you know, talking about pens and inks and technically, you know, what I bought. It was more about the experience which is what I call the post and that's what it felt like. It was just, it was super fun. So, when I got to the show, I got to the show a little bit early. Doors opened at 10 and I pulled in the parking lot about 9.30 and I just happened to, I was just killing time in my car for a second. I pulled up Twitter and I saw a tweet from a guy I'd never met, a guy named Pierce and he said, hey, I'm in, got my ticket, we're ready to go. I'm like, man, I don't even, I don't know this guy but let's get out the car and go meet him real quick. So, I did. I walked straight out the car and walked in the thing and paid my admission and you get a little name, you know, just like a, hello, my name is sticker, you know, on there and I saw the one that said Pierce and I said, hey, Pierce, I just saw your tweet and a guy I'd never met in my life before but it was like, we're friends just because of being in the same place, you know, having the same like, you know, we can have a conversation just about anything. It's like, we're long lost friends and even though we'd never met before and that's kind of how it was all day long and it turns out Pierce lives down closer to me than he does the pin show so we're hopefully going to get together later and maybe talk about pins and, you know, some other things like that so he's actually close, pretty close by to me so that was cool and then, you know, another friend that I'd seen at the pin shows before, a guy named Gray Williams, I'd seen him and he's, you know, I've talked to him on and off through Twitter and saw him at the pin show last year but didn't really talk to him and he came up and we started talking and we started talking about field notes and things like that and, you know, just had a great conversation about that and then Heath Cates comes in from the pen, paper, ink, letter blog who lives about two hours away so he drove in and I got to meet Heath for the first time which he was a really nice guy and we had some good conversations about, you know, what he's looking for because this was his first pin show so, you know, what he's looking for today and the things he's going to try to do and things like that so I got to meet him and then, by that time it was about 10 o'clock and, you know, the doors opened and we kind of all went our separate ways and went in through the show and, you know, I, of course, had to make sure I got on Myke Masayama's list to get a nib grind done and I actually had a friend, another friend of mine, Mark Backus, he helps, he does the website for the Atlanta Pin Show so he was in early and he put me on Myke Masayama's list so I was number two on the list for the day so I got in to see him pretty early. He fixed up my Lamy 2000 which was, which was bugging me again so he's, he's got it all smooth and working properly now and then I went over and talked to Brian and Lisa Anderson who were just awesome. I swear I talked to them for about 20 or 30 minutes right out the gate in the morning. This is before even looking at any pins or anything, just talking with them. I dropped them off some NotCo products because they had expressed some interest in them and then we just, we just chit chatted. They gave me America the Beautiful Edition because they, they were laughing. They said, well we got a present for you. We listened to the podcast on the way down the last episode where I talking, I was talking about, you know, maybe I need to, to get another pack of that so they gave me a pack of that so that was nice.

Brad Dowdy: So I got some, got some field notes from them and, and then after I talked to them I had set up a hold from Van Ness pins from Lisa Van Ness. They were carrying Ackerman inks and they were bringing a bunch to the show and they had said over Twitter if anyone was looking for any particular colors to let us know, we'll hold them for you. So I went over there, talked to them. They had my inks on hold. They were super nice. This was their first time at the Atlanta pin show was Lisa and Wendy from Van Ness pins. I think they had a pretty good time. They were super nice. It was great to meet them in person.

Brad Dowdy: And then I had a gentleman from Alabama bring me more of the Cigar Box pin holders that I have ordered in the past.

Brad Dowdy: His name's John and he, instead of shipping them to me, he knew he was coming in the show so we met up on Saturday and he dropped those off to me. So that was good. So it was, I kind of had a real busy first two or three hours just meeting people that I had planned on meeting. You know, during that time in the morning, the one and only Jeff Abbott came to the show who writes some for the Pin Addict and you know Jeff, right Myke? I know Jeff, yeah. Yeah, he does some work with Sean Blanc and several other guys. He was great. Me and him hung out a lot throughout the day. We kind of wandered the show together most of the day. He was a super nice guy and he made some cool purchases that will hopefully be reviewed on the Pin Addict in the future and he got some nib work done by Myke Masayama and things like that. So I don't know, it was like 12 or 1 o'clock before I even started looking at a pin. I mean, I'd already made a trip to the car to drop off the ink and the cigar box pin cases and I haven't shopped for a pin at all yet. So I got back from that drop off and I said, okay, I think I've got all the tasks down that I wanted to get done. You know, the people I needed to meet. I had some more people I needed to meet but it was just more to say hi. Did you have some babies to kiss and some stores to open and stuff like that? But no, there was a guy from Macon that always goes to the pin shows and has a table there so I wanted to make sure to talk to him and there was a guy from the Southeast Pin Collectors Club that wanted you to come over so I made sure I didn't go talk to him and things like that. Then I met several, several readers. I mean, a handful of readers or more. It's funny, I've had a couple of people email me afterwards like, I saw you but I was too shy to come say hi so hey, maybe I'll come see you next year. I'm like,

Myke Hurley: okay.

Brad Dowdy: So we decided for next year, Myke, that we're going to get you over here and we'll get a table and we'll just live broadcast the pin show. That'd be thrilling, wouldn't it? Oh God, that'd be so good.

Myke Hurley: We could do a live episode of the show live from the Atlanta pin show.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, bring in guests.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, and when you guys have your booth, I could be like your booth babe or something. That's right.

Brad Dowdy: You could totally be our booth babe.

Myke Hurley: It was funny to see business Brad seeping his way into the post where you're like, you know, I went and spoke to such and such person and dropped them off some samples of NOC products and I was like, oh, business Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, business Brad was taking care of business the first couple hours of the show. we got things to do, man. We got worlds to conquer and so we're trying to get that done. So yeah, I got some good feedback on the NOC stuff and some good business Brad notes for that. So that was good. That was good for sure. But then business Brad went into shopping Brad.

Myke Hurley: well, shopping Brad is enabled by business Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. Yeah, we need business Brad to be successful so we can have shopping Brad, right?

Franklin Kerstoff

Brad Dowdy: But I kind of had my list from we spoke about last week. I just kind of had a general kind of ballparky nothing super specific other than the Ackerman Inc which I was going to pick up for Van Ness and the Nib Grinds from Myke Masayama and I got one from Pendleton Brown too just because I'd never had a pen worked on by him and I wanted to get a stub nib from him and it seems very nice. I just haven't had time to use it yet but that was a good experience with Pendleton. But my shopping list was a vintage Ultra Flex Nib, Franklin Kristoff with a Masayama needle tip, the Stormtrooper Vanishing Point I just wrote down knowing that I probably wouldn't find it which I didn't, and a spare Pelican Italic 14k nib which I thought I probably wouldn't find either and then I mentioned that you know I really kind of in the back of my head I was going to look at that Visconti Wall Street pen which we've talked about before. It's a really beautiful expensive pen that you know that would be kind of my if I went with a one pen it would be that you know because it's kind of expensive. So that was kind of the list in the back of my head and you know I checked off a lot of the things on the list surprisingly. You know I got a vintage ultra flex nib which I haven't really shown pictures of because I've been busy cleaning it and doing some things with it. I got to ink it up but I bought a Waterman 52 which is just a classic kind of an all-time design Waterman. The link in the show notes is almost the exact one that I bought. It might even be the exact one. It was actually hard to find a picture of it since I hadn't even taken my own picture yet. I could have sent it to you but I think this is the exact model. It's just like a rubber barrel with the chasing on it and a lever filler and a really really flexible nib. So this is going to be cool to play with. So I'm anxious to get that going.

Brad Dowdy: And I bought two pins from Franklin Kerstoff and that's all I can say about those. I'm so intrigued by this.

Brad Dowdy: I don't know. I'm kind of nervous. I'm kind of nervous. You know, kind of blind buying for someone but I don't want to ruin the surprise for you so I've got these Franklin Kristoff pins that I want to talk about. This is what's

Myke Hurley: interesting because people will know that on last week's episode that I asked Brad to get me a Franklin Kristoff and we spoke and I told you what one I wanted you to buy me but you clearly bought something else and that's what I'm so excited about.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, I clearly bought something else because they got wiped out. I mean, there was not a lot of choice. So, I actually had other people telling me that they came for like some of the, you know, like the smoke and ice, the pocket pins that I have. When I got in Saturday morning, I think they'd sold the last one by the time I made it over to their table and that was Saturday, a.m. Saturday. So, I think it was a pretty good show for them. I mean, they had gaps all over the table from things that were gone and I actually talked to one of the guys there and they're just really behind on production, which I know that feeling.

Brad Dowdy: And, you know, they're just trying to catch up and, you know, their popular products are selling really, really well. So, we'll see. Your package shipped today. So, I'm sure we won't have it next week, podcast, but maybe in two weeks if we're lucky.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: You will get it and then we can have a, we'll have an episode on that and see if I passed or failed.

Myke Hurley: Oh, it might be the week after.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Actually, no, it might be okay. No, no, never mind. Because we're recording late that week, aren't we, rather than.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, we'll have to look at the schedule. But, yeah, I mean, I usually figure about two weeks to get you something from me and seems to be pretty consistent. But, we'll see. Honestly, I'm nervous. So, we'll see. We'll see. But, I can't talk about what I bought because that would kind of give away, give you some ideas. So, I'm not even going to talk about what Franklin Kristoff I bought. So, there.

Visconti Typhoon

Brad Dowdy: So, those are two pens that I bought. A Waterman and a Franklin Kristoff. And then I only bought one other pen, but it was kind of my big purchase and it wasn't the Visconti Wall Street.

Brad Dowdy: Because, do you remember, it's probably been a year or so. And we were looking at, I think it was Stephen Brown's video of this Visconti Typhoon pen and it had that mosquito needle filling system.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, I found one of those.

Myke Hurley: Why did you? I don't get it, man. I don't get it.

Brad Dowdy: And it's not the needle filling system, it's the pen. I don't even know that I'll use the filling system, but it's the pen. The pen is awesome in person. And it was a really good price.

Brad Dowdy: It is so cool. It's got this, it's got, the real selling point for me was the chamber system that's on the inside of it. And I'll have to do some pictures. We'll have a whole podcast, a whole segment on the podcast about this pen when I review it.

Myke Hurley: Because I don't understand it. But it's

Brad Dowdy: basically, it's basically got two chambers on the inside of the body. Okay. And unlike a regular vacuum filling fountain pen where it's just one huge chamber, you can segregate the chambers for travel and get the ink all into the back chamber and seal it off so no ink can leak from your pen. So it's good for airplane travel, any travel. That's one of the biggest features of it. And then the nib on top of that, which I forget the material, the name of the nib, chromium or something like that. It's this round nib. It's pretty cool. It writes really good. I've been real happy with it so far. The needle tip, the needle filling thing, that's kind of gimmicky. I actually filled it up. I had trouble filling it with that. And just filling it normally, you know, dipping the nib into the ink well and filling it that way worked much better for me. So yeah, the mosquito fillers in the box. But just everything else about the pen is pretty cool. I'm pretty happy with it. So that's all the pens I bought. I bought three pens, really.

Brad Dowdy: You know, I actually stayed within my budget for my stuff. And I bought a bunch of other things for other people that, you know, kind of blew my budget. But that wasn't, you know, necessarily counting in my budget. The money I took just for my budget for my stuff, I stayed under that, which was good. Because I frankly didn't buy that much. You know, I did buy a couple of extra Franklin Kristoff nibs for my pocket pens. I just wanted some variety. Like I wanted a needle tip that I could swap into one of those. I bought that. I bought the Ackerman ink, which I talked about. I bought one of the turquoise blues and one of the kind of dusky purples. The cigar box pen cases. Got the nib work done by Myke Masayama and Pendleton Brown. I bought some stuff from, I bought some ink from Anderson pens. I bought a bottle of Conpecky, which I was out of. And I bought another bottle of Organic Studio Blue Merle, which I've had a bunch of people asking me about. Want to know how that was. So I got that.

Brad Dowdy: And someone like Anderson coming to the show, they're not like most of the other vendors there. Most of the other vendors carry a lot of vintage and just kind of vintage pens. Well, Anderson carries vintage pens, modern pens, ink, paper, accessories. So I was able to pick up some accessories I needed. Like I needed some new sailor converters, you know, and I bought some nib smoothing sandpaper from them. You know, you're able to pick up things like that at a pen show that you could order online, but, you know, it saves you the shipping and things like that. And it's just good little add-on items. So that was kind of my haul from the show.

Brad Dowdy: It was good. It was pretty good. I'm pretty happy with what I came home with. I think, so the show ran from 10 a.m. to 5 on Saturday. And by like, I don't know, by about 2 o'clock, it was about 1.30, me and Jeff Abbott were just like, man, we're tired. We're tired and hungry. Let's go get some lunch. And he was waiting in line for Myke Masayama.

Brad Dowdy: Nib grind, so we waited like another hour. And then we went and grabbed some lunch, about 3, just down the street, came back. And about 5 o'clock, the show was wrapping up and I had set up just a real informal pen addict meetup that if anyone, you know, read the blog and wanted to, you know, come by and have a drink or just chit-chat and, you know, see what, see, you know, see what pens you bought that day or paper or ink or try out some pens and things like that, just come over to the hotel bar from 5 to 7. I said I'd be there and Jeff Brookwicky, my not co-partner, was there and he brought his wife and Mark Backus, who I mentioned before, who helps organize the website for the pen show and Gray Williams and Jeff Abbott and Heath Cates and Matthew Morse, which is at HeyMatthew on Twitter. Does that sound familiar, Myke? Do you know who at HeyMatthew is? Sure do. He is the guy that, I call him my visionary champion. He's the guy in the visionary comments back when it was all hot and heavy. That was like, guys, there's something not right. He was the one that was taking all the grief for calling out the visionary and the visionary comments. It was pretty funny. So he was there and his wife was there at the show. And so he came to the meetup afterwards and the Andersons came to the meetup afterwards and Myke Masayama was hanging around at the bar there afterwards. And we just had the best time after the show. Number one, I was glad to sit down and get a drink because I was tired. My feet were tired and my eyeballs were tired. You spend a lot of mental energy at a show like that, just walking around and talking to people and checking everything out. So I was exhausted. I was just ready to sit down and have a beer, have a nice cold beer and just talk with everyone and see how their show was. And I mean, you know, we probably had at the most, you know, eight or ten people. But, you know, we just sat around a big group, ordered some drinks, you know, ordered some hors d'oeuvres, took out some pens and paper and acted like the dorks that we were.

Myke Hurley: But that's it, boy. I like that. The dorks that we are.

Brad Dowdy: Yep, that is it. It is. But it was so much fun. I mean, just talking to everyone and even not about pen stuff. I mean, we just talked about life and just other things. And, you know, just it just ended up that ended up being the highlight of the show for me, honestly, to sit down with all these people that I knew, either in person who I'd met in the years past or who I'd only met online and talked to online before. All these people had traveled, like Jeff Abbott came from Alabama and Heath Cates came from Alabama. And, you know, I came from, you know, a little bit south of Atlanta. And Matthew Morse came from South Carolina. And to get all these people in the room together and, you know, just sit out the bar, sit at the bar and just chit chat. That was by far, in a way, the highlight for me after the show. And, you know, I planned on being there from five till seven because I was driving home that night. But I didn't end up leaving until about 830 just because we were enjoying the conversation so much. so it was really fun. And that was my biggest takeaway, you know, from that whole thing was just that, you know, the people are the best part of the show, bar none. You know, if you didn't have any money and just paid your admission fee to walk around and talk to people and, you know, even meet up with people afterwards, that would be totally worth going, even if you didn't purchase one item. It's really, really worth it to just go and hang out and talk to people. You know, fortunately, you know, I've had a platform over the years to be able to talk to people online. So I was able to, you know, arrange some, you know, meetings and some of the meet up and have other people, additional people come and talk and meet and say hi and chit chat. But even if you don't know anybody, it's worth going just to be in that atmosphere and to kind of soak it all in. It was it's a pretty amazing experience. I had it's it's one of the best times I've ever had. In anything, not just at a pin show, just genuinely good times. And I hope, you know, next year will be even better.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Mm hmm.

Myke Hurley: I'm glad you're I'm glad you're at such a good time, mate.

Brad Dowdy: I did. I did. And, you know, it's like I said, you know, I almost don't even care about the pins that I bought just because the the memories and the conversations were more important.

Brad Dowdy: It's it's it was definitely a change this year compared to the previous two years where I was very focused on the pins and things like that. This year was much different. And not that the previous years weren't enjoyable. They were thrilling. But this is the way it should be. It's this was like a like an annual meetup of just friends more than a pin show.

Myke Hurley: And that's what I'm going to do with the London pin show this year.

Brad Dowdy: Mm hmm.

Myke Hurley: Spend more time.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Because you kind of you kind of got rushed last year. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: It kind of snuck up on me and I didn't have the full day that I wanted.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yeah. Well, cool. That's good. And you should, you know, hopefully maybe some listeners can come out and and say hi.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, that'd be great.

Brad Dowdy: Mm hmm.

Myke Hurley: Awesome. Thank you, sir. Right. I think that wraps it up for this week's episode of the Pen Addict podcast. Thanks again to Pen Chalet dot com for being this week's sponsor. If you want to find information about the show, show notes and all that fun stuff, then you want to go to five by five dot TV slash Pen Addict slash one zero two. If you want to catch up with Brad online, he's at Dowdy is on Twitter. D O W D Y I S M. And he writes over at Pen Addict dot com. And I am I Myke at I Myke on Twitter. I am Y K E. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the Pen Addict podcast. Until next time. Say goodbye, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Goodbye, Brad.