Editing The Pen Addict 372/transcript (section)

== Show Attendee Experience ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' you're also gonna walk past tables and see colors and swells you've never seen before and it's gonna blow your mind like that's that's another thing that you can't prepare for

'''Adina Hurley:''' it's it's good to have a list to go back to like I'm getting distracted back to the list so let's say that I have these four brands to look at I'll get distracted by other pens I will settle on one pen and I will want to buy it but a lot of the times I find in these stores that especially when you're buying a new one you can't really give it the full writing test because they're never inked so and you might try a tester I imagine or someone else's but it's tuned to someone else so how how do you what do you do in those situations especially when you're spending a lot of money on one pen

'''Brad Dowdy:''' that's such a good question and it really ends up just being a discussion about what your current experiences are with pens you already haven't like compared to what this new pen is writing like what it offers what the nibs going to be like how it's going to behave and that's a hard thing for someone who's like brand new coming into a show to get that experience like you're you know you're in good hands because you have you know you can come ask me or Myke and we can like we can talk about why this pen is writing this way and does that meet your expectations in general a lot of it is just you're just gonna have to go with like that base information you get kind of quickly in testing out the pen or if you're lucky enough to find it from someone else but like I think that's a very hard thing for someone who is new and inexperienced with fountain pens to commit to spending boy that kind of money and I've spent you know two minutes scribbling you know Brad is number one you know on a piece of paper with a random ink right yeah

'''Adina Hurley:''' random paper random ink everything yeah

'''Myke Hurley:''' yeah there is it's like any purchase there is always like a little leap of faith that you have to make but you were at least in an environment a pen the pen show is the best place to buy these pens because you at least get to hold them where if you're buying them online it can be a bit trickier so like you're in the best possible place to make that kind of

'''Brad Dowdy:''' decision that's true yeah and the timing works like that's why I always implore people if they can to at least try to stay overnight so you have the time to absorb like the education that you don't know you're getting but is actually taking place every time you pick up a pen right it's hard to do that if you're rushing through with three hours to spare on a Saturday afternoon your your leap of faith is is much much larger than if you were there Friday got to test some things out got to talk to some people went back Saturday tried it out tried something out again ask some more questions and built that knowledge base to where you're comfortable doing that so that's what one of the things I recommend to first timers and understand that that's not always the case where they have the ability to spend more than a few hours at a pen show but it is a very valuable experience if you're if you're able to

'''Adina Hurley:''' yep good thing we're there all weekend

'''Brad Dowdy:''' yes we are then I think that the