Editing The Pen Addict 109/transcript (section)

== Lamy Safari ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' He's always missed. He's so good. He's such a natural. And for me, even reading the intro, you can tell I'm totally forcing that. That's not my thing. I'm more the rambler and give me a topic and I'll talk about it. Not, okay, here's the fixed part of the show that I need to say. I can't handle that as well.

'''Anna Reinert:''' He's had a lot of practice, though. He's done it for a hundred and how many episodes and you've only done a couple intros? Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So this is...

'''Anna Reinert:''' Cut yourself some slack.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' This is 109 and I think this is the third show I've done without him. I think that sounds right.

'''Anna Reinert:''' Weird.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, weird.

'''Anna Reinert:''' Okay, that's pretty amazing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Very, very weird. So, okay, let's get into it. We got some... We had an interesting show last week. Not to put you on the spot, but did you listen to last week's show? I'm not sure.

'''Anna Reinert:''' Yes, of course I did.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay, well, I'm never sure.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So we had Tim from Funkmon on Pins and he was a good guest. We got a lot of feedback on that. But I don't know that I've ever gotten more feedback about a particular topic than us talking about cross pins and how bad of a time Tim was having with cross pins. And then I sent kind of a call out to say, hey, if you have experience with any cross pins, tell me what the good ones are. Or tell me your good stories because I'm just hearing Tim's side and I've never used anything. I've definitely never used a cross fountain pen. I'm sure I've used an old cross ballpoint, probably like everyone has at some time in their life. But I got these very strongly worded, if you will, tweets and emails.

'''Anna Reinert:''' Well, Tim's opinions were pretty strong as well last week.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, yeah, and I can appreciate that. Absolutely. Like someone said, I forget who it was, someone said that he wasn't being fair. And I actually, I mean, I disagree with that completely. He's being completely fair because that's his opinion. And we may disagree 100% and have the exact opposite experience, but he's certainly being fair because that's what his opinion is.

'''Anna Reinert:''' Right. And he keeps, he keeps buying them. So obviously he's hoping that at some point he'll get one he likes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's right. Do you have any cross pin experience? I want to read a couple of these emails that some of us, some people send. How about you?

'''Anna Reinert:''' I have never, unless someone's handed me like their pen to sign something or whatever, I have never used one. Yeah. Yeah. So now I feel obligated to like, at least go out and give one a try.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know. Right. If nothing else, it means I'm going to have to go buy a cross pin now and just to see for myself. But I, the volume of emails I got, they're still coming in. I got one like five minutes before we started talking. I didn't even have time to put it in the show notes and they're not like two sentence emails. These are like five and six paragraph emails. Let me read it. I got two that I saved off. Let me read just kind of the, the bullet points. And I think this was the general consensus of the emails that I got about cross. Um, a lot of them were saying the same types of things. So I just, I pulled out a couple and, uh, let me, let me go over them real quick. One of them was from, from Lois. She says, my first suggestion is the cross ATX, a beautiful, well-made pen to my eye. Um, it's just mine is a shade of blue that I believe is no longer made. It has a very firm nib, which I like. A nice weight and a pleasant size and posted length in my hand. My only complaint is that the section is slick chrome. This makes it uncomfortable to use for any length of time. For this reason, I don't ink it up very often. I bought it about 10 years ago in a brick and mortar stationery store. I think I paid about $60 for it. So that's one thing I've seen in a common thread is people are buying cross pins in person. Um, they're able to find just like cross and Parker in more places than you're able to find necessarily like pilots and pelicans and things like that. They just seem to be at that price point where you're going to get them in that retail environment that you might just stumble on.

'''Anna Reinert:''' Yeah. I've seen them in places like office depot, office max and staples.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. For sure. And she continues on. She says the cross solo is the second pin. I don't think they make it anymore. Mine is black plastic with a gold plated trim. It will never win any beauty contests. And it's very order looking, ordinary looking. Um, and she says it was about $10 and bought it about 10 years ago. And she said it was, she found a recommendation online that it was good, inexpensive starter pin. And, uh, she says every single time I put this nib to paper, I'm pleased with it. I love this pin. Despite the cheesy black plastic and gold plating, I always have this pin inked up and would be very sorry if I lost it. So people are, people love their cross pins. They have a, uh, an attachment and, you know, I think that's that older school marketing link. You know, we just have that, that positive feeling about these things we grew up with. Right. You know, if we are familiar with cross for the past 20 or 30 years, we're going to, you know, kind of give it that, I don't want to say give it the benefit of doubt. It's, I'm sure it's perfectly good pin, but you have that fonder, more positive experience with it, um, that you can bring back. You notice like both of her pins she bought over 10 years ago and she still uses them and still likes them. So.

'''Anna Reinert:''' Well, and it also sounds like at, I mean, any fountain pen that you purchase at a $10 ish, $20 ish price range, um, I, you know, that's when the quality control tends to be a little less consistent. So it's that, you know, luck of the draw. She must've gotten one that was really good and maybe, um, you know, other people pick one up and they get one that isn't as, um, you know, wasn't quality checked as well and have problems with it. But, but I mean, I, my expectation at a $10 price point is hit or miss, you know, sometimes you get them and they work great, you know, maybe three out of five times or something. And then other times they're, the quality's just not there. You know, they just, at that price point, why would they bother to, you know, quality check them the way they would a pen that's over a hundred dollars?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. And we certainly still have quality issues with pins that are at a, at a higher price range.

'''Anna Reinert:''' True. Exactly.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And, um, yeah, so what, one more quick one from Matt, um, he says, I was listening to the podcast number 108. My ears perked up on your cross fountain pen comments. My first and for the longest time only fountain pen was the cross century to my pen as a fine nib. This pen is a daily use pen for me. I have a Kaveco sport and a Twisby diamond mini classic. I just received my dad's Parker 61 capillary fill. So I'm rather new to the fountain pen addiction. I really liked my century to, I stopped using the ink cartridges and now use the converter since discovering your blog and podcast. Awesome, Matt. This pen writes smoothly, but did notice some flow differences between inks. I mostly use it with Waterman absolute Brown. That ink writes very nicely. And I love the color new lures, ink 54th mass sometimes does not flow well. And if I refill the converter, it flows well again. So that's another, um, the cross century. I've actually heard of that, heard of that pen, um, more frequently than the, uh, the ATX and solo, like Lois was mentioned, but I got, you wouldn't believe the amount of emails I got on this. It was awesome. I love the feedback and, uh, everyone, uh, I'd say it was, you know, pretty much all positive cross. Um, no one said, Oh, you know, every cross pen I have is complete junk. It was, uh, definitely the cross supporters were, were out in force and I appreciate everyone reaching out. So that, that was cool.

'''Anna Reinert:''' That's awesome. It definitely gives us hope that, you know, for somebody who's wanting to try a fountain pen for the first time going into a place that carries them and being able to pick out a cross pen might be a good way to get an introduction into pens. So I guess we, we both need to pony up, try one out.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's what I was going to say. I think this is, you know, convinced me that at least, at least need to give it a shot and, uh, you know, no harm in trying. And, uh, certainly I can, uh, make my own opinions from there. So that will be cool. I will, I cross pens are now on the radar folks. So I pre I appreciate all the comments, um, about that. Now this, this next little bit of followup that I wanted to mention is totally random and just slots in with nothing, but I thought it was the coolest thing. Um, I got an email right after last week's plot podcast, just, uh, from a guy named Claudius in Germany. He says just a quick photo from the European parliament elections last week. He says, this is what we vote with in Germany, or at least in Munich. It's a big fat, in this case, purple Statler crayon.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There may be other colors, but I can't say for sure because I always end up in the booth with the purple ones. Nevertheless, as it would be expected from a pen addict, always bring my own pen. This time it was the Lamy AL star with a Schmidt P8126 refill. So if you click that link, if you click that link in the, uh, the show notes, I did, I did. We're going to have, we'll have this in the show notes, um, which everyone can get it, uh, five by five dot TV slash pen addict slash one Oh nine. This is amazing.

'''Anna Reinert:''' My question is, is it actually legal to take pictures in a voting booth?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, in the U S considering, you know, that I've been voting for well over 20 years, I've never even used a pen or a pencil in a voting booth before.

'''Anna Reinert:''' I mean, just a little pokey stick.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. The punch cards and you know, the, the hanging chads, uh, time and all that stuff. I mean, from the first time I ever voted, you know, long, long time ago, I never recall any writing instrument ever being in a voting booth, which that's what threw me off at first. The number two, there was actually a purple crayon in the writing booth.

'''Anna Reinert:''' That's pretty amazing. I think the last time I voted, we got paper ballots and we were given, um, the little golf sized pencils to fill them out. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, yeah, I guess I've just been in like bigger districts or so. So, which I guess I've never thought about it before, but well, we seem like I've been in smaller districts, but that's, I don't just recall doing that, but I thought this was so neat. And especially there's a lot of voting going on in the U S right now. So I just wanted to bring that up and throw that out there. I'm, I'm curious if anyone else has used any other interesting writing instruments to vote with it. Cause this one, uh, kind of boggled my mind. So it's not only that it's also corporate branded, if you will, right? Like Statler in the voting booth is kind of a statement if that some people might take, I don't know. That's just me being weird, but I just found everything about that picture. Interesting.