2018 Ohio Pen Show Recap– Day 3, Saturday.

Day Three: Saturday

Saturday was a doozy!

I got up on time and headed in to the Donutland to get muh stuff together for the show. I brewed a pot of coffee to give myself a headstart on brewing at the ‘otel, grabbed the donuts and drove to the Crowne Plaza.

Once there I started a-brewing. It was plenty fun. Matter of fact, I brewed so much coffee and sold so much coffee I planned to go directly back to the coffee shop around 11AM to get more coffee, bagged and also portioned for drip coffee.

I got a little sidetracked though. I stopped by Les’s Stylosuite table and sat down to write. Let me tell you, it was a blast. I may have surprised Les, as I’m both a lefty and a guy who’s practiced writing flex for a coupla few years. So I had a freaking blast with his pens. They’re mostly Noodlers and Rangas with modded nibs, which is cool, he had a wide variety of nibs that varied in how they flexxed, how they snapped back, and he had some cursive italics, also flexible, that were not up my alley, but y’know, whatever. I was grateful to Les for spending so much time with him at the table. 

Les is awesome and I’m going to find a way to spend money with him sooner than later.

One of Les’s Stylosuite pens

Delayed just a bit, I booked back to the coffee shop to reprovision in time to brew coffee for the noon break. I grabbed some decaf to brew, cause some people like decaf too. I may or may not have picked up a couple 6ers of local beer. I’m not telling.

Back at the ‘otel, I brewed coffee for folks and hung out in room 150 as folks filtered in for David Issacson’s talk about pens. My friend Sara Rice, who was working and fixing pens took my 20 section back to her table to get the housing out. I’d go get it from her later (except I didn’t! She brought it back to me later.)

I tried to warm up David’s crowd a bit, but it was no use. They were a little bit cold fishy. David came in and got started, so I grabbed some of muh beers and slipped out the side door.

I wandered around the show and came across Junior’s table, at the far end of the hallway, when what to my wondering eyes did appear, but a green stripey Wearever pen with a nice 14K nib on it! He offered it to me for under $30 so I gratefully purchased the pen and joined the Green Stripey Wearever with a nice 14K nib on it club, alongside by friends Nick and Myk.

‘member these guys?

After not too long it was time to head home and round up my girls for a dinner date with the Smiths and Jim.

So I went home to get the girls, and found a package waiting for me on the dining room table. Heh! I opened it and found inside a 3-page letter from my buddy Steve, a book about Nietzsche, and 3 practically new fountain pens! There was a Benu from Russia, a Visconti Van Gogh, and a Faber-Castell E-Motion, all 3 the first of each brand I’ve ever owned. What an amazing surprise, and I can tell ya I was glad to not have bought a ton of pens at the show, cause they wouldn’t have been as nice as those three.

Shocking.

Jazzed about the pens, I loaded my family into the van and we went to my favorite pizza joint in Columbus: Tommy’s Pizza on 161, not far from the pen show anyway. The pizza was swell, the company was wonderful, my kids were not well behaved. I wanted to head back to the show for another cigar and some yammering, but I was worn out, so I opted to go home and sleep instead. I feel like such a grown up.

Read about Day 4 and my conclusions here!