The Pilot Elabo!

Greetings, all!

Allow me to apologize for a lengthy absence. A blog post is well overdue! The 2020 holidays were dizzyingly brutal at my day job, and the first few weeks that followed were not much better. But at long last, things are returning to normal and I thought, while I'm home today waiting forever for the shower repair-man to get his slacker carcass over here to fix a cracked shower, I'd finally post an update. Namely, for this fantastic new pen!

I promise I'll get to the point here in a sec. When I'm not dazzling the internet with these provocative posts of fountain pen fabulousness, I work in an office cubicle-farm, helping our company's customers with order problems. You'd be surprised what a world-stopping event like a global pandemic can do to one's supply chain & transportation networks. During the holidays, far fewer people wanted to visit our stores in person than usual, opting to shop online instead (and who can blame 'em, under the circumstances)...so the company I work for took nearly 3 times the normal volume of customer contacts during the holidays. That is a volume that's already tremendous during Christmas as it is. It took until February to start slowing back down to normal.

...and then THIS happened!

That's a shot of the parking lot late in the evening where I work (taken with my phone, through the windshield of my car) on February 17. That's *after* the lot got plowed out. There was so much snow, in two big snowstorms 24 hours apart, that it brought life here in the midwestern USA to another stand-still. I'm not quite so far south as Texas, where those folks got the worst brut of it by far, and you mighty Texans have my sympathies. At one point, 73% of the USA was covered in snow and ice. I can't remember that having ever happened before. The snow wasn't the worst part, however: the most dangerous part here in the green hills of southern Missouri was the record-breaking COLD. One night, it got down to -13 F / -25 C, and that was before the wind chill, and turned the Ozarks into a deep-freeze. This shattered the previous record of -5 F / -21 C originally set all the way back in the year 1905.

Here's another photo of it, while on my way to work. My normally pastoral drive looked more like the foothills of the Himalayas or something.

It was so horribly frigid that my poor dogs (er, my editorial staff) couldn't go outside to do their evening "business" because their feet couldn't take the intense cold of the concrete breezeway floor right between my front door and the deep snow where the "lawn" would normally be. The first time I tried taking them outside, I had to carry poor Molly back indoors as the cold was too hard on her feet and she nearly collapsed. Egad...the next few days were a carpet cleaning challenge, since taking them out after work was no longer viable.

Also, the cold was so harsh and prolonged that we were getting urgent emails from our local power company imploring us to keep electric furnaces turned down to 65 F / 18 C if at all possible, and to refrain from turning any big appliances on for a few days until the cold snap was over. There was a nation-wide shortage of natural gas used not only for running a furnace in a gas-heated home, but for fueling turbines in the power plants themselves to generate our electricity. This was because the cold was so severe that it was freezing up the gas in the power company's big fuel tanks!

We complied, and the fuel emergency went down from "level 3" to "level 2", per the emails they sent out, and the rolling blackouts they told us might have to happen were kept to a minimum. I hate to see what my energy bill will be this month, though...

So there you are; that's my litany of excuses for blog-tardiness. Do not fear, the "editorial staff" suffered no interruption of pay or benefits during this time of blog-shutdown. They enjoyed their furlough while I spent nearly every waking moment of the last several weeks at the aforesaid cubicle farm.

Anyway, let's get back to my new pen...!

This is the Pilot Elabo, in the Metallic Brown color (photographed upon the closed lid of my laptop). However, I was in for a surprise: "metallic brown" turned out to be more of a "richly colored, lustrous metallic bronze of austere awesomeness"; I do feel that the description of these on the various pen & ink retailer's websites is understated. My meager photo doesn't do it much justice, either. It's gorgeous! And I love the slightly concave pocket clip (which you can't quite see in my amateur photograph) which makes it easy to clip onto your pocket or shirt-collar in addition to being aesthetically pleasing.

"Yes, but, the nib...?" you ask?

You guessed it: this is my very first Falcon Nib. It's a Soft-Broad; a thing I didn't know existed until I saw these pens, and it's quite smooth indeed! This is 14kt Rhodium-plated gold. (I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the two shower repair-men, who at long last arrived here 3 hours late, for the appalling fumes of glue, bondo, and liquid fiberglass that have completely filled the air here at the Busted Nib Secret Base of Operations. My two "editors" and I are finding it increasingly difficult to breathe...but it's not like I'm going to leave pens like this Elabo un-guarded while strangers are in here. And it would look weird, you know, hauling an armful of pens and other valuables out to my car...but I digress.) It has a little bit of line variation, but these nibs are a bit stiffer than their reputation, or unusual shape, would have you think. This is by intention, however...one does not get one of these thinking it is a "vintage flex nib"!

Here's a writing sample:

The paper is a handy pocket sized Rhodia 90gsm dot-grid note pad. You can see the line variation in this, and the nib does have a bit of "bounce" to it. (Editor's note: that dumb fox is going to pay. --Maggie) Now, "what is that ink", you ask?

Behold: Sailor Kin Mokusei! At least, I hope I got that right! My understanding of Japanese is poor at best, so feel free to correct me on that in the comments. Does anyone recall that there was a much-loved Sailor ink at one time called Sailor Apricot that was discontinued? I seem to remember watching YouTube videos of Dr. Steven Brown ("SBRE Brown") and his wife Azizah of Gourmet Pens lamenting about it's cancellation, and being glad that they both had a bottle's worth of it in their repertoire.

Well, I watched a YouTube video recently by Mike of Inkdepenence who seemed to infer that this ink is more or less a replacement for it. It is a wee shade or so more "orange" than "apricot", but it's close enough, and it shades wonderfully. And, it's the cheeriest, happiest, sun-shiney-est orange ink I think I've ever seen. 😊 Again, if you disagree with me on the Apricot issue, let me know in the comments.

Now have a look at this:

This is the ink converter. Rather than the usual twist-type piston operated converter that we're familiar with, this is a plunger operated converter with a spring operated pump that fills with ink with only a few quick presses of the black button on the end there, which makes it easy to quickly fill the pen with one hand and a few quick pumps. I've not seen one of these before, and I like it!

Now. on a different note, I have a special announcement to make. We have added a new position here at the Busted Nib. Allow me to introduce you to our newest employee: our new Receptionist and Nutritional Advisor, Mr. Ninety-Nine.

This fellow is so "next-level" that he doesn't burden himself with a long traditional name that would take up space on personnel documents and government paperwork. My "secret base" is directly adjacent to a small cattle farm, and Ninety-Nine has been wandering over to greet us every time I take my other two employees outside for their contractually required breaks, serenely strolling over to his side of the property line to greet us and present his candidacy for employment. (His inability to type a resume could not be used as a consideration for employment by species discrimination laws.)

In order to impress a potential new employer, 99 went so far as to provide his own company name badge. I don't know about you, but it's hard to ignore such a well-prepared, dapper presentation like that, so he has now been brought onboard as our new Nutritionist. Ninety-Nine has long experience with a healthy vegetarian lifestyle and brings his wealth of insights of sustainable, simple diet habits to the 'Nib.

Further, his friendly demeanor goes quite a ways into putting our visitors at ease, making him an ideal receptionist! He demonstrates those well-honed people skills in this company photo.

Ninety-Nine gets along well with his new coworkers. Here, he politely introduces himself to our Kitchen Floor Cleanup Technician, Molly. I can already tell that the office synergy and workplace dynamic is quite promising. Be assured, the fact that he's a cow, and that Molly is a collie with a proclivity to herd livestock, has nothing whatsoever to do with what's going on here. This is an entirely professional office co-worker interaction. You'll find only top-notch professionalism here at the Busted Nib.

He is a bit shy, however, as you can see here from my "back yard" (insofar as a mediocre apartment --er, super secret base--can have a back yard) where 99 is suddenly hiding his face behind a tree. We'll have to work on his confidence-building skills, but I'm confident he'll be a great addition to the team!

Now, at long last, the repair men who stank my apartment up to high heaven with chemical fumes while I sat here typing have wrapped up their work and have left. Thus, I can finally leave Broken Nib Base and go do this week's grocery shopping. The editorial staff (sans 99; the Nib's company vehicle isn't bovine-friendly...we'll have to address that in his compensatory package negotiations) is coming with me to escape the smell. I won't be able to use that shower for at least 48 hours, but fortunately, my apartment has two bathrooms. 😊🛀🚽

Okay, perhaps that was a bit much. Thank you all for your patience as I am finally getting my blog caught up, as well as getting pen pal letters sent out after the mess of the last several weeks...or is it months, now. Pandemics are stupid. Take care, and I'll probably have some bitter complaints about restaurants coming up soon. See you all at the mailbox!