Fountain Pen Quest Trail Log – January 23, 2022

Pilot Elite Steel Lined Pocket Pen — For reasons I can’t explain, I really enjoy using this pen.

My fountain pen usage picked up a little bit this past week. Although, it’s nowhere near the usage of November through mid-December. It’s still mostly lists, notes, and short journal entries. I expect usage to increase in the coming week, or weeks, as I’ll be doing some camping and traveling in areas with bad cell reception, so no internet for me. The plan is to sit by the lake, read and use my pens. With some hiking to break things up.

Housekeeping

As mentioned above, I’ll be in areas with bad connectivity/internet so next week’s Trail Log may be late, or short. I plan to write it offline and then post it when I have connectivity. So I still plan to publish on Sundays, but they may be posts that were scheduled earlier in the week, and not updated. For example, this post was scheduled late Saturday afternoon, so any update/links after that will appear next week.

Current Reads, Watches & Listens

Reading: Up Country by Nelson DeMille. The third installment of his Paul Brenner series. It’s a long book. Still working through it. It’s become a bit of a slog. But an interesting slog.

Listening: Caliban’s War by James S.A. Corey. Book two of The Expanse. I’m just under halfway through the book. I put it aside to start a different audio book, but that book just wasn’t suited for listening, at least not for me. So I returned it and will tackle the written version when I get a chance. That said, I haven’t gotten back to this one and still have nearly 12 hours left.

I may have been a little too ambitious, I downloaded nine library ebooks, most by authors I’ve never read.

Outgoing

None

Out of Rotation

Diplomat Aero Green (14kt Fine) with a Graf von Faber-Castell Carbon Black Cartridge saw an early exit. Performance was poor so I pulled the cartridge early. It was skipping and had occasional hard starts. This is the second GvFC Carbon Black cartridge that had a problem, making the box 0 for 2, out of 6 cartridges. I considering trashing the rest of the box. I hate to waste cartridges, but if they’re going to get trashed early I might as well skip the aggravation.

Into Rotation

Diplomat Aero Green (14kt Fine) with a Montblanc Emerald Green cartridge. I popped on this cartridge after removing the GvFC Carbon Black cartridge. The ink reached the nib quickly, and performance has been good. Another, and possibly final, nail in the coffin of the GvFC Carbon Black cartridges.