Speaker 1: Welcome to the River Rambler, a production of Swing the
Speaker 1: Fly magazine and sponsored by Jaymon Bamboo Rods. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the River Rambler, production of Swing of the Fly magazine.
Speaker 1: Our guest today is Nate Devolved from Hood River. Nate,
Speaker 1: thanks for taking time to visit.
Speaker 2: Thank you. This is this would be super fun. It was.
Speaker 2: It was great meeting up with you for the first
Speaker 2: time on the shoots this fall and we had a riot. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, after kind of circling each other in the
Speaker 2: fishing community for a long time. It was great and
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed our conversations, you know, early in the
Speaker 2: morning and late in the evening, and so this seems
Speaker 2: like a great way to sort of extend that and
Speaker 2: maybe give their folks a little insight into how we
Speaker 2: seem to connect. I guess a little bit.
Speaker 1: Well, it's it's funny. I my first connection with you,
Speaker 1: I think was in the bag my Shamburg reel came in.
Speaker 1: And then the second one was a wistful message from
Speaker 1: you when you saw a picture of Stella Rob Perkins
Speaker 1: drift boat thinking it was mine, and I was very
Speaker 1: apologetic wishing it was mine and I could invite you
Speaker 1: to float along. I'm always in heaven when I'm getting
Speaker 1: to ride in Stella. Yeah, so tell me about You're
Speaker 1: not a Hood River native.
Speaker 2: Correct, No, I've been in Hood River for twenty four years.
Speaker 2: I moved here in early two thousand, just after or
Speaker 2: concurrent with finishing up college at Montana State University.
Speaker 1: So he came from Montana. You grew up in Montana.
Speaker 2: I didn't grow up Montana. I grew up in western Michigan.
Speaker 2: So the way I described my trajectory is I'm hovering
Speaker 2: about three hours north or three hours south of the
Speaker 2: forty fifth parallel, but moving in Exora Blae westward.
Speaker 1: You haven't got that much more room.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I'm not. There isn't much further I
Speaker 2: can go.
Speaker 1: And actually, right now, with river levels, you might be
Speaker 1: pretty happy right where you are.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There are times where, certainly in the winter Hood
Speaker 2: River for those of you haven't been here or been
Speaker 2: in town and checked it out, we're on a very
Speaker 2: steep slope with the Hood River itself cutting diagonally through
Speaker 2: our valley out to the Columbia. But what's interesting is
Speaker 2: that in the winter, our steep hill gets to be
Speaker 2: a bit of a liability it's pain in the ass
Speaker 2: to get around town when we get snow. Oh yeah, roads,
Speaker 2: But then I always think, you know, concurrently that when
Speaker 2: we have giant rain events like this, I'm also kind
Speaker 2: of glad we live on a hill because at least
Speaker 2: most of it goes downhill quickly and out to the Columbia.
Speaker 2: We don't have a lot. We have a bit this morning.
Speaker 2: We're definitely we have a few roads closed. We've had
Speaker 2: a couple of landslides on Highway thirty five on the
Speaker 2: way up to Mountain Meadows and Timberline, so that's closed.
Speaker 2: But generally speaking, except for up in the Upper Valley,
Speaker 2: everything kind of flows downhill, so we don't get a
Speaker 2: lot of the type of flooding that the folks in
Speaker 2: the Seattle area and this Gadget Valley. Yeah, we're getting
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 1: So is the Is the Columbia looking just monstrous?
Speaker 2: Everything is monstrous? Yeah. The hood is very big and
Speaker 2: very brown red.
Speaker 1: Somebody this morning put a video up of hood and
Speaker 1: it was it's something. Yeah, it was as big as
Speaker 1: I've ever seen it. Yeah, so growing up in Michigan,
Speaker 1: tell me about it?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, geez, you know, I grew up in
Speaker 2: western Michigan, which is probably the biggest reason I ended
Speaker 2: up about west. You know, there are few Midwestern folks
Speaker 2: break the forest field of staying put, but those of
Speaker 2: us that do don't typically go back, and we tend
Speaker 2: to find cool places to land. In fact, in Hood
Speaker 2: River I can think of at least a half a
Speaker 2: dozen or more Native Michiganders along with me, None from
Speaker 2: my hometown, but many from surround areas, and they, you know,
Speaker 2: all have landed in various places and then in Hood River.
Speaker 2: So you know, I didn't really all this, the things
Speaker 2: with fishing and whitewater kayaking and all this. I didn't
Speaker 2: really interact with that stuff very much growing up in
Speaker 2: western Michigan, which is unfortunate because there are you know,
Speaker 2: myriad opportunities to do all of those things there that
Speaker 2: I've I've now gone back and realized, Wow, I wish
Speaker 2: I would have, you know, I would have availed myself
Speaker 2: of those things then. But yeah, I mean mostly I
Speaker 2: was just a normal urban kid. I grew up in
Speaker 2: a town, Grand Rapids, in western Michigan, which is about
Speaker 2: in the size of Portland, so maybe with all its
Speaker 2: suburbs around a million people, maybe a million and a half,
Speaker 2: and I just I kind of grew up as an
Speaker 2: urban you know, And I mean, that's that's not totally true.
Speaker 2: I did grow up at least part of my formative years,
Speaker 2: from maybe third grade through like into early high school.
Speaker 2: I did grow up in a relatively rural part of
Speaker 2: western Michigan, and we lived on a lake, and so
Speaker 2: I did. I did some sort of fish, I guess
Speaker 2: is you know, you'd call it that, but just fishing
Speaker 2: for bass and and you know, bluegill and things like that.
Speaker 2: But I was never someone that really liked to fish
Speaker 2: or thought that that was something I'd want to pursue
Speaker 2: in other places. It was just something to do because
Speaker 2: there was literally a lake at the end of our yard,
Speaker 2: and so that was my only real interaction with that there.
Speaker 2: And then then obviously, you know, after high school, I
Speaker 2: got the bug to I wanted to learn how to ski,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, there's not a lot of skiing
Speaker 2: in western Michigan, and there's some stray.
Speaker 1: Lake states don't have They have snow, but.
Speaker 2: Not a lot of elevation, no exactly, and so you know,
Speaker 2: some winners are good, and some winners there's no skiing,
Speaker 2: but I did pick it up later in my twenties,
Speaker 2: and that really sort of then the bug set in
Speaker 2: and I felt like I needed to go west, mostly
Speaker 2: to ski. And what's real full circle moment is that
Speaker 2: the thing that inspired me to move out west to
Speaker 2: pursue skiing and the mountains was the volt At catalog
Speaker 2: and all the photos were from a gentleman named John Laptad.
Speaker 2: Who is It turns out he lives in Hood River.
Speaker 2: And so here's on. After I moved to Hood River,
Speaker 2: I didn't know that that he lived here, and someone
Speaker 2: introduced me to him, and I, you know, I kind
Speaker 2: of probably lost my ship. I'm like, you're the guy
Speaker 2: who inspired me to move out west in the first place.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, so his his photos were in Parker's
Speaker 2: book Free Heel Skiing and photos featured in the Voleet
Speaker 2: catalogs and those two things. So I learned, Yeah, I
Speaker 2: learned how to ski teley skiing. So I did it
Speaker 2: the hardest possible way, so in West Michigan, on ice
Speaker 2: and with no formal instruction. So both of my hips,
Speaker 2: right and left hips were bruised into all sorts of colors.
Speaker 2: The first two seasons I kept falling down and uh
Speaker 2: but I you know, I had the bug and uh yeah,
Speaker 2: So that's that's what really spurred the you know, the
Speaker 2: the escape from West Michigan. I was a classic Midwestern
Speaker 2: kid in that both my parents worked in factory. So
Speaker 2: the future was, you know, either my whole my mom's
Speaker 2: side of the family, all of them to a one
Speaker 2: have since retired from GM and my mom retired from
Speaker 2: Steelcase making office furniture. My dad worked at Steelcase at
Speaker 2: the office furniture factory. I did summer what they called
Speaker 2: summer help, which is where all the kids would go
Speaker 2: in during the summer when school was out, and once
Speaker 2: we were sixteen, I think sixteen, Yeah, I think sixteen,
Speaker 2: they would let us in the factory and they would
Speaker 2: you know, be extra help while people were doing their
Speaker 2: summer vacations. And so that was kind of that's that
Speaker 2: was the trajectory. That's what you do. And you know,
Speaker 2: once I, once I started skiing and playing around with that,
Speaker 2: I realized that that seemed like a lot more fun
Speaker 2: thing to pursue than pursuing a future in the factory.
Speaker 2: So that's where I ended up moving moving west. And
Speaker 2: I'll just close up this chapter quick is I was
Speaker 2: fortunate at the time I decided to make the move west.
Speaker 2: My mom had remarried Alemen and his sister lived in Bozeman,
Speaker 2: and she had she had gone from West Michigan where
Speaker 2: we all grew up, and gone to Montana State, and
Speaker 2: she ended up staying married a guy who was a
Speaker 2: fourth generation Montana UH and had a place to live.
Speaker 2: And so when I was looking at options of where
Speaker 2: to escape to, you know, things like UC Boulder, UH,
Speaker 2: you know, Utah State and Logan, UH, University of Salt
Speaker 2: Later or of Utah and Salt Lake, all those things,
Speaker 2: and Bozeman and of all of those, the connection of
Speaker 2: having my my stepdad's sister and in Bozeman with a
Speaker 2: place to stay where she said, yeah, you can crash
Speaker 2: with us until you get established. That made it pretty easy.
Speaker 1: So awesome. Yeah, It's it's funny when you look back
Speaker 1: how little things make huge difference. I mean, just having
Speaker 1: just having when you're a kid, just having some familiar people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was great. And I you know, I frankly
Speaker 2: had never met my stepdad's sister at that point, so
Speaker 2: I just threw all my ship in the back of
Speaker 2: a GMC Sonoma. You know, the poor man's U S
Speaker 2: ten pick up. Of course, we're real drive not appropriate
Speaker 2: for the mountains in Montana, and drove across the country
Speaker 2: with all my stuff and there's there. You know, estically,
Speaker 2: I was there to go to college, just so you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, I did have an excuse to sell to
Speaker 2: my folks that that I was going to get a
Speaker 2: college degree when I went there.
Speaker 1: What did you go to college for? Uh?
Speaker 2: You know, it turns out I went to college for skiing, kayaking,
Speaker 2: rock climbing, and then fishing and and somehow incidentally I
Speaker 2: ended up with a bachelors of science and geography.
Speaker 1: So who do you remember much of the geography?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that stuff actually, I mean that's what
Speaker 2: I ended up with. That in that that that pursuit
Speaker 2: just because it was interested me. Settle in patterns and
Speaker 2: why people ended up in places and house cities and towns,
Speaker 2: especially in the West, grew up around the railroads. That
Speaker 2: sort of stuff is you know, it was always kind
Speaker 2: of fascinating to me. So it was an easy fit. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it didn't involve any math. Let's just say that the maths,
Speaker 2: the maths and my brain are not good friends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm kind of there too. I was actually I
Speaker 1: was actually really good at math up until calculus, and
Speaker 1: then I was just off a cliff once I couldn't
Speaker 1: just do it in my head anymore. Yeah. So, oh wait,
Speaker 1: just to backtrack a little bit, there is some argument
Speaker 1: that that two wheel drive truck is not a good
Speaker 1: Michigan vehicle either because of your snowloaded But as a
Speaker 1: guy who's first several trucks work too wheel drive, they
Speaker 1: are donut machines.
Speaker 2: They are. And also I would argue, if if you
Speaker 2: really pressed me, I would argue that if you could
Speaker 2: learn how to drive one of those things around in
Speaker 2: the snow with a little bit of weight in the back, Yeah,
Speaker 2: put weight in the back, you can. You can drive
Speaker 2: just about anything in the snow. And the reason being
Speaker 2: is you have to learn the technique of being very
Speaker 2: judicious with gas, yes it and using it so feeling
Speaker 2: for the traction right not let those you'll never learn
Speaker 2: that with, you know, an all wheel drive car. And
Speaker 2: so I suppose it was. It was good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I actually think all my goof and run I
Speaker 1: learned to drive in a sixty three MG and uh,
Speaker 1: you could break the back of that loose, so easy
Speaker 1: on the snow, and so drifting these big long country
Speaker 1: road corners. I didn't know it was called drifting that.
Speaker 1: And I don't think it's the same because guys who drift,
Speaker 1: I think are doing it either an all wheel drive
Speaker 1: or front wheel drive car, and I'm doing it there
Speaker 1: in the donut machine. MG. But it does really teach
Speaker 1: you how to drive in snow, I think, so.
Speaker 2: I mean, I feel like I was better equipped to
Speaker 2: drive in snow learning to drive in a real rear
Speaker 2: wheel drive vehicle in both in Michigan and and Montana.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, well, especially when you're a kid, you
Speaker 1: also are more meet heady and do stupid things that
Speaker 1: you learned from Yes. So, speaking of which, uh, I
Speaker 1: was happily surprised to find out about white Water. You
Speaker 1: guys started when you were at college.
Speaker 2: I did. Yeah. So I back to West Michigan right
Speaker 2: after high school. I went to work for an outdoor backpacking, general,
Speaker 2: outdoor and ski shop that at that time even had
Speaker 2: been in business for thirty or forty years. It was
Speaker 2: started the gentleman who started it was still working in
Speaker 2: the shop. He started after World War Two and he
Speaker 2: came back from from Europe, and he was one of
Speaker 2: the first folks to you know, like all of the
Speaker 2: rope toes and things across the West and the Midwest,
Speaker 2: any of the snow country. He was one of those
Speaker 2: people to you know, grab a car engine and rig
Speaker 2: up a toe rope at one of the hills in
Speaker 2: West Michigan and so, and he became a ski retailer,
Speaker 2: you know, to outfit all the people that were now
Speaker 2: skiing and having fun with that that sport. So he
Speaker 2: started a show up his son. He and his son
Speaker 2: were running it when I got out of high school,
Speaker 2: and I hired on with them to to sell mostly
Speaker 2: backpacking gear. But I once I got into the ski pursuit,
Speaker 2: I was selling skis for them too. They this is
Speaker 2: this will get us to Whitewater and Montana. I swear
Speaker 2: they were well known in the outdoor industry because they
Speaker 2: had been in business for so long made nationwide. People
Speaker 2: knew of this this shop. And so when I decided
Speaker 2: to leave their employ and move to Bozeman, I asked for,
Speaker 2: you know, a recommendation to a shop in in Bozeman
Speaker 2: that I had heard of that I also knew was
Speaker 2: quite you know, wealth well thought well regarded, and through
Speaker 2: that connection I got a job at a shop in
Speaker 2: Bozeman called Northern Lights Trading Company. They're kind of sort
Speaker 2: of still around. In fact, my old boss from there
Speaker 2: was just in Herd River a couple of days ago.
Speaker 2: One of two of his kids, who I remember walking
Speaker 2: around that shop in Bozeman is hodlers and infants are
Speaker 2: now living in White Salmon, and so I see them
Speaker 2: all the day. Yeah. But so I parlayed that work
Speaker 2: at Bill and Paul's sporthouse in Grand Reference, Michigan into
Speaker 2: working for Northern Lights Trading and Northern Lights was a
Speaker 2: climbing shop, a backcountry ski shop, a Nordic ski shop,
Speaker 2: and then most importantly, the passion of Mike Garcia, who
Speaker 2: was the owner and founder of that was whitewater. That
Speaker 2: was his baby, and so that shop had a Whitewater focus,
Speaker 2: and I didn't you know, that wasn't my thing. I
Speaker 2: hired on to sell backpacks and the same kind of
Speaker 2: stuff I was selling in West Michigan, and very quickly
Speaker 2: it became obvious that that was a cool thing that
Speaker 2: you could do, and so I did the standard thing.
Speaker 2: I went and took one of the role classes and
Speaker 2: got into a boat, and then that really wrote the
Speaker 2: rest of the rest of the story that landed me
Speaker 2: in Hood River, which was spending you know, the better
Speaker 2: part of from nineteen ninety six through you know, two
Speaker 2: thousand and six or seven doing nothing but whitewater kayaking,
Speaker 2: very little skiing, very little anything else. That's what we did.
Speaker 2: The calendar the year was was organized around skiing and
Speaker 2: the dead of the winter, and then the minute the
Speaker 2: spring runoff started, it was paddling locally in Bozeman. It
Speaker 2: was you know, Easter was always a trip hopefully to
Speaker 2: the Locksaw in Idaho. Fourth of July was always a
Speaker 2: you know, a week of debauchery and kayaking on the
Speaker 2: payats outside of Boise. You know, the fall was a
Speaker 2: couple of things in the Bear Tooth Mountains east and
Speaker 2: south of Bozeman. You know, so just the year kind
Speaker 2: of it was the whitewater calendar really, you know, at
Speaker 2: those rivers came into into into action, we would be
Speaker 2: there and so that really that was what got me
Speaker 2: in the the the rivers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's very much a seasonal chase. There was
Speaker 1: I just than an eastern version of it when I
Speaker 1: was doing it, you know, you'd start actually start brutally
Speaker 1: cold because some of the stuff in the a Aroun
Speaker 1: jacks was amazing then. And then as summer came and
Speaker 1: all the annual stuff was running off, we'd go up
Speaker 1: and go to the Autawa a few times because the
Speaker 1: Autawa was always running even when it's low. It's huge,
Speaker 1: and there's there's such a big overlap too amongst even more.
Speaker 1: I think, uh, Telemark skiers and kayakers, and there are
Speaker 1: downshill skiers and kayakers, although a lot of the Telemark
Speaker 1: skiers as they as they age, become downhill skiers.
Speaker 2: That's that's where I'm at now. Yeah, I jettisoned the
Speaker 2: freehill gear a long time ago, and and now since
Speaker 2: I don't ski all that much anymore, it's much easier
Speaker 2: to just walk in and go skiing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my my friends, the Whites, my my family in Colorado,
Speaker 1: one of my two families in Colorado, finally went to
Speaker 1: lock in Boots and they're just stunned at how much
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 2: It's good. I will say that it took me a
Speaker 2: little bit. It took me a good bit of one
Speaker 2: season to really get the hang of it, because it
Speaker 2: was quite a bit different and I was very confident
Speaker 2: that at the point when I made that switch, I had,
Speaker 2: you know, my telemark skied for ten plus years, and
Speaker 2: I was you know, I was you know, I was
Speaker 2: good at it. But making that switch, which I guess
Speaker 2: I presumed would be a little bit easier, it did
Speaker 2: become easier fairly quickly. But the initial part was there
Speaker 2: was some relearning to be sure. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: Now it's great.
Speaker 1: When I when I tried Teley skiing, it was right
Speaker 1: before I just had to face up to quit skiing,
Speaker 1: and I took a class and they were like, how'd
Speaker 1: you get down here? And I'm like, well, I downhill.
Speaker 1: I just didn't use my heel if I got to
Speaker 1: a spooky stretch, I just downhill skied.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But so back to boating, Yeah, what was your first boat?
Speaker 2: So I I was thinking about this in the the
Speaker 2: run up to our conversation and trying to get my
Speaker 2: back straight. And remember I was I started selling boats
Speaker 2: at Northern Lights, probably right at the end of at
Speaker 2: the very tail end of the Pirouette being the boat
Speaker 2: of choice. There were still a few of those in
Speaker 2: the shop, but they were mostly down in the basement
Speaker 2: and dust covered and and you know, and and that
Speaker 2: was kind of that was the end of that era,
Speaker 2: and so we moved into all the things, all the
Speaker 2: short boat era. So I I really my my heyday
Speaker 2: of paddling was at the advent of boat companies like
Speaker 2: Wavesport Chance Company out of Colorado, things like the X,
Speaker 2: things like the Z, things like the you know, the stubby.
Speaker 2: You know, that was that was my era. So so
Speaker 2: it's definitely the short boat thing. And obviously that is
Speaker 2: you know, it's changed dramatically. You know, it changes dramatically
Speaker 2: all the time and has quite a bit in the
Speaker 2: last few years. But that was where I kind of
Speaker 2: jumped in. And so to some degree it was an
Speaker 2: easier sport to learn, and the rivers that you were
Speaker 2: able to run, the difficulty of the rivers you were
Speaker 2: able to run fairly quickly in your I guess call
Speaker 2: it career of whitewater were made much more accessible by
Speaker 2: the technology. The boats were better.
Speaker 1: I was amazed when I started. They were like you
Speaker 1: get a dancer. I got a hydro dragonfly, and there
Speaker 1: were a couple others, But first off, they were made
Speaker 1: for people smaller than me for the most part, like
Speaker 1: a dancer I think was made for somebody one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty five to sixty five pounds. And the other
Speaker 1: problem is they're long and skinny. They're meant stuck in
Speaker 1: sticking holes. They didn't realize that yet, But if you
Speaker 1: owned a hydraulic sideways you could be there a while
Speaker 1: where the shorter that when the boats got shorter and
Speaker 1: more maneuverable, you could actually you could plain a lot
Speaker 1: of hydraulics that you were getting spanked in bigger boats.
Speaker 2: Well, I will agree with all of that. I will
Speaker 2: just make a note for any of the listeners out
Speaker 2: there that those boats did pioneer some of the hardest
Speaker 2: white water in.
Speaker 1: The Rocky, oh, the Rockies, all over the world.
Speaker 2: All over the world. I mean, I really can't say
Speaker 2: enough about. The one that comes to mind is the
Speaker 2: pioneering run that Rob Lesser and you launched and somebody
Speaker 2: else did on the on the box on the Clark
Speaker 2: Fork of the Yellowstone. I mean, that was a mission.
Speaker 2: They were in there for a week, and they were
Speaker 2: in boats they had no business being in there. And
Speaker 2: and certainly it's it's now run you know, much more regularly,
Speaker 2: but it certainly made it more fun I think it
Speaker 2: opened up the small boats definitely opened up the ability
Speaker 2: to just to use the river more creatively. You know,
Speaker 2: a small boat small and so if you if you
Speaker 2: look at it as I mean, I suppose I could
Speaker 2: analogize this to uh, painting, since that's your your gig
Speaker 2: is you know, it's the ability to use a tiny
Speaker 2: brush for details versus a big brush for big strokes.
Speaker 2: And so the smaller boats really allowed folks to I think,
Speaker 2: to get down some of those rivers, uh, not as
Speaker 2: a survival endeavor, but as a creative endeavor where they're
Speaker 2: able to sort of paint on that canvas, the river
Speaker 2: being the canvas, and those little boats allow those you know,
Speaker 2: tiny eddies to be you know caught, and those those
Speaker 2: maneuvers become a lot more interesting instead of just floating
Speaker 2: as if you're a piece of driftwood and making it
Speaker 2: through a rapid Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's there. It gives you more of a sports
Speaker 1: car aspect to it. Driving their bus. I was still
Speaker 1: skiing when I got started, and I used to tell
Speaker 1: people it's what's like your skiing, but the mountain moves,
Speaker 1: the features are still there, but the but everything's flowing
Speaker 1: over it and I love that the I'm not sure
Speaker 1: it's even it's an analogy. I'm looking for a word,
Speaker 1: but likening it to a creative endeavor because when you're
Speaker 1: when you're learning, and you're with your crew and your
Speaker 1: standard at a drop and you're trying to decide if
Speaker 1: you have the nerve and the scale to do it,
Speaker 1: and you're picking your line through it that you've got
Speaker 1: to put in your head to keep on, you realize
Speaker 1: everybody's picking their own line, and there's conversation back and
Speaker 1: forth and choosing and stuff. But uh, there's any number
Speaker 1: of ways to get down a complicated rapid and the
Speaker 1: higher your skill set and the more appropriate your gear
Speaker 1: is for it, the more creative you can be in
Speaker 1: in that.
Speaker 2: I would since you know, since I suppose the the
Speaker 2: broad strokes of our conversation are probably around where we
Speaker 2: interacted with fishing, I think that it's sort of similar
Speaker 2: to the pursuit of certainly you know, trout fishing, or
Speaker 2: or steel hit and salmon fishing. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: you and I could stand at one of those spots
Speaker 2: on the shoots, and while Barrett could certainly tell us
Speaker 2: that the fish is right behind that rock, you and
Speaker 2: I might approach how we fish to that fish, you know, differently,
Speaker 2: just like as you were suggesting a couple different people
Speaker 2: looking at a drop and how they're going to navigate
Speaker 2: a kayak through it would do it as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well it's it's funny. I didn't. I grew
Speaker 1: up wanting to do trips on my own. I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't have any idea. Well, I don't think it
Speaker 1: was as big, but there were still guides and outfitters
Speaker 1: and everything when I was a kid, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: something my family did at all, And so I came
Speaker 1: at it from wanting to develop skill sets so I
Speaker 1: could go on trips myself. So I needed to learn
Speaker 1: how to fish and out of camp and out a
Speaker 1: canoe on my own. And it was in the era
Speaker 1: of there weren't really classes, so you got a book
Speaker 1: and you started learning. Built Mason was it was the
Speaker 1: canoe guru from eastern Canada, and his books and his
Speaker 1: early videos were amazingly helpful. And then on trips I'd
Speaker 1: run into these kids at canoe camp that you'd go
Speaker 1: up for a week or actually it was usually uh
Speaker 1: three weeks or four weeks and you'd start off learn
Speaker 1: how to paddle, then you do learn how to cook,
Speaker 1: and then you do a weekend trip, and then a
Speaker 1: four day trip, and then a five day trip, and
Speaker 1: at the end of the end of the thing, you'd
Speaker 1: do like a ten day trip or something. We'd run
Speaker 1: into these groups in Canada, and I was thinking, why
Speaker 1: didn't I go to those? And it just wasn't something
Speaker 1: my family did. So what led to fishing? Just being
Speaker 1: on the river?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I was thinking about again, it's sort
Speaker 2: of in the run up to this conversation, I was
Speaker 2: sort of trying to get in my head the timeline
Speaker 2: and where I interacted initially with with fly fishing. And
Speaker 2: what I realized is is that, you know, I moved
Speaker 2: to Bozeman to pursue college and I'll put that in
Speaker 2: scare quotes or air quotes to college in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: late nineteen ninety four, early ninety five, and A River
Speaker 2: runs through It had just been released in nineteen four,
Speaker 2: and so you know, certainly the cultural zeitgeist if you
Speaker 2: were in the West, was you know that movie really
Speaker 2: you know making it well? And incidentally there's some great
Speaker 2: connections which I'll I'll allude to in a little bit
Speaker 2: about that movie and people that I've met subsequently in
Speaker 2: Bozeman who worked on the film. But nevertheless, I, you know,
Speaker 2: I had seen the film and that it just really
Speaker 2: interacted with my you know, my looking at the pictures
Speaker 2: of John lappt you know, skiing photos in the Valet
Speaker 2: catalog and the you know, Paul Parker's Freehield skiing book
Speaker 2: and the skiing and I'm like, this is just why
Speaker 2: I'm going to the West. And so but I did
Speaker 2: show up in Bozeman primarily with the idea of skiing
Speaker 2: in mind. And so the first summer that I was there,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I really don't recall when I bought
Speaker 2: gear first, but I'm not sure it was the first
Speaker 2: summer I was there. I think the first summer I
Speaker 2: was there, I spent primarily hooking up with rock climbing
Speaker 2: folks and doing some of the local climbing classics, and
Speaker 2: then also trying to pursue summer skiing. So I remember
Speaker 2: specifically the first summer I was there doing a few
Speaker 2: trips to walk in you know, on the dirt to
Speaker 2: get to the snow and summer ski. But soon there
Speaker 2: after either that summer or the subsequent year that I
Speaker 2: was there. I went to a sports shop in Bozeman
Speaker 2: called Bob Warden Sons. And they were a general sports shop.
Speaker 2: So where I was working at Northern Lights was more
Speaker 2: specialized with climbing gear, with paddle sports gear, with you know,
Speaker 2: higher end backpacking gear. Bob Warden's Sons was you know,
Speaker 2: pick your local sports retailer anywhere across the country, that's
Speaker 2: what they were. They had everything. I mean, you could
Speaker 2: buy hockey tape there, a hockey stick. You could buy
Speaker 2: football cleats and you know, a cup and a jockstrap,
Speaker 2: you know, and you could buy fly fishing gear. And
Speaker 2: so I went in there with what little money I
Speaker 2: had as a broke college student, and I bought a
Speaker 2: fluger metalist reel, and a Saint Croix rod of some
Speaker 2: variety or other, a fishing vest and a parent neoprene
Speaker 2: waiters and some boots, and off I went. And that
Speaker 2: was that's where it started. And I really, I really
Speaker 2: dove into it. I enjoyed it. And certainly the area
Speaker 2: around boseman Is is just a trout fisherman's paradise. I
Speaker 2: mean every river has, you know, tributaries all up and
Speaker 2: down the thing, and every one of those tributaries has
Speaker 2: another tributary. And so if you just want to fish
Speaker 2: in beautiful places for tiny fish, you can do that.
Speaker 2: You can fish on the gallet, and you can fish
Speaker 2: on the Mattis. I mean all of it, you know.
Speaker 2: So it was all right there, you know, just right
Speaker 2: right at the fingertips of you know, a college student.
Speaker 2: And I was thinking about this when we started talking
Speaker 2: about having this conversation. I was fishing on the hood
Speaker 2: maybe a week and a half ago, and I was
Speaker 2: wearing a pair of fingerless fox river gloves. I realized,
Speaker 2: those are the ones that I bought at Bob Wardensn's
Speaker 2: in either nineteen ninety five or ninety six. They're in
Speaker 2: terrible shape and they smell bad, but they're always in
Speaker 2: my jacket. They were in my jacket in my boat.
Speaker 2: Your hands, yeah, they still get my hands form. So
Speaker 2: that was where I got into it. And so, you know,
Speaker 2: I because Montana is big. I think the only people
Speaker 2: that really can understand this are people who lived either
Speaker 2: grew up in Montana or have lived there for an
Speaker 2: amount of time. Is the state's fucking huge and it's
Speaker 2: very enormous. It's enormous, and there's so much to do
Speaker 2: there that like I can say that I spent you know,
Speaker 2: five and a half years there skiing, skiing, kayaking and fishing,
Speaker 2: and I still never fished the Blackfoot. I still never fished,
Speaker 2: you know, some of the classics around Missoula. I never fished,
Speaker 2: you know, the Ruby, I mean, but I fished a
Speaker 2: whole lot of other shit, you know, and so it's
Speaker 2: hard you I just remember, if you stand in Linley Park,
Speaker 2: which is is that the name of it, there's a
Speaker 2: park on the east side of Bozeman where there's some
Speaker 2: hiking trails just in town. You know, easy place to
Speaker 2: go for a run. You can look out and you
Speaker 2: see seven different mountain ranges. Every one of those mountain
Speaker 2: ranges has skiing possibilities, has kayaking possibilities, has fishing opportunities.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, I fished a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2: I didn't fish some of the classics. I fished a
Speaker 2: lot of you know, neat places, but I fished a
Speaker 2: lot that was you know, that was my pursuit when
Speaker 2: the kayaking wasn't happening. And then sometimes just you know,
Speaker 2: in the midst of it, because it was something easy.
Speaker 2: You know, you could run out. I often did. I
Speaker 2: would run. I'd well run out. I would skip class
Speaker 2: and I would drive out to one of my favorite
Speaker 2: places to fish on the Gallot and was the lower
Speaker 2: part of the river down by a little town called Manhattan,
Speaker 2: which is just east excuse me, just west of Bozeman.
Speaker 2: Kind of the lower part of the Gallaton. There were
Speaker 2: a lot of white fish and kind of braided channels,
Speaker 2: but there were also really big rainbows tucked under the
Speaker 2: undercut banks and not a lot of fishing pressure because
Speaker 2: everyone wanted to fish. The classic scene at the end
Speaker 2: of a river runs through it is Brad Pitt standing
Speaker 2: in that silhouetted standing on that rock. It's casting. That
Speaker 2: is right below Squaw Peak, down stream from Big Sky,
Speaker 2: from the ski resort, and that's the canyon section of
Speaker 2: the Gallaton, which is where we would kayak. And also
Speaker 2: it's great fishing, but it's you know, it's where everyone fishes.
Speaker 2: So I always found myself trying to fish. I feel
Speaker 2: like this is something you where you and I a
Speaker 2: line a bit. You were always looking to do solo trips,
Speaker 2: you know, paddling, and I guess I was always looking
Speaker 2: to fish without other people around, so I would go
Speaker 2: you know, I would go out to less you know,
Speaker 2: crowded areas on the Gallaton that were not the A
Speaker 2: plus fishing. But I always had good fishing and I
Speaker 2: never people.
Speaker 1: So that's that's always my goal. I couldn't care less
Speaker 1: if it's a well known river, stream or creek, uh
Speaker 1: to not be that. The thing I love about fishing, paddling,
Speaker 1: being outside is that chance to connect to the world,
Speaker 1: the earth in a in a more primitive seems like
Speaker 1: a ridiculous word to use. I need more, but in
Speaker 1: a more simple way then as soon and I my
Speaker 1: last ten years, i've fished with people more than I
Speaker 1: did in the first fifty years and I and I
Speaker 1: love it. But I still love being alone or just
Speaker 1: with my dogs. One of the things I think dogs
Speaker 1: make you notice more so I think they're they're interesting addition,
Speaker 1: but I love being on water alone.
Speaker 2: I think that what I would argue, if if you
Speaker 2: press me, is is that whenever you fish, we'll just
Speaker 2: use fishing as the example, since that's the thing we're
Speaker 2: talking about. Whenever you fish with a pal, a buddy,
Speaker 2: two pals, it doesn't matter. It inevitably the discussion goes
Speaker 2: to gear, not the surroundings. The surroundings do come up,
Speaker 2: the beauty of the place you're in and all that,
Speaker 2: but it just inevitably ends up at gear talk. When
Speaker 2: you're by yourself, the gear talk, you got nobody to
Speaker 2: talk to about the gear, so you tend I think
Speaker 2: this is this is an argument. I'm just getting this
Speaker 2: argument for him right now. I'm not sure about it,
Speaker 2: but that you when you fish solo, you tend to
Speaker 2: take in the surroundings, maybe more than you would when
Speaker 2: you're with people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's it's funny. I also find I fish
Speaker 1: much more intently, which doesn't mean I'm any more focused
Speaker 1: on my fishing than I because I'm always I'm kind
Speaker 1: of notorious, at least with myself, for looking at everything
Speaker 1: other than my fly or my line or anything else.
Speaker 1: But I feel like I'm more focused on it. I
Speaker 1: was actually really shocked one time fishing with a friend
Speaker 1: who guides too, and he wasn't guiding me. We were
Speaker 1: just fishing, but he went into guide mode and next
Speaker 1: thing you know, I was waiting to be told what
Speaker 1: to do. And I like to learn, but I hate
Speaker 1: being told what to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So.
Speaker 1: Once you first pick up spade run.
Speaker 2: So I had an interesting sort of interaction with fishing
Speaker 2: and Oregon. So I moved to Oregon to pursue throwing
Speaker 2: myself off every waterfall that was available in paddle kayak
Speaker 2: in the winter here. And I really didn't understand the
Speaker 2: fishing in Oregon, and I was really kind of put
Speaker 2: off by it because the only thing that I could
Speaker 2: I could really figure out was that there was one
Speaker 2: trout stream and it was the Shoots. And so to
Speaker 2: my mind, that was really hard to adjust to having
Speaker 2: just come from Bozeman. Where As I said before, every
Speaker 2: river has a tributary, which has a tributary, which has
Speaker 2: a tributary, and they're all full of trout and then
Speaker 2: you can just go wherever and fish. And all of
Speaker 2: the rivers in the Northwest, which is one of the
Speaker 2: reasons they're so uniquely interesting for kayaking is they're all
Speaker 2: in sized in these you know, deep basalt canyons, which
Speaker 2: is great for whitewater because it means there's a bunch
Speaker 2: of waterfalls and cool canyons to paddle through. But what
Speaker 2: it means is there's none of those tributaries and free
Speaker 2: stone streams and the things that you're so used to
Speaker 2: in the Inner Mountain West, and so I kind of
Speaker 2: kind of hung up the fishing gear because I'm like,
Speaker 2: this is sort of dumb. I don't want to drive
Speaker 2: all the way out to the shoots and fight a
Speaker 2: bunch of people and fish to picky fish. You know
Speaker 2: that everyone's fished over. So I kind of stopped fishing,
Speaker 2: and then a couple friends of mine who were also
Speaker 2: trout fishermen, started to kind of pick away at you know,
Speaker 2: salmon and steehead fishing and two handed rods. At that point,
Speaker 2: this would have been two thousand and four to two
Speaker 2: thousand and six, somewhere in that range, that that gear
Speaker 2: was starting to become much more ubiquitous and much easier
Speaker 2: and more accessible. And so a couple of friends who
Speaker 2: I knew were fisherman also who had fished with a
Speaker 2: little bit, started to get into that and kind of
Speaker 2: drug me into it. I believe I was again trying
Speaker 2: to get my timeline straight. I believe that sometime around
Speaker 2: that my good friend Chad Foster lives here in town,
Speaker 2: had purchased a trip at the Native Fish Society annual
Speaker 2: auction to do a day with Barrett and Hickman on
Speaker 2: the Clackamus. And no, no, I'm sorry, it wasn't Barrett.
Speaker 2: It was Tom Larimer and Jeff on the Clackamas, and
Speaker 2: Chad invited me along. And I hadn't had a two
Speaker 2: handed rod in my hand ever, so I spent that
Speaker 2: day learning how to two hand cast. Hickman taught me
Speaker 2: how that day or Tom, I think Tom did. I
Speaker 2: think Jeff was fishing with Chad and so that was
Speaker 2: my first entree into it. And then I kind of
Speaker 2: just I kind of just kept going, you know, from
Speaker 2: that that point on.
Speaker 1: So, uh, Tom probably put a Loomis in your hand
Speaker 1: at that time, Okay, you.
Speaker 2: Know, maybe probably, I don't remember, you know, it was
Speaker 2: that so long ago, and you know, it was one
Speaker 2: of those those days. I don't remember that well because
Speaker 2: it was you know, I had leaky waiters and was
Speaker 2: pouring down rain, and it was the winter on the Clacamus,
Speaker 2: and it was a pretty miserable day. And I was
Speaker 2: also trying to learn something new and trying to you know,
Speaker 2: get proficient at it really fast, which I wasn't very
Speaker 2: good at.
Speaker 1: So it is it is funny. I have a nephew.
Speaker 1: I have two nephews that are do a lot of
Speaker 1: outdoor stuff and when families together, they will be tell
Speaker 1: a story and it my family's appalled at how miserable
Speaker 1: it is sometimes, and uh, it makes me so wishing
Speaker 1: I could be young again, because that there's something about
Speaker 1: the miss is part of it. The I mean, when
Speaker 1: you're so cold, I hate being cold. And when you're
Speaker 1: so cold you're barely able to function and you're still
Speaker 1: having fun. It's kind of amazing to me. Although this
Speaker 1: last say, six weeks being reintroduced to northeastern cold has
Speaker 1: not been really fun. I spent the last three days
Speaker 1: chipping away at the driveway for it to find me,
Speaker 1: trying to get ready for today because they's fifty two
Speaker 1: or fifty four and raining, so my driveways finally clean again.
Speaker 1: I was completely not prepared for thoughts about snowblowers, maybe
Speaker 1: getting somebody with a plow, all that crap. No thank you,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, Nate just left for some reason,
Speaker 1: so we're going to take a We're going to take
Speaker 1: a quick break. Patrick Lukaba of jay Moon Bamboo Rods
Speaker 1: is located down in southern Oregon along the Rogue River
Speaker 1: in Grant's Pass. That's where he spent the last several
Speaker 1: years developing tapers for three bamboos bay rods. He builds
Speaker 1: a light ten foot eight four weight trouts Bay, a
Speaker 1: sweet eleven foot six six weight summer steel and rod,
Speaker 1: and the one I like to call Little Thunder is
Speaker 1: eleven foot eight weight Coastal Special. There all hollow built
Speaker 1: and have what I love in a spey rod, a
Speaker 1: stiff tip and junk in the trunk. He also builds
Speaker 1: a powerful eight foot six weight single hand rod for
Speaker 1: those of you might want to take a two and
Speaker 1: a break and throw big drives or streamers or smallmouth bugs.
Speaker 1: Patty can be found at jaymoonworks dot com. That's works
Speaker 1: with an ex jaymoonworks dot com.
Speaker 2: A bird just flew into the window next to me
Speaker 2: here in my dining room, and I just got up
Speaker 2: to take a peek see if the thing was dead
Speaker 2: or been flown away.
Speaker 1: Well, one of the things I've been really surprised with
Speaker 1: in the woods out behind me. It's eastern hardwoods and
Speaker 1: full of undergrowth. I finally got so lime disease freaked out.
Speaker 1: I quit walking back there until we got snow then
Speaker 1: the dogs. That I've been back there, I'm seeing very
Speaker 1: few small birds, which I don't remember. When I lived
Speaker 1: up in western New York, it was always thick with
Speaker 1: small birds in the wintertime, eating every little seed off
Speaker 1: of everything. And an art critic I follow made a
Speaker 1: remark that he was hearing very few birds on his
Speaker 1: walks anymore, and it's got me a little freaked out
Speaker 1: about it. But where I lived in Oregon City, you'd
Speaker 1: hear a bird thump off the window, and I'd always
Speaker 1: go charging outside to see if was laying there because
Speaker 1: there's so many cats in the neighborhood. Yeah, and half
Speaker 1: a dozen times I found little, tiny, unconscious birds that
Speaker 1: you'd pick up and just hold for ten minutes, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden they'd come to it and fly away.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, how long ago din't you pick up space run?
Speaker 2: How long was I think we were? To the best
Speaker 2: of my limited brain power these days, I believe it
Speaker 2: was probably in the two thousand, probably two thousand and six,
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven, two thousand and six to two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: Issus kind of like you better like twenty years now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Yeah, So.
Speaker 1: You're sticking most of the Oregon. Are you traveling?
Speaker 2: Uh? I mean, I would love to travel more, but
Speaker 2: I end up, you know, fishing ends up being an
Speaker 2: active of you know, convenience, And I'm obviously blessed with
Speaker 2: the things that are convenient to me in Hood River,
Speaker 2: which are the shoots for summer steelhead, the click tat,
Speaker 2: you know, we've got the Hood the Hood River in
Speaker 2: town has a small but really fun winter steelhead run,
Speaker 2: and obviously, yeah, you know the metro area, Portland metro
Speaker 2: area for things like the Sandy or close by. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of opportunities. I don't travel a ton for fishing.
Speaker 2: I wish my schedule would allow a little bit more flexibility.
Speaker 2: I would like to spend more time out with you know,
Speaker 2: with Colby and Jeff at the coast because there's a
Speaker 2: lot out there. But the Oregon coastal rivers are are
Speaker 2: very fickle, and then they explode into you know, raging
Speaker 2: high water and then turn into trickles in the space
Speaker 2: of a day or two. And so the only good
Speaker 2: way to really hit those when they're at their peak
Speaker 2: is you sort of have to live out there, or
Speaker 2: at minimum you live in the Portland metro area, so
Speaker 2: it's almost and.
Speaker 1: Just to be really flexible. Even in Oregon City because
Speaker 1: of the traffic patterns, it would take me almost two
Speaker 1: hours to get out there. So you've got to be
Speaker 1: watching stuff and be just be ready to drop what
Speaker 1: you're doing when things are in shape, which is gonna
Speaker 1: be really hard to do from Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 1: Surprising to me back here in the East. Some of
Speaker 1: the best steel heading is through the winter months. And
Speaker 1: I just don't function in sub freezing. If I'm not moving,
Speaker 1: I want to be inside. I hands give out on me.
Speaker 1: And I was shocked to find out the first winter
Speaker 1: back out in Oregon. Winter is my season for fishing.
Speaker 1: I just love fishing the coastal stuff when it's like
Speaker 1: thirty five or forty and drizzly, rainy, whatever. Especially when
Speaker 1: it's like thirty six thirty seven and snowing. Oh that's
Speaker 1: just heaven to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So I don't get a chance to travel
Speaker 2: too much for fishing, you know, I wish that I
Speaker 2: that I did, But that's fine. I mean, I'm I'm
Speaker 2: able to pursue it in a way that you know,
Speaker 2: makes it makes it fun. And the as I said before,
Speaker 2: the things that I have in my backyard here in
Speaker 2: hood River, you know there they are things that other
Speaker 2: people travel across the world for. So I count my
Speaker 2: blessings that those are things that I get to do,
Speaker 2: you know, before work on a given day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that is the dream is to be able
Speaker 1: to go fish for two hours. Yeah, so talk about work.
Speaker 1: How'd you get into coffee?
Speaker 2: I got into coffee by way of being drunk in
Speaker 2: two roommates saying it was a good idea, and I said, sure,
Speaker 2: I'll help you with that. So yeah, they So at
Speaker 2: the time when we started the shop, my former business
Speaker 2: partners and I, there weren't a lot of options in
Speaker 2: hood River. There there had been a history of a
Speaker 2: couple very specific coffee shops that have been around for
Speaker 2: a very long time, but at that point they had
Speaker 2: those had all kind of closed up or people had
Speaker 2: retired or sold them. And one of our business partners
Speaker 2: was traveling back and forth to Portland regularly for work
Speaker 2: and had started to encounter things like Stumptown, you know,
Speaker 2: some of the higher end roaster retailers, and thought that
Speaker 2: that would be a good fit for Hood River and
Speaker 2: I didn't disagree. I you know, I knew the cafe
Speaker 2: culture from being in college Embozeman and knowing that it's
Speaker 2: it's a it's cool thing to have available for a community,
Speaker 2: and so yeah, so it was it was happenstance in
Speaker 2: that a friend of ours who ran a kayak school,
Speaker 2: the Colombia Gorge Kayak School, was renting a space in
Speaker 2: the back of the building that our cafe is in now.
Speaker 2: And he got wind that the tenant in the front
Speaker 2: of the building was leaving, and he knew that my
Speaker 2: roommates at the time and I had been kicking this
Speaker 2: idea around, and he said, oh, you should walk down
Speaker 2: there and take a look at that spot. And we
Speaker 2: walked down and looked at the spot, and we're like, okay, sure,
Speaker 2: let's do it. So we signed the lease in April
Speaker 2: and then did a massive gut of the place on
Speaker 2: our own because we didn't have any money. And we're
Speaker 2: opened by August of two thousand and four. So that
Speaker 2: was it. And so the three of us kind of
Speaker 2: worked in there. We had employees, and then you know,
Speaker 2: obviously all of us still had day jobs, and so
Speaker 2: slowly but surely, just through attrition and other life circumstances,
Speaker 2: I ended up being the last guy standing, and that
Speaker 2: was in about twenty eleven, twenty ten, and so now
Speaker 2: I'm the only owner and I'm still in there slinging
Speaker 2: car I still work behind the bar four or five
Speaker 2: days a week, so throw the apron on and make coffee.
Speaker 1: Do you enjoy it?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: It seems it seems like being part of a community
Speaker 1: like that would be really fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's super fun. I mean it does. I mean, well,
Speaker 2: it doesn't offer as much flexibility to travel for fishing
Speaker 2: as I'd like. It does allow for the flexibility to
Speaker 2: do those sorts of things where I'm able to sneak
Speaker 2: out and be on the dishoots for you know, two
Speaker 2: hours in the morning and in you know, September, or
Speaker 2: run over to the click atat or run down to
Speaker 2: the hood and fish before work or after work, so
Speaker 2: that there's there's that flexibility. I guess at this point,
Speaker 2: I'm I don't know if I I don't I don't
Speaker 2: know if I could work for somebody else, is what
Speaker 2: I was about to say. But then I also, on
Speaker 2: the other hand, think, God, I'd love to work for
Speaker 2: somebody else and not have the responsibility of all the
Speaker 2: employees and all that. Where someone just said, go stable
Speaker 2: these pieces of paper together all day, I'd be like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's awesome. I just want to stable the papers together
Speaker 2: all day and not think about anything else, you know.
Speaker 2: So it's a it's you have to weigh those things
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 1: It's it's funny. Like the only specific thing I can
Speaker 1: remember from going to school for business is the economist
Speaker 1: Peter Drucker saying that the day you go to work
Speaker 1: for yourself is the day you become unemployable. But I've
Speaker 1: had long stretches where I wish I could have a job.
Speaker 1: I just don't have a skill set. I mean, the
Speaker 1: economy moved away from my skill set.
Speaker 2: It as for mind too, at fifty four years old,
Speaker 2: right now, I wouldn't know what to I mean, I
Speaker 2: suppose at best what I would do is I would
Speaker 2: try to pitch myself as as a leader, you know. So,
Speaker 2: I mean that's one thing beyond just the hard skills
Speaker 2: of being able to be a you know, twenty one
Speaker 2: years as a barista. I mean, I'm very skilled at that,
Speaker 2: but I'm also have I've definitely developed leadership skills that
Speaker 2: you know, are undeniable and just be by necessity, you know. So,
Speaker 2: And I know this. I can't get my hands off
Speaker 2: my own back padding them right now. Sorry, but that's
Speaker 2: what I mean by this. But I do have a
Speaker 2: history at this point of having you know, employees who
Speaker 2: have been with me for multiple years. I've had multiple employees,
Speaker 2: you know, for six and eight ten years. I have
Speaker 2: you know, live in town who worked for me a
Speaker 2: long time ago, who are still in the shop every
Speaker 2: day as customers, And so I do there is some
Speaker 2: validation to the efficacy of my leadership skills. And so
Speaker 2: to your question, what would I do if I got
Speaker 2: a job, I don't really know, but I think that's
Speaker 2: what I would have to do is pitch it as
Speaker 2: some sort of a you know, a leadership role, because
Speaker 2: I think that's where my skill set really is at
Speaker 2: this point. But certainly sort of technical proficiency, I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, that's.
Speaker 1: Hey, hey, we're both zuoming, come on, man. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that must be really helpful in your because you do
Speaker 1: quite a bit of community involvement stuff.
Speaker 2: I do. I was thinking about how I got to
Speaker 2: that to.
Speaker 1: A community, but you're quite involved in your community. Would
Speaker 1: be a nicer way of saying that.
Speaker 2: Sure I do I do good work. I try to
Speaker 2: do good work. I was thinking about that how I
Speaker 2: got motivated to do those things. And what I realized is,
Speaker 2: so this is I'm going to butcher this a little bit.
Speaker 2: But there was a Timbering family in southern Oregon out
Speaker 2: of Roseberg, last name was Ford, and set up a
Speaker 2: program of scholarships throughout Oregon to teach leadership skills to
Speaker 2: folks in rural Oregon, in rural communities. And the way
Speaker 2: they would they would pursue this is they would come
Speaker 2: into a community, they would pitch it to someone who's
Speaker 2: already a leader in the community and say, go, get
Speaker 2: you know X number of people that you think would
Speaker 2: would benefit from this or would you know if they
Speaker 2: learned some of these leadership skills, would would become a
Speaker 2: net benefit to your community later down the road. And
Speaker 2: so back in about it had to have been two
Speaker 2: thousand and six, two thousand and seven, one of my
Speaker 2: employees at the time and myself were were asked if
Speaker 2: we wanted to participate in that program, the Ford Family
Speaker 2: Foundation program, and so we did. My friend John, who's
Speaker 2: still he's like my little brother. He and I went
Speaker 2: through that program, and both of us have subsequently kind
Speaker 2: of stuck with it. You know. It was the program
Speaker 2: was teaching leadership skills, you know, two folks in rural Oregon,
Speaker 2: to to get those communities to have those those natural
Speaker 2: leaders within within them to to uh, you know, get
Speaker 2: projects done and get project sated. And so that I
Speaker 2: suppose probably set the hook a little bit. And then
Speaker 2: from there I did two terms or eight years on
Speaker 2: the Hood River City Planning Commission. I was the chair
Speaker 2: of the Planning Commission for a couple of those years,
Speaker 2: so I learned how to run meetings. Robert's rules. I
Speaker 2: still kind of remember and think I can muddy through
Speaker 2: if I needed to run a hearing right now.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And then obviously, as we talked about it the beginning,
Speaker 2: I'm a member of the Mountained Economic Alliance, which is
Speaker 2: a small We are a micro lender and our remit
Speaker 2: is to lend to businesses or individuals starting businesses in Bosco,
Speaker 2: Clacamus and River counties. And one of the criteria for
Speaker 2: our lending is that they've been denied by a bank
Speaker 2: for business lending. So we are a lender of last resort,
Speaker 2: but of you know, maximum opportunity. And then what's the
Speaker 2: other thing. Oh yeah, the bridge. So the bridge that connects.
Speaker 2: For those of you listening who have been out to
Speaker 2: Hood River or White Salmon or both, you've probably driven
Speaker 2: across a really narrow bridge that seems scaried across. And
Speaker 2: it's because it just across last October. It's one hundred,
Speaker 2: one hundred year anniversary. And so that bridge needs to go.
Speaker 2: And so there is an outfit called the Hood River
Speaker 2: White Salmon Bridge Authority, which is separate of the Port
Speaker 2: of Hood River, which is to get funding, design and
Speaker 2: build and implement a new bridge across the river. And
Speaker 2: I'm a board member representing Cood River County, a board
Speaker 2: member alternate representing Cood River County on the Hood River
Speaker 2: White Sammo Bridge Authority working on that project. That's maybe
Speaker 2: travel for fishing.
Speaker 1: It's uh, that's just a colossal project.
Speaker 2: It is. It is really cool. I mean, my interest
Speaker 2: in being involved in the bridge project was because actually,
Speaker 2: you know what I should I'm going to summarize all
Speaker 2: of my community involvement is because because I have been
Speaker 2: for the last twenty some years standing behind a coffee bar,
Speaker 2: people ask me questions and the thing that drives me
Speaker 2: the most batshit crazy is there's just a lot of
Speaker 2: bad information out there, and I don't want to perpetuate
Speaker 2: that bad information. And the easiest way to know what
Speaker 2: the right answers are and the correct information is is
Speaker 2: to be a part of one of the community organizations
Speaker 2: that's working on these projects and have the right information.
Speaker 2: And so when the opportunity arose to volunteer for the
Speaker 2: Bridge Authority, I knew that for the next however many
Speaker 2: years it took to build a bridge that on a
Speaker 2: daily or hourly basis, I was going to have people
Speaker 2: coming into the coffee shop and asking me across the bar,
Speaker 2: what's going on with this? And instead of not knowing
Speaker 2: the answer and not knowing where to point people for
Speaker 2: the answers, I figured I would do what I always do,
Speaker 2: which is I just volunteered and decided to be part
Speaker 2: of the organization. And so now I don't know all
Speaker 2: the answers, but I can at least give people. I
Speaker 2: can give people accurate information, and that that feels like
Speaker 2: the right thing to do, feels like what I should
Speaker 2: be doing.
Speaker 1: So what It's funny years ago, when I lived in
Speaker 1: Western New York that down my kids went to school
Speaker 1: in towns especially butted up to each other and they
Speaker 1: decided they wanted to just combine it. And there was
Speaker 1: this big stink in town, people bitching about all the
Speaker 1: dumb options for the name and stuff. And then one
Speaker 1: day in the grocery store, the I think that the
Speaker 1: woman behind me in line was complaining about it being
Speaker 1: called Bloomfield, and I turned around and asked her. I said,
Speaker 1: did you vote? And he goes, well, no, And I
Speaker 1: said the final vote was like forty eight to fifty seven.
Speaker 1: Hardly anybody voted. Why are people complaining if you don't
Speaker 1: even make the effort to get involved?
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, and I would. I'll pile on with that
Speaker 2: and say that I don't think everyone needs to get involved,
Speaker 2: because that doesn't work either, But somebody asked to. And
Speaker 2: I don't mean to suggest by any means that I'm
Speaker 2: uniquely qualified to be that person who's involved. I'm just
Speaker 2: interested enough and willing to go through.
Speaker 1: Well, you'll put the effort in get involved. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think one of the things on a local level,
Speaker 1: and I'm the worst defender because I'm not involved at
Speaker 1: all right now. But if there's things happening that you
Speaker 1: don't like. If you're sitting around waiting for somebody else
Speaker 1: to stop them, you're probably going to be disappointed. I
Speaker 1: know years ago, when I was in college, I was
Speaker 1: really involved in the local TU chapter and we did
Speaker 1: a big statewide event and despite all the talk, it
Speaker 1: was pretty much put on by three of us, and
Speaker 1: it was really about a ten person job because most
Speaker 1: people are willing to give an opinion. But that's where
Speaker 1: it stops.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely, And it's you know what's been interesting
Speaker 2: is with that community involvement, it's made it easier and
Speaker 2: more interesting for me to get involved with groups like
Speaker 2: the Native Fish Society and be active, reasonably active within
Speaker 2: that organization and an active you know, trying to work
Speaker 2: on projects around our our waterways, you know, in and
Speaker 2: around Hood River. So I'm always up for those those
Speaker 2: fights as well when it makes sense.
Speaker 1: Well, it's it's nice too when you did you get
Speaker 1: involved in something like that, you just meet more people
Speaker 1: with similar interests and uh, some of the some of
Speaker 1: uh my buddy Terry Rogers, I wouldn't know if I
Speaker 1: hadn't gone in to do red counts through Native Fish.
Speaker 1: And you've gotten to be really good friends. So Nate,
Speaker 1: tell me how you got started doing leather work.
Speaker 2: Well, I got started, uh, you know, by happenstance, like
Speaker 2: I think a lot of folks do, getting into various
Speaker 2: things that they eventually get interested in. I was searching
Speaker 2: around for an idea years ago to come up with
Speaker 2: some Christmas gifts for all my my close you know
Speaker 2: friends who were also my fishing buddies. And you know,
Speaker 2: it occurred to me, I think, I'm not sure how
Speaker 2: much of this you'll keep from the previous version. But
Speaker 2: we had talked a little bit about Arnie Mason. So
Speaker 2: there's a gentleman in southern Oregon who did fly wallets
Speaker 2: and leather fly wallets and some really beautiful real cases.
Speaker 2: And my wife had gotten me one of his fly
Speaker 2: wallets as a gift maybe the year before, and you know,
Speaker 2: I loved it. It was it was too big. It
Speaker 2: was quite a big fly wallet. It wasn't really a
Speaker 2: pocket size one, which which is totally fine, But that
Speaker 2: got me into this idea that the sort of the
Speaker 2: subsequent year that I wanted to make something in a
Speaker 2: little pocket size fly wallet for all my fishing buddies.
Speaker 2: And so I went to you know, as many people do.
Speaker 2: I went to Tandy Leather in Portland and bought just
Speaker 2: the rudimentary tools and some raw materials and went at
Speaker 2: it and made them little fly wallets. And you know,
Speaker 2: I had material left over and had the tool and
Speaker 2: decided that, well, what else can I make out of
Speaker 2: that stuff? And so you know that spurred, well, if
Speaker 2: I can make a wallet with you know, shearling in
Speaker 2: it for flies, I could surely make a wallet that
Speaker 2: carries cards or cash. And so that's where it really
Speaker 2: sprang from. And I haven't really stopped since. I guess,
Speaker 2: you know, somebody, I think it's probably getting on to
Speaker 2: be almost ten years close to that by now of
Speaker 2: doing it, and it's it's really been. It's been. I
Speaker 2: didn't realize I needed a hobby, and I didn't realize
Speaker 2: how much I really liked to make things until I
Speaker 2: started doing it. And now I really is.
Speaker 1: That kind of the first thing you started making?
Speaker 2: It is? It is in my background when I, as
Speaker 2: we talked about before, I had worked in outdoor retail,
Speaker 2: and so I monkeyed around with backpacks and ski gear
Speaker 2: and climbing gear and paddling gear and gotten pretty pretty
Speaker 2: interested in how those things are made. And when I
Speaker 2: first moved to Hood River, a couple of years after
Speaker 2: I was here, I ended up working for the folks
Speaker 2: at Decine when they were still here. I did product
Speaker 2: development for their backpack and travel bagline, and so that's
Speaker 2: where I really got into understanding how packs and bags
Speaker 2: are made. I mean we I would take two sometimes
Speaker 2: three trips to Asia a year to you know, go
Speaker 2: through all the samples and work at the factory with
Speaker 2: our factory partners, and so I really got immersed in
Speaker 2: sort of sewing techniques and how things were put together.
Speaker 2: But I never thought about doing it myself. I just
Speaker 2: was interested in it. And once I made that first
Speaker 2: set of fly wallets for my buddies, that those two things,
Speaker 2: although they were separated by many years, sort of really
Speaker 2: came together and I kind of found a thing I
Speaker 2: really liked, which is I like making stuff, and you know,
Speaker 2: I'm so still so bad at it that I you know,
Speaker 2: I just am continually learning and trying to figure it
Speaker 2: out and get better at it. And you know, work for.
Speaker 1: I would say, that's that's the wrong word. You're not
Speaker 1: bad at it. The the things I have from you
Speaker 1: show meticulousness and a good aesthetic, a niceyesthetic. So nope,
Speaker 1: not bad. Maybe maybe not as experienced as you want
Speaker 1: to be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think what I realized right away
Speaker 2: with making things was number one, I really enjoyed the
Speaker 2: process of designing things. There's certainly, you know, one avenue
Speaker 2: that you can take with leather goods in any of
Speaker 2: this stuff is you can you can buy patterns and
Speaker 2: and create things based on someone else's designs. And that
Speaker 2: really wasn't that didn't interest me at all. What I
Speaker 2: really got interested in was coming up with my own
Speaker 2: designs and coming up with ideas that met sort of
Speaker 2: my needs. I guess more than anything else, I never
Speaker 2: intended it to be a you know, a no. I mean,
Speaker 2: it is a business, but I didn't intend it to
Speaker 2: be a you know, a retail style business. So I've
Speaker 2: always had the freedom to build the things that I
Speaker 2: want to carry. So like, if I want to carry
Speaker 2: a cool wall, I make one for myself. And you know,
Speaker 2: but I'm thoughtful about keeping track of what I did,
Speaker 2: how I did it. I've got copious notes on everything
Speaker 2: that I built, and I've got a file for that
Speaker 2: with all the patterns, and so it's it's a really
Speaker 2: fun process and that respect in that it it's everything
Speaker 2: from you know, getting out the ruler and the grid
Speaker 2: paper and designing things to seeing it come to life
Speaker 2: and foam first maybe and then you know, into a
Speaker 2: real life product that I get to carry around. And
Speaker 2: because I have that freedom to and I'm not a
Speaker 2: slave to trying to sell things to the marketplace, I
Speaker 2: do get to make things that maybe are a little
Speaker 2: bit different, but that I know will hold up to
Speaker 2: my own use. I mean, I use all the stuff
Speaker 2: that I make, and so I'm very confident when I
Speaker 2: do sell a piece to someone that it will it
Speaker 2: will function the way it's intended to. So yeah, so
Speaker 2: that's that's where it's it's and it's branched into all
Speaker 2: the things that happen when you someone knows that you
Speaker 2: make leather things, which is, you know, a constant string
Speaker 2: of can you fix this? Can you repair this? Can
Speaker 2: you put a strap on this? You know, for various
Speaker 2: things in people. And then I've done a lot of
Speaker 2: custom kind of fun custom work. I mean I have
Speaker 2: menu wine menus at a couple of restaurants here in
Speaker 2: the Gorge. I have wrapped the yokes on two different
Speaker 2: people's cessna's you know that didn't have wraps before, so
Speaker 2: doing essentially plane steering wheel wraps. Last fall, I did
Speaker 2: a huge project with a local welding custom welding outfit.
Speaker 2: They were building railings for this house up on the
Speaker 2: click Atat and I did a thirteen foot railing across
Speaker 2: a loft, you know, down into the main space of
Speaker 2: the house, and also a handrail and a safety railing
Speaker 2: on the other side of this set of stairs. So
Speaker 2: I did, yeah, on the handrail, the safety rail along
Speaker 2: the side of the stairs, we wrapped that in leather,
Speaker 2: and then the two railings I guess, well, I guess
Speaker 2: those are the safety railings. What we did is we
Speaker 2: figured out how to put the welded spindles in and
Speaker 2: then we laced leather through all of that all thirteen
Speaker 2: feet so there was a continuous piece of leather wrapped
Speaker 2: through that entire thing. So it added this really neat
Speaker 2: texture and color to it. Obviously, the because of the
Speaker 2: safety requirements, the spindles were where they needed to be
Speaker 2: to meet code. But then in between all of that
Speaker 2: we strung leather. So that was a huge project. That
Speaker 2: project was probably six months total. Time, you know, from
Speaker 2: design to having our friends at Future Folks Supply Company
Speaker 2: here in Hood River did all the welding, the custom welding.
Speaker 2: So took them, you know, forever to get those railings
Speaker 2: built and then get them installed in the house. And
Speaker 2: then I spent gosh, I probably spent two weeks, you know,
Speaker 2: at least three or four days a week. I think
Speaker 2: I did something like, I don't know, like forty two
Speaker 2: hours of a lapse time sitting in that house on
Speaker 2: my knees, hands and knees, stringing leather and stitching it
Speaker 2: through those railings.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: It was a crazy project, and it was way bigger
Speaker 2: than that I had anticipated that it would be when
Speaker 2: we when we bid it out. Luckily I bid it
Speaker 2: out well enough to cover my cost and my labor
Speaker 2: that I didn't screw up too bad. But the actual
Speaker 2: amount of work that was evolved in it was it
Speaker 2: was nutty. I don't know that it's like my aesthetic.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I would put that railing in
Speaker 2: my house, but for a River cabin on the click
Speaker 2: at that it was kind of perfect. It really, it
Speaker 2: really worked well with the interior design gal from Seattle.
Speaker 2: It turned out nice, but that was a cool So
Speaker 2: just by way of saying that it's it's you know,
Speaker 2: started at basic pocket sized fly wallets and now has
Speaker 2: gone into with future folks supply. I also did a
Speaker 2: coffee table, a shelf underneath a slab of metal coffee
Speaker 2: table that we strung a big piece of leather to
Speaker 2: make an undershelf like a bookshelf underneath it. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: I've done a lot of really unique things. And you know,
Speaker 2: as I mentioned before, the litany of repairs. You know,
Speaker 2: can you fix this pair of boots my dog chewed through?
Speaker 2: And I take on those projects and I never say
Speaker 2: yes first. I always make someone bring me the repair
Speaker 2: item first, because some of that stuff, you know, it's
Speaker 2: just too hard to you have to take it all
Speaker 2: the way apart down to it. In some things, the
Speaker 2: way that they're constructed, they were never meant to be repaired.
Speaker 2: This is one of the things that's been quite interesting,
Speaker 2: and it is it's definitely affected how I build the
Speaker 2: things that I build. Is I do try with everything
Speaker 2: that I put together, I do try to think what
Speaker 2: would happen if I had to do a repair on this,
Speaker 2: and I take it apart and put it back together.
Speaker 2: So the perfect or the best analogy is shoes and
Speaker 2: boots with the advent of you know, glue and rubber
Speaker 2: and things, soles on work boots and shoes in general
Speaker 2: are glued on. Now you can't really resole them. They're
Speaker 2: not meant to be that way. You can't take them
Speaker 2: apart and put them back together. The stitch down style boots,
Speaker 2: whether it be a pair of Whites or Nicks or
Speaker 2: you know some of the danners, those things are made
Speaker 2: to be resold and taken apart and reconfigured as they age.
Speaker 2: And so it's been interesting as I've gotten repairs in
Speaker 2: from people a repair projects and had to say no
Speaker 2: because I can't take things all the way apart and
Speaker 2: put them back together. I've kind of I've educated my
Speaker 2: own products in a way that or I've created my
Speaker 2: products in a way that I know that with all
Speaker 2: of them, I can take them apart easily and do
Speaker 2: a repair if I need to, which makes me feel
Speaker 2: good because you know, I can't tell what people are
Speaker 2: going to do with a you know, a tote bag
Speaker 2: that I give them and they're dog Couto. In fact,
Speaker 2: our neighboring business to the coffee shop Toky Art Supply
Speaker 2: here in hood River. The gal who was at Janet,
Speaker 2: she commissioned me to make a wallet for her, and
Speaker 2: you know, it was cool. It was a fun project
Speaker 2: because it melded two different wallet styles that I had
Speaker 2: into one a little bit different, you know than I'd
Speaker 2: done before, and so it was it was a cool project.
Speaker 2: It was super fun. I gave it to her and
Speaker 2: two days later her pet rabbit had chewed mostly a
Speaker 2: hole right through it, and so it was one that
Speaker 2: I had to do some repair work on. And I
Speaker 2: was glad that I designed it the way I did
Speaker 2: because it wasn't that hard to fit. I mean, it
Speaker 2: was complicated to take it apart and fix the thing,
Speaker 2: but I was able to do it, and I felt
Speaker 2: validated in some of the design choices. So yeah, so
Speaker 2: that's you know, at this point with the I build
Speaker 2: stuff for I have, I only just this year started
Speaker 2: to have a little bit of a retail presence. I
Speaker 2: have a few of my wallet styles and a few
Speaker 2: other things at a local artist co op consignment shop
Speaker 2: in Parkdale called the four to one. One of my
Speaker 2: very early purchasers of a wallet, this gal named Anna,
Speaker 2: who owns the four to one. She badgered me into
Speaker 2: putting some of my stuff up in her spot, and
Speaker 2: so I do have a little bit of a retail
Speaker 2: presence now, but she doesn't push me to either you know,
Speaker 2: refill it or not. I can, I don't have to,
Speaker 2: but I sometimes, you know, when I get the urge too,
Speaker 2: I can build a little pile of stuff and bring
Speaker 2: it up to her and have it kind of sell
Speaker 2: as as needed. Otherwise I'm basically selling two people who
Speaker 2: I know, and that's until this year. I think this
Speaker 2: is an important I know this is an important It's
Speaker 2: an important point point to me in why I do
Speaker 2: this is I love knowing that almost everything that I've
Speaker 2: made is in the hands of someone that I either
Speaker 2: know personally or no close to personally within you know,
Speaker 2: a friend of a friend and close close associates, and
Speaker 2: that that is really rewarding to me. It's not that
Speaker 2: I'm not that interested in having all my stuff go
Speaker 2: into anonymous hands. And that's been a bit of a
Speaker 2: jumb spent this year with the things that I have
Speaker 2: sold up at the four to one. In part tail
Speaker 2: is I have had people show up here at the
Speaker 2: coffee shop while I'm slinging coffee and say, hey, thanks
Speaker 2: for the wallet. I got one of your wallets. And
Speaker 2: there are people that I don't know, I don't recognize,
Speaker 2: and I might know them from town, but I don't
Speaker 2: know how they would have gotten a hold of one
Speaker 2: of my pieces, because I do keep it kind of
Speaker 2: a close rain on it. And then I have to
Speaker 2: kind of, you know, in my own head, kind of
Speaker 2: shake my head and realize, like, oh, yeah, I forgot
Speaker 2: I have stuff that's available to the public now and
Speaker 2: where some rando could buy something of mine. And so
Speaker 2: that's a little bit of an adjustment to that because
Speaker 2: I don't It's not I guess I think I said
Speaker 2: just a second ago. I like to have control over it.
Speaker 2: It's not a control issue. It's more I want the
Speaker 2: things to go into the hands of people who I
Speaker 2: know will appreciate them and use them, instead of buying
Speaker 2: them and throwing them in a dusty drawer or giving
Speaker 2: them to somebody who won't won't appreciate it. And that's
Speaker 2: that is a I suppose a bit of a level
Speaker 2: of selfishness because I put a lot of time and
Speaker 2: effort into the thing, and so I like to make
Speaker 2: sure that people are going to use it because it's
Speaker 2: meant to be used. I mean, none of this stuff
Speaker 2: is meant to be you know, sitting in a drawer.
Speaker 2: It's meant to go in your pocket and get the
Speaker 2: shit beat out of it and you know, go on
Speaker 2: adventures with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's It's funny that when you go from something
Speaker 1: being a hobby to getting paid for it, there is
Speaker 1: a a mental adjustment on where that place is in
Speaker 1: your life. You know, when it becomes a source of money.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid and I first I've sold
Speaker 1: a few drawgs and stuff, I'd be all excited because
Speaker 1: I could go buy something fun. And then one day
Speaker 1: you sell something big and you realize, oh, I need
Speaker 1: snow tires and it's just your cash flow. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it does. It puts you in a different spot. And
Speaker 1: the flip side for me is I got a I
Speaker 1: can't remember, I got an email or a text. I
Speaker 1: think it was an email from a guy asked me
Speaker 1: if I recognize this painting and I said yeah, and
Speaker 1: I had a scratch in it, and he said, can
Speaker 1: you tell me what it's worth? Like I said, well,
Speaker 1: I can tell you what I sold it for. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I said, and if you send it to me,
Speaker 1: because it's not that big a piece, it won't cost
Speaker 1: you very much money. And I'll take the varnish off
Speaker 1: and revarnish it for you and get rid of that scratch.
Speaker 1: And he goes, oh, no, I don't mind the scratch.
Speaker 1: It makes me happy about where I got it. I
Speaker 1: paid five dollars for this at Goodwill.
Speaker 2: Oh man, how do you navigate that?
Speaker 1: You just say it good, I'm glad you're happy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's funny to me that somebody would
Speaker 1: pay me what they did for that and then when
Speaker 1: they redecorated, just take it to Goodwill. But yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's there. That's the owner's prerogative.
Speaker 2: Oh totally. And I don't think I was trying to
Speaker 2: suggest that I want to take control of how people
Speaker 2: use the things I make for them, but I do.
Speaker 2: But I do want to make sure that they do
Speaker 2: get used. I mean, I feel like it's silly for
Speaker 2: them not to. I mean, I think you'd feel the
Speaker 2: same way if someone bought something and left it wrapped
Speaker 2: up in the brown paper and never put it off.
Speaker 2: I mean, then it's not doing what it's supposed to do.
Speaker 1: I have a friend up in the Rondacks who makes
Speaker 1: just spectacular guide boats, a traditional Androndeck guideboat, but they're
Speaker 1: all made to hang in really expensive lodges. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he he would kill to have someone use his over
Speaker 1: a lifetime and wear it out and have to bring
Speaker 1: in for repair.
Speaker 2: And nobody does.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, because I mean his his boats. The
Speaker 1: last one he sold was like sixty five thousand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's it's not something you're probably going to take
Speaker 1: your grandson on a you know, a trip in although
Speaker 1: if I had the money to buy one, I.
Speaker 2: Would yeah, hell yeah, use it all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So what do you make and what are you
Speaker 1: conjuring next to make?
Speaker 2: Well? Funny, in between our conversations last time and now,
Speaker 2: I had somebody reach out to me about a just
Speaker 2: a trout fishing leader wallet, and I've never made one.
Speaker 2: I don't know why. It seems silly. I mean I
Speaker 2: end up, like you said, I'm steelhead fishing most of
Speaker 2: the time, and so I have kit for all that gear,
Speaker 2: and when I do go trout fishing, I basically just
Speaker 2: jam a bunch of shit in my you know, in
Speaker 2: my pocket and my waiters. Because I don't do it
Speaker 2: that often. I'm not as as tricked out, you know,
Speaker 2: and organized as as people that do it really regularly are.
Speaker 2: And it just, yeah, it was kind of a fun.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: It's a friend of mine and he had just asked
Speaker 2: if I if I had if I do one, and
Speaker 2: I said no, I never have, and he was like, well,
Speaker 2: don't do anything. I'm like, I no, no, it's okay, I
Speaker 2: want to do it. So it's kind of fun. I've
Speaker 2: got things out on the workbench right now to do,
Speaker 2: you know, product development again, you know, to start from
Speaker 2: scratch and kind of figure out how I wanted to work.
Speaker 2: And so that's kind of fun. I've gotten very far
Speaker 2: yet because we've had family in town for the holiday,
Speaker 2: but that's the next thing that I'm gonna jump into.
Speaker 2: And then at some point, usually around this time of year,
Speaker 2: I get a frantic text from Schomberg saying he needs
Speaker 2: bags for his reels. He likes to particularly wait until
Speaker 2: it's the coldest possible possible, the most cold days in
Speaker 2: my shop, which is unheeded half of my garage. He
Speaker 2: seems to know when it's going to be really cold.
Speaker 2: He's trying to keep me hardy. So sometime soonish, I
Speaker 2: presume I'll be getting a text from him about reel
Speaker 2: bags for for his next batch of reels, so those
Speaker 2: will be kind of the next big things. And then
Speaker 2: after that, I do have another friend of mine needs
Speaker 2: to yank the yokes out of their their other airplane
Speaker 2: while they're not using it this winter, and I need
Speaker 2: to wrap those yokes make him look look fancy like
Speaker 2: their other plane. In fact, I gotta reach I need
Speaker 2: to harass them about pulling those things out of the
Speaker 2: plane when it's in the hangar this week and getting
Speaker 2: them to me so that I can work on those.
Speaker 1: Oh, so he can actually just you don't have to
Speaker 1: go to the plane. He can just bring you the
Speaker 1: yolks and you can.
Speaker 2: Do he just pulls the yolks out, and I can
Speaker 2: do it in my shop, which excuse me, which actually
Speaker 2: works out great because the easiest way or the way
Speaker 2: to do it is im I essentially get the leather
Speaker 2: super wet, what they call casing the leather, which is
Speaker 2: what they do for saddles and things to make it
Speaker 2: take compound curves. The best thing to do is to
Speaker 2: get it totally saturated and then it actually molds almost
Speaker 2: like clay. But then it'll also set up and keep
Speaker 2: that shape. And so the easiest thing to do is
Speaker 2: if I can get the pieces so that The way
Speaker 2: those yolks are set up is they're just like an
Speaker 2: old school steering wheel. They got all the little fingernat notches,
Speaker 2: you know, in the back of them. And so the
Speaker 2: part that I wrap, I don't do the whole rectangular thing.
Speaker 2: I'm just doing the grip area. And so I get
Speaker 2: that that the piece of leather cut for each side,
Speaker 2: I case it, get it in water and let it
Speaker 2: sit for a while, and then I get it wrapped around,
Speaker 2: and then essentially I just wrap it in soran wrap,
Speaker 2: you know, and bring it inside and let it sit
Speaker 2: for a few days until it's dry enough, and then
Speaker 2: I can pull the saran wrap off. The shape stays
Speaker 2: about right, and then at the butt on the back
Speaker 2: of it, I can stitch it together, do a butt
Speaker 2: stitch so and then then it's kind of done. But
Speaker 2: it takes a couple of days, and it's easier. I
Speaker 2: don't think I would be able to accomplish that in
Speaker 2: the plane, just because it's nicer to be able to
Speaker 2: have them sitting right on my workbench. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 2: you know, hold them in place and wrap everything up
Speaker 2: with all the tools that I have.
Speaker 1: It'd be like to be like trying to just sow
Speaker 1: leather when you're in the position you are when you're
Speaker 1: changing fuses in your car.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, it would be really complicated and yeah, cold
Speaker 2: in the hangar. And so it's easier to do it
Speaker 2: in my shop and and uh yeah, so that those
Speaker 2: are kind of the next the next things that are
Speaker 2: on the list. I did it. I've finally this year
Speaker 2: got the sewing. I'm much more comfort on. So I
Speaker 2: have my workshop is set up in that one side
Speaker 2: of it is the leather shop, and on the other
Speaker 2: side I have an industrial sewing machine that I'm just
Speaker 2: becoming familiar with, and I don't use that for any
Speaker 2: of the leather goods. I do for some of the softer,
Speaker 2: lighterweight glovier leather. To use a term, I'll throw that
Speaker 2: out there. But like the little bags for Shamberg's reels,
Speaker 2: I use the sewing machine for that, But any of
Speaker 2: the other leather products, those are all handstitched, and the
Speaker 2: sewing machine is more something that I had an opportunity
Speaker 2: to get one from a friend who had one, and
Speaker 2: I was like, yay, I want it. I don't know
Speaker 2: what I'm going to do with it, and so I'm
Speaker 2: in slowly this last year, you know, making friends with it,
Speaker 2: and it's been hard. I still don't intend to use
Speaker 2: it for any of the leather goods because I like
Speaker 2: the aesthetic of the handstitched look. It makes it way
Speaker 2: slower and I can't produce as much. But I want
Speaker 2: to start doing some things like just for fun, working
Speaker 2: on outerwear and things like that. So this year, this fall,
Speaker 2: I did my first jack it off of a pattern
Speaker 2: from a gall in Portland, and I want to do
Speaker 2: another one out of some different materials. So I'm hoping
Speaker 2: that'll that'll be kind of a late winter project, just
Speaker 2: to you know, fuck around at that and learn how
Speaker 2: to sew more and better. I'm really bad at it,
Speaker 2: but I'm getting there.
Speaker 1: What kind of machine did you get?
Speaker 2: So one of my former employees, a gal who worked
Speaker 2: for us for about eight or nine years. Her mom
Speaker 2: spent her entire career down in the Salem area working
Speaker 2: as a seamstress for Nordstrom, and so when she retired
Speaker 2: and over the years as the Nordstrum that she worked
Speaker 2: at retired machines, she took a couple home and refurbished
Speaker 2: them and had them in her house. Well, she had
Speaker 2: two of this particular just it's just a conso two thirty.
Speaker 2: So it's a straight, you know, straight stitch industrial machine
Speaker 2: meant for you know, doing draperies and big long runs
Speaker 2: that sort of thing. It's not necessarily designed to be
Speaker 2: an outerwear you know, or bag machine, but it will
Speaker 2: do most everything he needed to do. But it's in
Speaker 2: fabulous condition. And she had two of them, and she
Speaker 2: was trying to give it away to her daughter, who Phoebe,
Speaker 2: who worked for us for years. And Phoebe is an
Speaker 2: amazing she's she's just amazing in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2: Like if you say, Phoebe, can you build a bridge,
Speaker 2: She'll be like, yeah, hang on one second, then she'll
Speaker 2: build a bridge. She's just astonishing that way. But she
Speaker 2: already had a machine and not enough room, and so
Speaker 2: she asked me, Hey, would you want one of my
Speaker 2: mom's old machines. I'm like, yes, absolutely, this is a
Speaker 2: couple of years ago. And I didn't like, I said,
Speaker 2: I didn't know what I was going to do with
Speaker 2: it or where I was going to put it. But
Speaker 2: I knew that that in the back of my head,
Speaker 2: that was something I wanted next to start to play
Speaker 2: around with. And so I got that one from her,
Speaker 2: and it's in top notch condition. And now I'm starting
Speaker 2: to screw around with that too.
Speaker 1: So did you did you get a chance to talk
Speaker 1: to Patty at all about it?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: I didn't, oh, because he just picked one up. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: He was a wildline firefighterup in Alaska and they have
Speaker 1: a gear shut and it's all set up to make
Speaker 1: gear repair and so he's sewn on and off for years.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he's sewing yet, but he just
Speaker 1: picked up I'm gonna blank on the name. It was
Speaker 1: a name i'd never you know, I sowed in home
Speaker 1: achin junior high. But I've actually always wanted to make
Speaker 1: my own gear.
Speaker 2: It's pretty, it's pretty fun, it's very it's uh. I
Speaker 2: find it interesting and that there are some very particular
Speaker 2: things where it is different than doing some of the
Speaker 2: leather work with wallets and that, and it's a it's
Speaker 2: a little bit of a different way of thinking. Everything
Speaker 2: is kind of starts inside out and goes right right
Speaker 2: side out versus with a lot of leather work, everything
Speaker 2: starts right side out. And so there the seam allowance thing,
Speaker 2: and some of the things that you do are different,
Speaker 2: and there are a lot of tricks and techniques to
Speaker 2: the different types of seams and things that you do
Speaker 2: with fabrics that are really cool. I mean, they're really
Speaker 2: you know, super interesting and intricate, and everyone's got a
Speaker 2: trick for how to do something, you know. That's so
Speaker 2: it's pretty cool to learn that a whole new set
Speaker 2: of tricks, you know, the leather stuff. I've got many
Speaker 2: of those tricks. I've got kind of on lock at
Speaker 2: this point, not all of them obviously, and I don't
Speaker 2: execute all of them as well as i'd like, but
Speaker 2: I have a really good sense for how to approach
Speaker 2: a project. With a sewing project on the machine, I
Speaker 2: really am kind of really the shruggy shoulder, you know, emoticon.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't know, you know, I don't know
Speaker 2: how to approach it. And so that's really fun to
Speaker 2: have a new thing where it's a lot of head scratching. Again,
Speaker 2: So that's.
Speaker 1: Part of what I enjoy, though, is when you're doing
Speaker 1: when you're making stuff, the especially when you start something
Speaker 1: new and you suck. Yeah, when you're a kid. In fact,
Speaker 1: I just went through with my grandson that he wanted
Speaker 1: to draw together and we were watching a little video
Speaker 1: that's too fast paced for a little kid, and he
Speaker 1: got very frustrated. And the thing that's nice. As you
Speaker 1: get older, you feel the same frustration starting something, but
Speaker 1: you have gone through enough life to realize, oh, it's
Speaker 1: just the learning curve. Yeah, it's just I really like
Speaker 1: because those first gains, you know, the first ten times
Speaker 1: you do something, your gains are huge. It's once you
Speaker 1: get relatively competent, it's something. The gains are minuscule. They
Speaker 1: keep coming, but they're much less noticeable. Yeah, and those
Speaker 1: first ones are so fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it's the same, the same probably, I
Speaker 2: mean really it's universal. But same thing with you know,
Speaker 2: with flytying, right, I mean you can you can get
Speaker 2: way into it and make really exquisitely detailed things, or
Speaker 2: you can choose a path that gets you to things
Speaker 2: that are just enough to catch a fish, you know,
Speaker 2: and you can you can choose whichever one of those
Speaker 2: whatever that one of those stopping points along the way
Speaker 2: I think that that's actually I don't know why I
Speaker 2: thought of that, but that makes flytying almost a little
Speaker 2: bit more unique than some of these other things. Because
Speaker 2: you always want to make that you know, wallet you're making,
Speaker 2: or that jacket you're making. You want to get those
Speaker 2: stitches right, you want to make them look really good.
Speaker 2: There's no kind of in between, there's either, but with
Speaker 2: fly tying there is kind of there is a there
Speaker 2: isn't good enough, like it won't fall apart. I can
Speaker 2: fish with it a bunch and.
Speaker 1: Cash.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of cool. I feel like that's a
Speaker 2: little bit unique. And it's then versus saying, you know,
Speaker 2: with you with painting or with making products that actually
Speaker 2: need to hold up, I mean you can you can
Speaker 2: kind of be a little more freestyling with with fly
Speaker 2: tying and make things that work, which is kind of cool.
Speaker 1: That's actually how most of my steel at tying is
Speaker 1: winging it rather than tying a pattern. Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: gotten down to where there's half a dozen flies. I
Speaker 1: fish most of the time, but it's I was thinking
Speaker 1: over the last few months, I'm probably gonna start tying
Speaker 1: a lot more because I'm not and I have as
Speaker 1: much opportunity to fish as I did was in Oregon.
Speaker 1: So I think there's a lot of that. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of gear acquisition goes into people who aren't getting
Speaker 1: to do the thing they love to do as much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's that, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: So what else? What else did we miss? What have
Speaker 1: we had not talked about? So?
Speaker 2: I know Coleby mentioned it when you guys chatted a
Speaker 2: little bit, you know, he and I have had the
Speaker 2: opportunity over the years, over the last well since twenty fifteen, Yeah,
Speaker 2: so almost ten years now, variously being able to help
Speaker 2: the Hickman's out with their project up at Kim's Quick Bay,
Speaker 2: and that that's been super fun. It's been a really
Speaker 2: neat experience to I've never seen the place in full swing,
Speaker 2: you know, to see what it's like when the clients
Speaker 2: are there, because I've always been there beforehand. But it's
Speaker 2: been a neat it's been a neat project to watch
Speaker 2: that in a really special place. And I think Colby,
Speaker 2: you know, touched on that too about how what a
Speaker 2: cool and a unique, very unique experience it is up there,
Speaker 2: such a cool piece of river. It's such a neat
Speaker 2: group of people that that ends up being I think
Speaker 2: this is Steelhead Fishing generally. I mean, the the group
Speaker 2: of people that that that end up in Steelhead Fishing's
Speaker 2: orbit are always really interesting and unique and fun people
Speaker 2: to hang out with. I think that goes for you know,
Speaker 2: it goes for the the shoots, it goes for individual
Speaker 2: communities within the steelheading community. Like there's you know, obviously
Speaker 2: all the bamboo folks, myself included. You know, that's a
Speaker 2: unique subset of people within that orbit. You know, the
Speaker 2: people the setup crew, you know at Kim Squitt was
Speaker 2: where I first met James Reid and hung out with
Speaker 2: him for you know, two years in a row up there.
Speaker 2: It's where I met Pappy, you know, Ryan White, who
Speaker 2: I have one of his rods. You know Colby I
Speaker 2: drug him up there in one of the years, and
Speaker 2: now he's been up there almost but I don't know
Speaker 2: if he's been up there more years than I have.
Speaker 2: But just some really unique people and cool folks that
Speaker 2: you know, really are passionate about the fish, passionate about fishing,
Speaker 2: and passionate about helping you know, that project get off
Speaker 2: the ground. So pretty cool, I mean, you know, and
Speaker 2: just meet people that are they're willing to work hard,
Speaker 2: play hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: At the same time, you know, Barrett included and you
Speaker 2: know his wife Kate. Yeah, just it. It's pretty pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I got an opportunity. So Jeff and Catherine
Speaker 2: bought the lodge. I'm going to murder of the dates,
Speaker 2: but I think that it was at the end of
Speaker 2: the of twenty fourteen season, and they went up there
Speaker 2: and got to shut the place down with the previous
Speaker 2: owner justin Blackwell, and you know, kind of get a
Speaker 2: sense for what they were getting into for the following year.
Speaker 2: Twenty fifteen was going to be their first year of
Speaker 2: operating it themselves. And so over the winter of twenty
Speaker 2: fourteen to fifteen, you know, we got around. Jeff was
Speaker 2: looking for some people to who are dumb enough to
Speaker 2: want to go up there with him, and you know,
Speaker 2: unearthed the place from a winter a winter's slumber, and I,
Speaker 2: you know, for whatever reason, I was like, hell, yeah,
Speaker 2: I want to do it, and I yeah, and I
Speaker 2: was like, yeah, let's let's do it. So that first
Speaker 2: year I went up there with Jeff and Catherine and
Speaker 2: we met up with his two guides. That year, a
Speaker 2: guy named Morgan and a guy named Matt, and both
Speaker 2: of them were were very helpful in that first year
Speaker 2: setup because both of them had experience as electricians, professional electricians,
Speaker 2: and so they were they were the pros. I was
Speaker 2: just the schlepper, come around and do whatever. But yeah,
Speaker 2: that first year. You know, if you've see you've seen
Speaker 2: images from up there, I mean the lodge justly gorgeous.
Speaker 2: The setting is absolutely gorgeous. Let me tell you, the
Speaker 2: place was a wreck when we got there in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: I mean it functioned, but barely. You know, the people
Speaker 2: that were long term clients I think were probably like, eh,
Speaker 2: you know, the accommodations aren't great, you know whatever, the
Speaker 2: place is a bit of a shambles, but the fishing
Speaker 2: is so good, We'll keep coming back. And you know,
Speaker 2: I think, I mean, Jeff has to speak for himself here,
Speaker 2: but I think his vision was always to make the
Speaker 2: experience of being there, you know, on par with the fishing,
Speaker 2: and that was really the push. And that's where you know,
Speaker 2: each year twenty fifteen or yeah, twenty fifteen, sixteen, seventeen eighteen,
Speaker 2: you know, all through that every year he Jeff would
Speaker 2: round up a crew of people to come up and
Speaker 2: do a set of projects. I mean basically, you know,
Speaker 2: throughout the year when the guests were there, he would
Speaker 2: continue to work on whatever those those projects were that
Speaker 2: got started that year. But just being up there by himself,
Speaker 2: you know, with his work crew, it was you know,
Speaker 2: those things that just get picked at. But each year,
Speaker 2: coming into the following season, it was like, Okay, this year,
Speaker 2: we're going to do X. You know. One of the years,
Speaker 2: for example, we ripped the front porches off the three
Speaker 2: guest cabins and had a friend to Jeff's who was
Speaker 2: a timber framer, come up and we all helped timber
Speaker 2: frame the fronts of all the guest cabins and put
Speaker 2: new decks on them. You know, we put in a
Speaker 2: new septic tank up there for all the guest cabins
Speaker 2: one year, so you know, digging a hole for that
Speaker 2: and putting new new pipe to it. Our good friend
Speaker 2: Dan Pierce. Have you ever met Dan? Have you ever
Speaker 2: a fish with Dan? I don't know, Aaron driver. Dan's awesome.
Speaker 2: You got to meet Dan. Dan is He's he is
Speaker 2: a unique character and he is just awesome. But one
Speaker 2: of the years Dan and I were up there, we
Speaker 2: we had to jack up all three of the guest
Speaker 2: cabins because they weren't they were sitting on rocks basically,
Speaker 2: and kind of figure out how to better, you know,
Speaker 2: situate them on the crappy foundations they were on. And
Speaker 2: then we ripped out the bathrooms in all three guest cabins,
Speaker 2: expanded the size of the bathrooms, and put them all
Speaker 2: back together in like ten days before the guests showed up.
Speaker 2: So's it's a fun it's the setup crew thing is
Speaker 2: really fun because the list of things that Jeff always
Speaker 2: wants to do is so enormous that you're like, there's
Speaker 2: no possible way, there's no way this can happen with
Speaker 2: five of us, you know, and you and then you
Speaker 2: get through the you know, the ten days, and you've
Speaker 2: gotten through like two thirds of it, and you're like,
Speaker 2: how did we do that? Part of it is because
Speaker 2: in that part of Northern Coastal BC, it's light until
Speaker 2: I mean it's workably light outside ten o'clock at night,
Speaker 2: you know, and it's light at four in the morning.
Speaker 2: And so that's one part of it is you can
Speaker 2: get a long ass work day, you know, and you
Speaker 2: still get to go fish. Yeah, easily, you know, and
Speaker 2: so you you work for a bunch of hours in
Speaker 2: the morning and then you you know, drive the side
Speaker 2: by sides down and you know, go catch an amazing fish,
Speaker 2: you know, on the Dean with nobody else on the
Speaker 2: river because you you the setup crew and you know,
Speaker 2: your other budies who are there are literally the only
Speaker 2: people on the river, which that never happens when the
Speaker 2: clients are up there, there's always other people around. And
Speaker 2: so you have this you know experience of the Dean
Speaker 2: that very few people get, well generally speaking, very few
Speaker 2: people get. And it's even more unique and special because
Speaker 2: you're kind of up there by yourself and then you
Speaker 2: just roll back up the hill, chuck your waiters on
Speaker 2: the porch, and go back to work until you know,
Speaker 2: the end of the night. And it's so it's been
Speaker 2: a fun experience. It's been a neat way to experience
Speaker 2: that that area. I've caught some very memorable fish up there,
Speaker 2: you know. Really, that's that's the reality.
Speaker 1: That's the population like that time of year.
Speaker 2: Oh, they're everywhere. They've just woken up and they're all
Speaker 2: over the place. Yeah, I've got a lot of great,
Speaker 2: great memories and Luckily, I have never run into any
Speaker 2: of them too too close, you know, down down wall fishing,
Speaker 2: and I haven't run into any of them in the
Speaker 2: woods up there. But they're around. I mean they're they're
Speaker 2: always around. In fact, you know, almost every morning and
Speaker 2: every evening you can be sitting right at the picnic
Speaker 2: table at the lodge at kim Squid and just look
Speaker 2: down over the edge where the road is coming up
Speaker 2: to the lodge and you can watch them walking through
Speaker 2: the tide water. Every night and every morning it's bear show,
Speaker 2: and so it's pretty cool. They're all over the place,
Speaker 2: and you definitely, you know, you can walk through the
Speaker 2: woods down to a spot you want to fish fish
Speaker 2: for an hour and there was no bear scat on
Speaker 2: the trail, and you come back and there's steaming, big
Speaker 2: piles of it right where you just wear that not
Speaker 2: that long ago. So you know they're always in there.
Speaker 2: I mean, we all definitely you want to you're carrying
Speaker 2: bear spray and you know, pretty much not like holstered,
Speaker 2: but like in your hand as you're walking down to
Speaker 2: the river, it's like you're rodding one hand and the
Speaker 2: bear spray in the other and you're just hoping to
Speaker 2: get to the river and always looking behind you every
Speaker 2: once in a while and not getting too focused just
Speaker 2: down the water you want to you know, you're kind
Speaker 2: of always looking over like okay, and don't see anything cool,
Speaker 2: like I sim our right. A few of the walks
Speaker 2: in there's one particular little hike into a famous fishing
Speaker 2: spot there called Ross Island, and the walk isn't very long,
Speaker 2: but god, it feels spooky and Barry It's it just
Speaker 2: feels like one of those plays is where you're gonna
Speaker 2: get eaten every time every time, Like I, I really
Speaker 2: don't like to do that walk by myself. I always
Speaker 2: like to have a buddy come along. I don't know
Speaker 2: if it makes a different, Yeah, I know exactly, but yeah,
Speaker 2: I think one of the questions you would ask us
Speaker 2: do I travel for steelhead fishing? And I kind of
Speaker 2: said no, but that I kind of have that that's
Speaker 2: sort of been my only real travel for for steelhead fishing,
Speaker 2: which I mean, I say only you know, I've gotten
Speaker 2: pretty lucky, so I've had some really really neat experiences
Speaker 2: up there and just such a beautiful area, especially if
Speaker 2: you if you're so used to you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of the fishing that we do involves being roadside, right,
Speaker 2: you know, driving along to a river, getting out at
Speaker 2: a spot, or or floating down a river. But all
Speaker 2: of those things, almost all the rivers, no matter how
Speaker 2: kind of even reasonably remote, with the exception maybe of
Speaker 2: the Grand Rond, most everything that we do is steel
Speaker 2: at fishermen, you're pretty close to civilization one way or
Speaker 2: the other. The Dean is not like that. I mean,
Speaker 2: And really that whole area of coastal BC, you really
Speaker 2: realize that cars are not the main source of travel.
Speaker 2: It's boats and planes and helicopters. And because they're just
Speaker 2: aren't roads everywhere, and the roads that are in some
Speaker 2: of those places are you know, very very remote. They're
Speaker 2: very dirt, and they go on forever and there's nothing
Speaker 2: out there. So it definitely is a different feel. I
Speaker 2: didn't grow up I mean, I grew up in Western Michigan,
Speaker 2: and Lake Michigan is you know, coastal, so to speak,
Speaker 2: but not in the way that it is in those
Speaker 2: areas in BC. They're very remote and very water focused
Speaker 2: and very you know, boat focused. It's very interesting and
Speaker 2: it's nothing that I've experienced, you know, until sort of
Speaker 2: interacting with with with Hickman's and with Kim Squitt. Is
Speaker 2: just being up in that area and experience, you know,
Speaker 2: boats and plains is the main. Like I think people
Speaker 2: that grew up in Alaska grew up in Alaska probably
Speaker 2: that's just they know that, you know, that's what it
Speaker 2: is out there. It's not like that down here in
Speaker 2: the lower forty eight. You know, we have roads everywhere
Speaker 2: at all.
Speaker 1: So no, it's it's funny if you look at a
Speaker 1: map of the US and just look at highways, the
Speaker 1: East has a you know, one hundred and fifty two
Speaker 1: hundred ye lead on making highways. Yeah, there's so many
Speaker 1: more roads and the difference is probably greater when you
Speaker 1: go from the west to someplace like British Columbia or
Speaker 1: Alaska that there's so few roads. Yeah, and not not
Speaker 1: enough people to have a budget to make them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, no real reason to, you know, I
Speaker 2: mean there's the population centers there are very you know,
Speaker 2: far away from each other. And yeah. So yeah, that's
Speaker 2: that's sort of been my experience, and it's been it's
Speaker 2: been fun. You know, obviously having people like some of
Speaker 2: the young folks like Colby and some of his friends
Speaker 2: start to kind of take over that that setup crew
Speaker 2: thing at kim Squid and make it their own. Has
Speaker 2: been fun and it's it's always a good group of people.
Speaker 2: It's a it really feels it's kind of an opportunity,
Speaker 2: I think for a lot of us to go up
Speaker 2: there and kind of pretend we're you know, well, some
Speaker 2: of us really are contractors, but some of us that
Speaker 2: aren't kind of pretend like we are. You know, you
Speaker 2: need to really put your work pants on and actually
Speaker 2: go to work, you know where a lot of us
Speaker 2: don't do that for a living, and so it scratches
Speaker 2: that age a little bit too well.
Speaker 1: And it's it's funny, that's that's satisfying work to do
Speaker 1: one d you know. That's I can't remember if we
Speaker 1: talked about it before, but one of the things I
Speaker 1: wonder if is driving some of the dissatisfaction in uh
Speaker 1: just the population, is that there are so few people
Speaker 1: that have anything to show at the end of their
Speaker 1: day that they did because so many jobs now are
Speaker 1: you know, computer based or customer service based, and you
Speaker 1: don't it's not the same as making stuff. And for
Speaker 1: the longest time, most of the jobs were about making stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, sure, and you could expand you know, making stuff
Speaker 2: is obviously relevant to you painting or me making leather goods,
Speaker 2: but making stuff is also you know, starting the day
Speaker 2: with a hole in the ground and at the end
Speaker 2: of the day putting stuff back over the top of
Speaker 2: that hole, and knowing that there's now a pipe in
Speaker 2: there to take somebody shit away from their house or
Speaker 2: or you know, I mean, that's a crude way of
Speaker 2: looking at it, but any of those things, or stringing
Speaker 2: wires through a bunch of walls so that now a light,
Speaker 2: you know, turns on. You know that that's there's something very,
Speaker 2: very tangible about the results of that work.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I paid for college working as a carpenter,
Speaker 1: and then when the Oldest won the Internet launched and
Speaker 1: I was out of business and no time as an illustrator.
Speaker 1: I went back to working for a good friend of
Speaker 1: mine doing carpentry work. And it's actually probably the most
Speaker 1: satisfying work stretch in my life, that stretch right around
Speaker 1: forty when I was old for going back to doing
Speaker 1: concrete work. But I love learning stuff everyday day. My
Speaker 1: friend Paul hoped that I was working for is really
Speaker 1: talented contractor and because of that, he got really nice
Speaker 1: jobs to do and at the same times really physical
Speaker 1: and I've always liked I've always liked physical work. But
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, even if you hadn't
Speaker 1: a job that took two or three weeks, at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, you could see what you've done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I feel a little bit that.
Speaker 2: I think that's certainly one of the reasons that I
Speaker 2: I am still running the coffee shop, because there is
Speaker 2: there's something like that that you know, at the end
Speaker 2: of each really at the end of each sort of interaction.
Speaker 2: I mean, you're you are creating something that goes out
Speaker 2: the door in somebody's hand that they're going to well
Speaker 2: presumably hopefully enjoy, you know, for some amount of time,
Speaker 2: and that well, yeah, there's always that possibility. We have
Speaker 2: to have to make room for that. But you know
Speaker 2: versus like, yeah, I filled up a spreadsheet and somebody
Speaker 2: else can now look at it and you know, I
Speaker 2: don't know. Yeah, it definitely the thing It.
Speaker 1: Took me the longest time to realize there are people
Speaker 1: who that gives them the satisfaction. Yeah, And the problem
Speaker 1: is when you put somebody like me like my high
Speaker 1: school guidance counselor told me I should go to school
Speaker 1: for accounting. I still can't balance my check book. I'm
Speaker 1: not of that ilk. Yeah, and the people who are
Speaker 1: man would I'd like to have a good one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's not my my I can't do that
Speaker 2: sort of stuff very well either. I need to sort
Speaker 2: of be working a little bit with my hands and
Speaker 2: my brain in a way that you know, it's not
Speaker 2: just staring at things on a screen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no to my Uh just for for Rob
Speaker 1: and Dan, my buddy's coop and Magic both were industrial
Speaker 1: designers and are very much hands on makers because they
Speaker 1: were industrial designers before and after computers got involved and
Speaker 1: are very much and actually my brother in law as
Speaker 1: well as my nephew too, there were all industrial designers,
Speaker 1: and my brother in law came up when working for
Speaker 1: Black and Decker. When you wanted to make a hand tool,
Speaker 1: he would make it out of wood so you could feel,
Speaker 1: you know, the shapes, and then I still remember him
Speaker 1: talking to me about a vat of resin with three
Speaker 1: laser beams coming together and hardening your tool in the
Speaker 1: middle of the resin and his went through the development
Speaker 1: of that and that just has to have been fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I'm always fascinated by and really enjoyed talking
Speaker 2: to folks that I've known in my work when I
Speaker 2: was at Takaine, and I still know some of them.
Speaker 2: They still live around town here and are still industrial designers.
Speaker 2: But those were some of the most talented people that
Speaker 2: I've ever met in there ability to kind of bridge
Speaker 2: you know, the aesthetics of you know, painting and drawing
Speaker 2: along with the technical aspects of putting something on paper
Speaker 2: that can be conceived into a three dimensional product without
Speaker 2: a lot of you know, questions being asked. And I
Speaker 2: just find that a really cool. The people whose minds
Speaker 2: work that way are fascinating to me. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: and I think I scratch a little bit of that
Speaker 2: when I'm developing products. But what I realize is that,
Speaker 2: I mean, I would probably be way better off if
Speaker 2: I if I knew a little bit more about that,
Speaker 2: because I think, you know, any of my industrial designer
Speaker 2: friends would come over and be like, why are you
Speaker 2: doing it that way? You can do this a lot,
Speaker 2: This will go a lot faster if you just know how.
Speaker 1: To do this, you know, And yeah, so at the
Speaker 1: same time. They probably know that because they went through
Speaker 1: this process.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Those are always fascinating folks. And
Speaker 2: I'm always in awe.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 2: I was always really in awe of the folks at kind.
Speaker 2: We had a kind of a unique set up here.
Speaker 2: And when we were working when Kaine was here in
Speaker 2: Cod River, we had a gentleman by the name of
Speaker 2: Lawn who he's still here in town. His family owns
Speaker 2: a tie restaurant here and he actually is working now
Speaker 2: for one of the other outfits in town, Alpine C,
Speaker 2: doing pattern and product development. But he was he started
Speaker 2: his life out as a tailor and he got to
Speaker 2: know Rob Kaplan, who is the guy who started to
Speaker 2: Kine when they were both in Hawaii and came on
Speaker 2: early on and helped design all of those products. And
Speaker 2: he was a wizard, that guy. So if one of
Speaker 2: the industrial designers sketched something out on Monday and handed
Speaker 2: it to Lawn, he would have a prototype built for
Speaker 2: us by Tuesday, sewn up. I mean obviously not you know,
Speaker 2: not finished finished product, but all the shapes and all
Speaker 2: the size and the straps, I mean, dead on. He
Speaker 2: was our secret weapon. And between he and the industrial
Speaker 2: design guys that that team was always fast to watch,
Speaker 2: you know, lawns sewing skills and ability to interpret what
Speaker 2: was on the page. And then watching the industrial design
Speaker 2: folks who you know, maybe were new and came into
Speaker 2: that team not knowing what lawns skill set really looked like,
Speaker 2: but then realizing what his skill set was and then
Speaker 2: just melding right into that, and they could produce. The
Speaker 2: speed with which they could come up from a design
Speaker 2: and an idea to a prototype in house was so quick.
Speaker 2: It was always just it always blew my mind. And
Speaker 2: none of the other outfits, you know, at that time,
Speaker 2: we were competing against companies that now have you know,
Speaker 2: subsumed all of those companies Quick, Silver, Roxy, whatever. But
Speaker 2: we were competing against all those companies and they didn't
Speaker 2: have that. They didn't have a lawn in house. I
Speaker 2: mean they had, they had graphic designers and industrial designers
Speaker 2: to be sure, but they had to send that stuff
Speaker 2: to their Chinese partner factories, you know, for the for
Speaker 2: the first round of prototype, and we were able to
Speaker 2: do it in house down in our you know, in
Speaker 2: our facility here in town, and it was just always fascinating.
Speaker 2: I think, I think maybe I realized that some of
Speaker 2: that experience of working closely with with Law and and
Speaker 2: seeing what he could do probably really has informed a
Speaker 2: bit of my interest in in the leather goods and
Speaker 2: all that, you know, with the the intervening years in there.
Speaker 2: But once I started with the leather goods, I think
Speaker 2: I remember somewhere deep in there, I was remembering how
Speaker 2: cool I thought it was to watch that process and
Speaker 2: be able to take things from an idea to a
Speaker 2: tangible product. And so maybe maybe some of that experience
Speaker 2: stuck with me and has has informed or or helped
Speaker 2: to you know, dig that that process in a little deeper.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's It's funny how as you get older, Uh,
Speaker 1: you find yourself influenced by all the things you've done
Speaker 1: in your life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: And and some when I was printing a woodcut at
Speaker 1: p n c A with some grad students and they
Speaker 1: were very complimentary about my carving and asked me how
Speaker 1: I've been doing it, and I said, well, this is
Speaker 1: my second print. They said, how'd you learn how to
Speaker 1: do this? I'm like, I've had jobs since I was
Speaker 1: like eight, you know, I've I've had all kinds of
Speaker 1: different jobs. And probably a third of them come into
Speaker 1: what you do with woodcut, from knowing how to sharpen
Speaker 1: a gouge to knowing how to break it image down
Speaker 1: into shapes and all the different things I've done. And
Speaker 1: that's what that, to me is the most fascinating thing
Speaker 1: now is how do I how do I use all
Speaker 1: the different things I like to make something?
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of how is the meta salmon project thing
Speaker 2: coming along?
Speaker 1: I just finally got the colored salmon put on the website.
Speaker 1: I am writing letters in the next her letters emails
Speaker 1: in the next week or so to two locations that
Speaker 1: actually you're the I'll ask you about this after we
Speaker 1: finished recording, because you probably know to two possible locations
Speaker 1: to do murals next year, which next year starts next week.
Speaker 2: But hopefully I'm hoping that.
Speaker 1: I'm hoping that by May I have two locations to
Speaker 1: to come out and put murals up.
Speaker 2: Okay, and then.
Speaker 1: Combination of like things that I don't know, how do
Speaker 1: I get sponsors to do, because I mean, I've got
Speaker 1: I can't do it by myself. I got to have
Speaker 1: people helping me on these murals. Yeah, and so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be looking for some corporate sponsors, and I think
Speaker 1: there's I think I have enough contacts now too, at
Speaker 1: least have an idea of who to reach out to.
Speaker 1: And so the goal is five or six murals up
Speaker 1: and down the Columbia by the end of next year,
Speaker 1: not next year, at the end of twenty seven. If
Speaker 1: I could do two or three this year and then
Speaker 1: two or three next year and then have enough foot
Speaker 1: traffic to help nudge the argument.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so are you. Well we can talk about
Speaker 2: this offline later. But that's good. I'm glad to hear
Speaker 2: that the project is still moving.
Speaker 1: Oh no, it's it's been beating my head on the
Speaker 1: wall with everything else in life the last few years.
Speaker 1: But you know, I'm stubborn.
Speaker 2: You do you intend to choose the look and feel
Speaker 2: of each of the murals once you kind of get
Speaker 2: the place identified, or do you have the designs in
Speaker 2: your brain already for what each of them might look at?
Speaker 1: But it's I've got a video up that I can
Speaker 1: show you that my son put together for me, and
Speaker 1: the picture. The thing about it is we can take
Speaker 1: that Sam and the idea is you can print that
Speaker 1: on gompy paper, which is a really rugged tissue and
Speaker 1: then put it up with wheat paste. So the thing
Speaker 1: that will change is the size of the text that
Speaker 1: Matthew Letzelter at PNCA is going to adjust that for me.
Speaker 1: So if I have a wall that, say twelve feet wide,
Speaker 1: I can print the text out ten feet wide and
Speaker 1: then put use enough salmon to fill it up. But
Speaker 1: I find one that's twenty feet wide, We'll print the
Speaker 1: text eighteen feet wide and just print more salmon. So
Speaker 1: we can just we can enlarge and contract. If we
Speaker 1: have a place that's just big enough for like three fish,
Speaker 1: I can do that. To me that the thing would
Speaker 1: be to have enough viewing distance that to intrigue people
Speaker 1: by it. I think the headline the text of all
Speaker 1: the damn names, and all the damn names, and our
Speaker 1: rivers are paved with the damns of our good intentions.
Speaker 1: That's not the right that I watched the quote because
Speaker 1: I've said it too many times, But I think that.
Speaker 1: And then to get up close, Greg Fitz is going
Speaker 1: to write me a information piece to go with it,
Speaker 1: to lay out the argument for removing the stake river dams.
Speaker 1: So I think between them it should be interesting. I've
Speaker 1: I've never been in a situation to do something that
Speaker 1: public facing, and it'll be a good.
Speaker 2: Challenge, right. It's interesting to it's it's something in the
Speaker 2: at the intersection of advocacy and public art, and so
Speaker 2: it's interesting to me thinking how do you find the
Speaker 2: people that want to help you make it become a
Speaker 2: tangible thing? You know, is it is it arts organizations?
Speaker 2: Is it uh? You know, people the own physical infrastructure
Speaker 2: where a mirural can be housed, or you know, and
Speaker 2: or is it uh? And then is it advocacy groups
Speaker 2: in the world of you know, sam in an ecosystem advocacy,
Speaker 2: It feels like it's all three of those. It is.
Speaker 1: It's it's trying to interesting trying to tie resources from
Speaker 1: all of them together. Yeah, And it's it's funny that
Speaker 1: at one point I felt I interactive with people so much.
Speaker 1: When I was a freinance illustrator pre internet days, you
Speaker 1: had to go meet people constantly, and so to go
Speaker 1: in and pitch I was pretty comfortable with. And for
Speaker 1: the last twenty five years, I when I'm showing my work,
Speaker 1: I mostly sit and read and hope people leave me
Speaker 1: alone and just buy a painting and go away. So
Speaker 1: so it's going to be interesting, uh, to get out
Speaker 1: of my own way and get busy.
Speaker 2: Well, one thing I can say from from having a
Speaker 2: couple late night around the lights and dinner on the
Speaker 2: dishoots with you is I can definitely say that your
Speaker 2: description of the importance of salmon was unique and and
Speaker 2: moving to me. Even though I'm immersed in that here
Speaker 2: and I live with it in this area and understand it,
Speaker 2: the way that you describe the importance of that animal,
Speaker 2: that spirit, that that resource was enough to make me
Speaker 2: kind of shake my head a little bit and think
Speaker 2: that I had heard it explained to me differently than
Speaker 2: I had in a long time. So I can't describe
Speaker 2: to you exactly what you're wording was, but if you
Speaker 2: can think about the way you described it, or that
Speaker 2: you definitely you know you typically describe it, I would
Speaker 2: say you're onto something. I guess I don't know if
Speaker 2: I'm making the point I'm trying to make, is the
Speaker 2: way you described it was it made me even kind
Speaker 2: of sit up a little bit. And that's interesting because
Speaker 2: I am immersed in that world of sort of advocacy
Speaker 2: in the salmon in our area, and even some of
Speaker 2: the ways that you explained it really have stuck stuck
Speaker 2: with me since those days on the is shootes. So
Speaker 2: just know that you you have some there's some resonance
Speaker 2: in the way that you have described this, and so
Speaker 2: if you can remember what that is, you should write
Speaker 2: that down and bottle it because it will be it
Speaker 2: will hopefully be resonant with with folks that can help
Speaker 2: you put this project into motion. If that makes any sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because that's that's what it's funny. I had made
Speaker 1: just an amazing contact my buddy Jane that I'm printing with.
Speaker 1: Her neighbor just retired from I think the Interior Department,
Speaker 1: and she's worked the Columbia Watershed for like the last
Speaker 1: twenty years. And she and Jane were just visiting one
Speaker 1: day out in their yard and ess she's printingly and
Speaker 1: then she told me what she told me about salmon,
Speaker 1: and the woman lit up and said, oh, I have
Speaker 1: to meet this guy. And so we had the three
Speaker 1: of us had breakfast, and she gave me contacts with
Speaker 1: several of the tribes, several fisheries managers. And so then
Speaker 1: that's why, right when life took a hard U turned south.
Speaker 1: And uh so that's all what I'm all trying to
Speaker 1: get everything back on on pace to to get things
Speaker 1: happening this year, next year, hurt next year in the
Speaker 1: following year.
Speaker 2: So yeah, pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Well I look forward to spending more time on the
Speaker 1: river this year man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I definitely yeah next year. As I mentioned before,
Speaker 2: I definitely love to get a seat in whatever your
Speaker 2: trip is with with Barrett this year. If you're when
Speaker 2: you start figuring out, you know, you talked about trying
Speaker 2: to do a couple of boats. I would love to
Speaker 2: jump on so that I can hang out with you
Speaker 2: some more and in person and you know, swap stories
Speaker 2: and and fish.
Speaker 1: So no, I think we're going to stretch this year.
Speaker 1: We'll get Curtis and and Barrett both and and uh
Speaker 1: we should have a blast.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well then we'll have Colby and probably maybe maybe
Speaker 2: John Helliberg cooking in the other camp so or both,
Speaker 2: you know, so yeah, good time. It would be really fun.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I look forward. I look forward to it.
Speaker 1: Well, hey, man, thanks for taking the time, and I
Speaker 1: hope you had a great holiday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad to have the conversation with you. So
Speaker 2: it was really fun to continue some of the conversations
Speaker 2: that we had. You know out on the river and
Speaker 2: and hopefully folks will find this useful to get a
Speaker 2: little more insight and info.
Speaker 1: And I can't wait to hear going through Hood River
Speaker 1: and they want an outstanding cup of coffee.
Speaker 2: How do they find you, Dog Dog River Coffee. We're
Speaker 2: located at four eleven Oak Street, right here on the
Speaker 2: main drag downtown Hood River. So yeah, yeah, come in
Speaker 2: and see me, you know. And if you're coming through
Speaker 2: to go fishing, if you need information, come find me.
Speaker 2: I'll give you some information. I don't know if I
Speaker 2: can give you good information, but i'll try. All right, Well,
Speaker 2: take it easy out there on the East Coast, and
Speaker 2: we look forward to seeing you back out here on
Speaker 2: the West coast soon.
Speaker 1: Or up alrighty bed the River Ramblers production of Swingfly.
Speaker 1: Visit swing of fly dot com for the best swung
Speaker 1: fly and spacecasting content on the web and in print.