My friend Jen H. is friends with a couple who just opened a hostel in Salida. Jon and Julia. Jen was telling me how cool the place is. Rather than push through another four hours of night driving I decided to stop in and say hello. I ended up being their first paying customer ever. It was quite an honor. There are so many things that are right about this place: it's in Salida...I shouldn't have to list anything else after that statement but it only gets better...affordable, beautiful, great hosts, sweet vibe. The place feels like home more than a hostel. Check out the old door from the garage that was turned into a counter-top. Please stay there if you are headed toward The Ark Valley.
www.simplelodge.com
The end destination was La Veta to spend time with college friends in the southern mountains. Good times. Like being with a second family. We made fires, had deep conversations, had smores. Good. They are an old farming family from the east side of the mountains. Lots of similar conversations to what I hear in the North Fork: the Farm Bill, water rights, and how tough it is to make a living growing apples. They have also experienced the immenent domain of the gas exploration on their land; I heard a lot of pros and cons of gas drilling. The gas companies can come in and drill whether you want it or not. The whole area around La Veta is humming with well pumps. There are literally thousands of wells.
On the shoe front, the catalog is at the printer, we're moving into finalizing some details and getting ready to go from the sample size into extended sizing. There's a bit of unorganized, random field testing going on; full blown durability testing starts in June. It's been pretty cool to see this stuff take shape. I still feel like it's not good to put up photos until the catalog is published. Getting women's shoes to fit has proved one of the greatest challenges of my career. There's just not much to work with when you don't have laces. No faking it...it has to work.
P-towne is lovely and green and a perfect 80 degrees. Nights are still cool and the orchards look like they are about to get busy. The talk of the town is water. And mosquito spraying. We've had some high drama on the Mosquito Control District board. We're all wadded up about mosquito spraying over here. It's important and passions are running high. It's small town drama at its best. I don't mean to make light of it...it's important. Health is at risk (from both sides - the nerve agent in the spray, and the potential consequences of a West Nile epidemic if left unsprayed); but really, no one is shooting at us, there are no roadside bombs, no genocide...just our little slice of Mason Jar Utopia being challenged. Keep it all in perspective.
