Text & Photo by Shinya Tanaka/Photo by Randi Jo
I often fall in love.
Sometimes it’s with a person, sometimes it’s with an object.
In her case, it was both.
It goes back five years, to when Rick Hunter said, "You should meet her. She’s living in California right now, so it’s close. Shall we go now?" And that was how we met.
At the time, she had just given birth to her first child, and they had just sold their bike shop in Eugene to the president of the wheel manufacturer "Rolf," so they had a little breathing room. They were staying for a few years in an old house owned by her great-grandmother in California to maintain and preserve it.
There was a small room there that served as a workshop for making caps, aprons, and bags for customers from their Oregon days. The kitchen was modest, like something out of a movie, but decorated with such great taste. It was immediately obvious that everything there was "truly" well-worn and used, and I thought, "Wow, these are really amazing people."