Slow Baja - Iron And Resin Founder Thom Hill

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

Thom Hill is the founder and visionary behind the iconic brand Iron and Resin. He was raised on the East Coast, attended college in Southern California, and made his first of many trips to Baja as a student in the mid-80s. After graduating, Hill lived on a sailboat and continued exploring the peninsula by water. His passion for the outdoors, surfing, riding motorcycles, and seeking solace in a vintage 4x4 shines through in his brand and work. “Forged in Ventura, CA, in a mass-produced, disposable world, Iron & Resin is a product of “one-off” culture, where men still build, by their own hands, the craft they ride, be it water or land.” Get your Baja insurance here: ⁠ https://www.bajabound.com/quote/?r=fl... For more information about Slow Baja:⁠ https://www.slowbaja.com/⁠ More information on Slow Baja Adventures:⁠ https://www.slowbaja.com/adventures

Hey, this is Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning into the Slow Baja. This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortaleza, handmade in small batches, and hands down my favorite tequila. You know, I've long said it. Ask your doctor if Baja's right for you. If you've been hankering to get down to Slow Baja,

you've got to check out the Adventures tab at Slow Baja.com. All my trips are there from my vintage extravaganzas in summer and fall. Summer is old, old, funky, slow stuff. Fall is not quite as old stuff. And, of course, your meals are included on the fall trip. Good dirt roads, private campsites, ranch days, great food and great people. Let me tell you about my winter 2025 expedition. You know, that's already on the calendar, winter 2025.

That's for you folks with the new stuff, all those folks, the complainers who tell me they don't have anything old, but they want to come with me? Well, the winter expedition is for you. We've got whale watching. We've got beach camping. And once again, that is open to trucks of any age. The common denominator on all these trips, they're small. They're immersive.

We go slow. We say hello. Well, to find your trip, check out the Adventures tab at slowbaha.com. Now, stay tuned because I'm going to be adding some non-motorized adventures soon. So who's ready to go on a mule packing trip with me in the mountains above Loretta? You know, I just went and I can't wait to share a super, super slow Baja experience with you. And just so you know, I'm always open to help you with your Baja trip planning. And if you like me to organize and lead a private guided tour, I've done it.

I loved it. All the pictures, all the information, all the deets are over there at slowbaha.com slash adventures. Or just hit me up at slowbaha.com slash contact. Hey, big thanks to those of you who've contributed to our Baja baseball project. You know, we launched our gear deliveries on my winter expedition. Michael and Matthew from Barbers for Baja. We're along for the ride, and we got to deliver that critically needed baseball gear up and down the peninsula. It was really, truly amazing.

And on my last trip, I got to go to the state baseball championships and see some of our alums playing some recipients of the Baja baseball gear deliveries and congratulations to Guerrera Negro and Mule Ha'O'A, the Austenaros and the Cardinalitos won silver and bronze at the state championships. Big stuff. It's really fun to be there and fun to see them. All right, well, please help us continue this vital work. Make your tax deductible donation at the Barbers for Baja. click barbers for baha.org, click the baseball in baha link, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I really do. It is so amazingly gratifying to be able to give these kids this chance to keep playing this sport, keep them on the field, keep them out of trouble. Please check it out. Baseball in Baja link at barbers forbaha.org.

Thank you. Hey, thanks for tuning in to today's slow Baja. My heaping dose of gratitude goes out to all those slow Baja folks who stepped up and supported the Akalani's high school auto shop. They had a go fund me. They had an amazing trip. They built some postal jeeps and got them down to Baja with me for the super slow Baja summer vintage expedition. And we had an amazing time last week. We got all the way through northern Baja 600 some miles. And these guys did it in two-wheel drive postal jeeps.

I was in four low a couple of times and watching them in my side. mirrors we are going down the trail and these kids figured it out so hey thanks to the folks at the harvey auto group taz harvey's an old friend from my law career racing days he generously underwrote two entries for the postal jeeps and i can't thank tas enough for getting those cars entered and getting them in and jump starting their financial campaign max idan a student who's off to college max put together a go fund me and i was super stoked to see some slow baha folks jumping in. Sinway, Xavier, he not only contributed, but he passed the story along to the folks at Expedition Portal with whom he's associated, and they did a nice write-up on the kids and did a

matched $250 donation, so they donated and then matched the first donations up to $250, which was awesome. Jeff LaPlante, L.A. Car Guy, if you're shopping for a Porsche, you've got to go see Jeff. Sharif, my old friend from Minora Racing Days, my Nora Slow Baja Safari class, he raced a Porsche and a beautiful Rothman's livery, Dakar replica, and then sold that after the Slow Baja Safari and built a proper racing 9-11 and has raced it in Baja. So thanks for making a donation there. Blake Wilkie Dog, he's also a Slow Baja alum, and he not only made a donation,

but put it out to his group, his peeps. And thanks for that. Nick Butsy, he was originally the dude who closed the fundraiser out. He was the guy. They were $190 short and Nick Butsy stepped up to the table and closed it out. So thanks Nick. Mount Smith, thank you for your donation. John Tucci, 47 Hills brewing up in the San Francisco Bay Area. Thanks John for stepping up. And Kelly Witten, I went to Kelly and said, what the hell do I do to get these kids to Baja? Kelly used to run the Copper State Rally and the Copper State overland and is basically a just a genius in my book.

Anyways, she suggested the GoFundMe and they did it and she was the first to contribute. She put her money where her mouth was, helped get the kids down there. So thank you very much for your advice, Kelly, taking my calls and I appreciate it. All right, today's show, today's show is with Tom Hill. Tom's a great guy. Founded the Store Iron and Resin, the brand, the store, the garage, the thing that I absolutely love. It's an amazingly beautifully curated space in downtown Ventura, the garage in downtown Ventura. They've just opened in Denver and they're opening in Europe or just open in Europe by the time you hear this.

Anyways, Tom, the East Coast guy, came to school in California and got a Volkswagen camper and drove from UC Santa Barbara down to Baja and his life was changed forever. We talk about some of those Baja trips, motorcycle trips, the Volkswagen camper, the Westphalia, you know I spent some good times bumming around Baja and my dad's 78 Westphalia. So Tom and I share that slow, that love for slow travel with such a cool yet fragile yet smiley old vehicle. And then Tom sailed Baja with his grandfather, which I just think is an amazing thing. So we get into all that in today's slow Baja. So without further ado, Tom Hill, iron and resin on today's slow Baja. Tom Hill, thanks for making a little time for Slow Baja.

We're here at your shop in downtown Ventura, the Iron and Resin shop. I can't believe it. Yeah, well, welcome back to California. Yeah, thanks. I've been a little frazzling. Thanks for having me. Obviously, I admired what you've done as a guy behind the brand, the vision for iron and resin. We're not going to really talk too much about iron and resin in the beginning here.

It's going to be more about your Baja experience who you are as a person. But I reached out to a mutual friend of ours, Drew Martin, this morning on the drive up to get some insights on you. And Drew said, you are the most resilient person you know, that he knows. You are the most resilient person he knows. And your grit and determination is another level, according to him. Well, it's nice to hear. Yeah. Yeah.

How does that inform who you are? I mean, it's got to be nice to hear grit and determination and resilient. I guess like in life, I don't really know any other way to live. You know, it's, I think for me, the way I've approached things in life is just always move forward. I've had my share of challenges like everybody. You know, we're all faced with challenges in our lives. And some have been personal, some have been business, some have been relationships. but it's it's just a matter of moving forward always and trying never to you know no matter how bad

things get you're just looking forward and moving that try try and move in that direction so that's that's been my kind of what's carried me through some of the tough times and you know I guess I don't know really any other way to live. Seems like that might have been starting on a heavy note Yeah I think it's a deep style Yeah I thought it was a hell of a compliment From a guy who I have a lot of respect for

And obviously I think what comes through most for me On that from Drew Is how much respect he has for you And your attitude and the way you live your life And the way you you interact with the world He told me a little story So I was fishing for stories stuff always happens to you.

Riding a motorcycle, you have a header. You know, it's like you just, you know, you've got the motorcycle and it's now leaking gas instead of, you know, whatever. Like it's not only you and your body that takes the beating, but the motorcycle getting fixed, the tank getting fixed. And can you talk a little bit about some of those things? Is that right? Is he right on that? Something always happens to you? Yeah, I guess, you know, I guess it is right.

I'm always, I'm always the guy that ends up bringing up the rear somehow. And, you know, either injured or the bike's broken or something's broken. But, you know, the great, you know, the respect for Drew is mutual. You know, it's one of the humans I really love on this planet. And we've been through a lot of fun times together over the years. And a lot of those fun times weren't fun during those times. Fun and reflection. Yeah, but it's, you know, it's like,

anything, I think with Drew, especially and some of the mutual friends we have here that, you know, a lot of these trips we do, we all finish together. You know, we all get through it one way or the other, and it's a matter of, you know, just helping each other push through whatever, whatever challenge we have. But, yeah, we've been on some, we've been on some, some adventures. And the one of a, I think the one Drew is talking about, we had, um, it was a, was it in hindsight it was a great trip and it's probably one of the more challenging ones we've done but um it's the one i probably have the fondest memories of yeah and uh fixing your tank on your motorcycle with uh surfboard uh residence sole res right yeah yeah yeah never really about it ever

it's like the fix-all for everything um but uh yeah i mean i just remember drew had this route plan for us He hadn't ridden it. And the last 10 miles were down a boulder field that it was a river bottom, but it wasn't sand. It was, you know, bowling ball size and bigger boulders that were riding. My headlight had gone out earlier in the day, kept blowing a fuse. I had no lights and couldn't see anything in front of me. Yeah. And then drop the bike, you know, just right on a rock that shattered a hole in the tank.

And I had a big desert tank on that bike. And it just started. The last little bit of gas I had was spraying down my leg. And Drew was right beside me. Everyone else had gone ahead. And Drew kind of stuck with me. And we were just like, I got to go. I got to go.

They just gunned it to try and get, you know, and I pushed it as hard as I can until I ran out gas. And by that time, I was just exhausted. And I just threw my bike down in the desert and walked the rest of the way. And I was just, in fact, I was going to leave the bike there. I was disgusted with it. But went back and got it. the next day and we all made it back.

There were a couple casualties on that trip, but everybody survived. It was like really good memories, though. Talk to an old guy early in my slow Baja podcasting days. Pete Springer had been doing crazy stuff in Baja since the early 60s, and he was telling me about a trip. And he said, the darker it got, I didn't have a headlight, and I just kept riding faster and faster like I was going to outrun the dark.

Yeah, yeah. Then he hit a rock and slept right where they dropped the bike. Yeah, yeah, I believe. it. You're an East Coast guy and you came to California in to go to college. How did you find Baja? I mean, I know you're at school in Santa Barbara. We're sort of same vintage. What, what got you down to Baja? I'm trying to remember the first trip I made down there was probably, um, with my college roommates. I came out here in the mid-80s and, and, uh, we, we, we, we, we, we, um, we, we, um, I, um, if I remember correctly, it's probably like a spring break trip or something like that, my first

year at UCSB and never been to, never been to Baja, never been to another country at that point in my life. You know, I'd been to Canada and that, I don't know if that qualifies as another country, really, but, and we just went down to Rosarito and Ensonata and then drove across the peninsula to San Felipe and ate a lot of shrimp tacos and forever changed my life. Yeah. That road between Ensenada and San Felipe, we got lost. We may have done some mushrooms.

I don't even remember now, but wandered around the desert and just, like, really good memories of that trip. In fact, I kind of came across some photos from that trip like a couple weeks ago and sent them to my friends, my old college roommates, and we were kind of reminiscing together. But that was my first trip down there. and went back at least every six weeks to two months, probably after that for the next 20 years. I did a lot of trips. My kids went down there a lot when they were small, mostly around surf trips. Yeah, I was going to ask, I was surfing.

I mean, I always say the reason you're going to Baja is recreation one way or another, and much of the time it involves the water, whether you're fishing in the Gulf of California or surfing in the Pacific. Surfing, obviously, was what was taking you there. And let's talk about some of those things. At times, you know, you didn't have GPS. You didn't have satellite communication. You might have had a vehicle that was fragile.

You might not have had the preparations that people take now to go to Baja, lighting, good tires, all that stuff. I mean, I drove around every sort of crummy car imaginable in Baja in the early days. And I'm still doing it now. Yeah, yeah. Talk about where you're going and where you were surfing. So mostly the northern half of Baja. We'd go down to, like, as far as Seven Sisters, quite a bit, area, like, Santa Rosa

Lolita and kind of that zone in north, I would say. A lot of quick strike trips when we could kind of predict us well. Back in those days, it was all by facts, so we'd get the surf report, and we'd head down for like a long weekend or something. And so usually, you know, San Quintin, you know, San Quintin, you know, North there, a lot of the point breaks, kind of the northern third of Baja, and usually three, four, five-day trips, just quick, kind of quick strike trips. And that picture for me.

Is that sleeping in the back of your truck? Is that sleeping in a van? Is that sleeping on the ground? Is that everything got stolen while you're out surfing? Let's talk about some of those experiences because that, you know, that was not uncommon. Yeah, I've driven. kind of vehicle imaginable down there from, you know, I had a, I had a, what years is it, like a 91 or 89 suburban I drove down there. That was the first truck I drove down there,

like 35 inch tires on it. Wow. Preped. Fully prepared. Yeah. You were serious. Surf rack loaded with boards, slept in the back of that thing. And then the, you know, quite a few trips. I had a 79 Westphalia that I bought from an older couple. They were the original owners, and it was the most pristine, perfect. It looked like it was right off the showroom floor. When I sold it, it was barely running and had, you know, rusted out front windshield and rear windshield because I lived at the beach. And I mean, it just, we used it hard. And a lot of Baja trips in that. It's probably one of the most capable. Baja rigs I had.

Had a lot of really good trips in that. It was probably the most comfortable. I had a couple pickups, and I had a four-wheel camper that I moved from truck to truck as I kind of traded up trucks, and we did a lot of trips in that. And then moved into the sprinter vans when those first came out and did a number of sprinter van trips and just kind of kept getting, went from the shittiest vehicles starting out, and the vehicles got. a little nicer, a little nicer, more reliable.

But if you wanted to take a significant other down there, you know, you had to have something a little more reliable or someone really adventurous with you. But, yeah, a lot of different rigs over the years, but all, you know, all made it down and back. Nothing got left behind. Well, I had a trip that I almost got left behind with my now wife of 28 years, so probably 29 years ago or something and took my dad's Volkswagen Westphalia down and drove all the way up to Guadalupe Canyon and whatever, all that jiggling around, jiggled something off of it. And anyways, I didn't have any throttle control when I came back and it was a good Friday and

we were in a lot of traffic and it was very difficult to drive and I had to leave it at a shop for four days. So when I came home, I had to clear my drawer out at her place. It was over. Oh, yeah. Fawn memories of Baja in the West Valley. That was the last trip for the Westphalia. We went back on my motorcycle after that, and we're married shortly,

and marriage mortgage mortgage and minivan came rather quickly for me. But enough about me, Tom. I want to talk to you about that trip you took with your grandfather. You went sailing with your grandfather down there, and that just intrigues me. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about your grandfather and how he started sailing. So my grandfather was career Navy. He was based out of Norfolk and was they had a he had a sailboat that I grew up sailing all over the East Coast on out of Chesapeake Bay and we'd sail we sailed out to Bermuda.

We sailed up and down the central eastern seaboard, some different places. And fond memories of that growing up from a real young kid, I'd spend a good chunk of the summers with him. him in the summer and we'd go spent a lot of time sailing in those years and um it was one of those things as I got older I remember being a teenager and I was I was uh just I didn't want to go sailing anymore I would get bored I wanted to hang out with my friends and you know I hit that age I think all teenagers do and it's you just you lose the appreciation for it and you just want to go skateboarding or do other fun stuff with your friends and and um and so Life went on. I went to college.

Came out here, so I didn't see him as often. And I probably saw him once or twice over the four years or so. I was in college. And while I was going to UCSB, I took a class. One of my last years, maybe when I was this junior year, I took a class on the Channel Islands. And UCSB has a research station out on Santa Cruz Island, so we've got to spend a couple weeks out there.

And I'd never been to the island. and that was a game changer for me. Like I couldn't think of anything but getting another sailboat. Not that I'd had a sailboat before, but I wanted to find a sailboat. I was getting ready to graduate. So the first job I got out of college, I was working as just a graphic designer for an ad agency in Santa Barbara. And I saved every penny I had and bought an old 69 Islander sailboat. It was a 34-foot sailboat, beautiful boat.

Needed a ton of work. Do you remember what you paid for that? The boat and the slip in Santa Barbara, which the slips are worth more than most of the boats in the harbor there, was $10,000. Yeah, I was just wondering. Yeah. Your Volkswagen van might have been about the same price in those days. Yeah, so I had the van, and I had the boat. and I moved on to the boat.

I lived on the boat. And I was just pinching myself every day I'd wake up. I'd go surf the sand spit in Santa Barbara in the wintertime and just walk down and, you know, go to my job on the weekends. Friday night I'd leave work and do a night sail across the channel to the islands and just usually by myself, come back Sunday afternoon. And just could not get enough of being on the water. and out the islands.

So my grandfather would come out. He was super excited when I first got this boat. So he would come out a couple times a year and go sailing. And we'd spend a week out the islands or just sail locally around here. And it is just magical, just like, you know, just a magical time to be with him again on a boat, experiencing some of those same things again, but on a, you know, in a completely different environment than the East Coast was. And, and so I had needed to do some work on the boat, and I was trying to get it done in a local, local boatyard, and I just didn't have the money to do it. And there was

a really good boatyard in Ensenada at the time. It was probably still there called Baja Naval, and kind of worked out a deal with them. I'd sail the boat down there, and, and, and, and, and, and, you know, and leave the boat, and then we'd hop a train or something to come home, get to the border and hop a train back to this area. Kind of like getting your bug redone in Tijuana, right? You're getting your boat redone in Ensenada. Yeah, yeah. And the boat was going to be down there for three or four months while they did the work.

And then the plan was to go, when the boat was done, we'd go pick it up and then continue on our trip, wherever that was going to be. And we didn't have really a plan, but the boat was, was down there three or four months. They finished it up. We had a great sale down there. We took our time. We went out to Santa Barbara Island, spent a couple days, went to Catalina, which he'd never been to, sailed on down to Ensenada. We pulled in at like two in the morning and just pulled up to a dock there, not even knowing where we were. I had never been in that harbor. And no GPS, no satellite communication. Again, you're, what are you on charts or something?

You're just going by lights? Well, in those days, you know, there was no GPS. In fact, we didn't have any electronics on the boat at all. It was just a compass. Everything was just dead reckoning. My grandfather... You hear that at home kids. I'll have in the show notes what dead reckoning is.

Yeah. In the... You know, the only navigational aids at the time were like Loran. You know, it was like basically what airplane used. It was just a land-based system, which probably hasn't existed for... 40 years. I don't even know. But I couldn't afford that on my boat. So I just had a compass. You know, I had good charts and I had notes that from other people who had sailed down there. But, you know, when you cross the border into, especially in the northern Baja, there's,

nothing's lit. You know, here you have buoys that are lit. You have things that, you know, you can navigate at night by down there nothing's lit at least it wasn't at that time and then there's all kinds of other debris in the water um that as you pull as you come closer into like ensignada that you just have to avoid and um so you know we're under sales we're going like five knots so it's not like you know we're going fast but um there's just hazards you have to be aware of and um trying to locate rocks and other, you know, underwater obstacles just on a chart and then know where you're at on that chart is interesting. So that was like kind of my first long range sale with him on this coast in my own boat.

Can we back up a little bit? I'm assuming your grandfather is pretty proud of you. Like there's a, the apple didn't fall far from the tree. You've got a boat. You're doing these adventurous things. I'm assuming that there was a moment of pride about that. I think so. I think I was too young to really maybe appreciate that at the time, but I know he was, he loved coming out here and in doing that with me. And he was, he was kind of a vagabond. He loved to travel and he'd, and my grandmother didn't. And she was kind of a homebody. And so he would just grab a backpack. and like because he was retired Navy, he could fly standby on any naval flight

and he'd just be him by himself and a cargo plane sitting on a bench, you know, with his backpack, and he'd land. I'd pick him up at one of the naval bases and we'd go on our adventure. So I had an old Jeep, CJ6 at the time with no doors or top on or anything. And we drove all over California in that thing.

Just, I remember dead winter, rain, everything. And he was loving it. Nothing faced him. Yeah. What sort of practicalities did he, did you learn from him in sailing a vessel like yours, not a sophisticated vessel, you know, a trip down to Insanada. It could be quite trying, let's say. Yeah.

Especially sailing at night and doing this sort of stuff you were doing. What did you learn from the old guy? I think, you know, I think we had on that trip, particular I remember we had some engine problems because the wind died one night and we're we were we had to drop the sails and I can't remember what was going on with the engine we had an old atomic four which is basically like a gas tractor engine you know just runs steady RPM for forever and very reliable motors but pretty simple easy to work on but I can't remember if it was just like a water pump or something.

And I remember, and I always had like spare impellers and other hoses and, you know, hose clamps and stuff. And I remember we pulled, we were in the engine room trying to figure it out with like flashlights and we were in pretty rough seas. It had been a windy afternoon. And the wind just went to zero, but the seas were still super, super rough. And so the boat was just like, and I spent my entire life on boats. I've never once been seasick.

And I remember being in that engine room just running out and just losing my dinner over the side of the boat. And, you know, he, he was just a stoic, very stoic individual. And I always felt like he had this strength about him that I really respected that, you know, he could survive any kind of hardship. And he would be who I would want by my side on a trip like that. where some of these experiences were new to me. And he'd sailed all over, you know, so he had a lot of sailing experiences, his whole life pretty much.

And I'd spent a lot of time sailing with him. But this is the first time I'd ever own my own boat and did a lot of solo trips in it locally, but didn't really have the confidence to sail, you know, like on a two, three week trip, you know, some distance. a foreign country and, you know, foreign waters that I wasn't familiar with. Right.

So long before Christian Beamish had written Voyage of the Comeront. Yeah. Yeah. You friends with Christian? No. I don't know him. Oh, wow. So it's a similar guy from here.

Worked for Surfer's Journal. Got became possessed, decided to build a boat in his garage, 18 footer, double ender, built it, lost his job at Surfers Journal, started sailing out to Catalina and Santa Barbara. and all that, then solowed it down to Baja and should have died. That's a small boat. Got helped by some fishermen at Stedros Island and nursed him back to health, but beautiful, beautiful story.

Voyage of the Comerant, Slow Baja alum, Christian Beamish, I'll connect you to. Okay. Yeah, I'd love to check that out. Good book. Beautiful on audiobook if you have a long drive ahead of you. Always do. Yeah, always do. So let's talk a little bit about some long drives.

You do. You've got a sprinter van. You're action ready. packed, motorcycles, surfboards, you ride, you ride horses. What don't you do? I don't know. It's just some things I want to do that I haven't done before. I want to fly.

A couple years ago, we kind of fulfilled a lifelong dream that we've had for a long time. We bought a ranch in the backcountry here that came with an air strip, has an air strip on it. Wow. And from here, it's about an hour and a half, two hour drive over the mountains to get to it. But it's surrounded by national forests and BLM land. And the next dream is to learn how to fly and be able to have a little tail dragger, bush plane that we could, you know, fly to Mexico, fly around the backcountry here, fly out to the islands. But I've done a little bit of flying back there, and it's just, you know, fly to. Just high on my bucket list right now.

Well, so much of Baja in the early days was only open to private pilots. People were flying down to go fishing. People were flying. You used to be able to land your plane. You know, in downtown, it's hard to say downtown. Bahia de Los Angeles where you just drop in and taxi right up to Casa Diaz. And so much of Baja was that because the roads were so poor. Yeah.

And now the roads are much better. Good roads bring bad. Bad roads bring good people, right? Yeah. Let's transition a little bit to graphic designer. You've built this incredible brand that I don't know all that much about, except you used to have a store right across from the Transamerica pyramid in my neighborhood in San Francisco that I was always standing in front of your window looking in there and going in and buying gifts for my boys during the holidays.

And it was just so well curated, stunningly curated. My grandfather was a haberdasher. So I spent a lot of time in clothing stores and to just see a store that resonated so deeply with me. Motorcycles, cool stuff, red wing boots, you know, salvage denim, you know, just thoughtful, thoughtful stuff. How much of that is you, you know, finding, finding, we need to take a quick break? I mean, we can take a break for a message from Baja Bound. That would be all right. Here at Slow Baja, we can't wait to drive our old land cruiser south of the border.

And when we go, we'll be going with Baja Bound Insurance. Their website's fast and easy to use. Check them out at BajaBound.com. That's Bajaubound.com, serving Mexico travelers since 1994. Hey, we're back at the flagship Iron and Resin Store in downtown, beautiful downtown Ventura. I'm outside with Tom Hill, and I was just starting to wax poetically about how beautifully curated the store was. And I'm just wondering, I'm assuming that's all you,

that you're just translating these things that are inside you that you have to get out. And the vision realizes itself inside the walls of your store. And you call this the garage? Is that? The garage, yeah. How you referenced this one? Yeah, yeah.

I think, you know, the concept for the garage, at least in my life, is all great adventures start in the garage. All the scheming, all the planning, all your toys and tools. and everything you used to make, make, kind of make your adventure dreams come true, start in the garage.

So we called it the garage. But, yeah, this is our, this is our flagship store. We had a store in Venice at one time, San Francisco, the one you've been to, San Diego. We closed all those at COVID during COVID. COVID was a little tough on a lot of retailers. Yeah.

My wife was at Lucky. brand there. They closed everything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We kept this one. We actually closed this one for a little while, too. We had to do a big earthquake retrofit in here. So it just timing worked out. We closed the store. They did the construction. And then COVID hit. So we're, you know, we opened about a year and half later right towards the tail end of COVID. And this store's been here about 13 years now. So but it's it started and still is kind of a labor of love. It's a passion. project. It's all I do now. But it's, it's, it's just a reflection of all the stuff that I love. And I think I got a little bit of a good business advice a long time ago. Somebody told me to

really, I was just trying to do too many things in, in business. I started, I started my own business probably by the time I was 25, just working for myself and screen printing t-shirts. And was doing like band merch and surf merch and stuff for skate brands. Surf brands are friends and things like that. And pretty soon I was just, I had 150 employees and it was trying to do too many things for too many people. And it was killing me. Wow. So I'm really happy just to be doing this.

Yeah. And it's just kind of the stuff that I enjoy and get to work with good friends and people that I love. And it's not all fun, but it's, you know, for the most part, it's doing what I love to do and being around people that I love to be around. Well, it's hard resets sometimes are important. And again, circling back to our mutual friend, Drew Martin, saying that you are the most resilient person he knows with a deep well of grit and determination. How does that, again, how does that find itself in this brand? Iron, resin, you know, it's motorcycles, it's surfing. It's tell me more about this.

The, in thinking about, you know, the name, I really, you know, as a child of the 70s and 80s, I looked at kind of the golden age of, motorcycles and surfing, you know, guys that were building their own surfboards and going out to race the desert on the weekends and, you know, they're their own mechanics, very self-reliant, you know, everything sort of hand-build or customized, whether it's a bash plate for your motorcycle, you know, or, you know, what you're surfing, the board you're riding. A lot of them are building their own boards or, you know, at least working with a local craftsman that was making something by hand. And so I just love that, I love that time period and I love the idea of the sort of,

the sort of the self-reliant nature of, you know, how you, how you had to exist at that time, you know, and so Iron and Reson is, you know, it's really sort of a nod to that time period. You see a lot of inspiration from that period, whether it's motorcycles or surfing or just things in the outdoor. There's a lot of sort of familiar things from my childhood that I bring into the mix here. And I love, I just love that nostalgia. So that influences a lot of what we do, whether it's close. clothing or the content we do or, you know, what have you. I think there's a pretty strong Baja vibe connection in that as well, that if you were going

to Baja in the 70s and I always think about my 71 lane cruiser, who was driving that thing in 1975, the guy who probably was a veteran, came back, went to the surplus shop, got a cot, threw some bags in the back of the thing, and drove. And he didn't have, you know, 16 lights on the top. He didn't have the satellite navigation system taking up half of his dash. He didn't have the GPS trackers. He just went and figured it out the way that you and your grandfather went and sailed down there and figured it out. And he lived to tell the tale and rode the motorcycles like Pete Springer and just kept riding faster and faster because he didn't have lights.

And he wasn't going to outrun the darkness, but he was young and dumb. And he came to sleep right where that rock. where he hit that rock, which luckily didn't kill him. So he had more Baja adventures. Yeah, I mean, I would say I still love to travel that way. I hate having an agenda or schedule. I love having things be pretty open-ended. A lot of times if we travel by air, we get a one-way ticket,

and we're just like, well, we're going to fly back from wherever we end up. We don't know when or what place that's going to be. Or same driving. We did like a month-long trip last summer. just up the west coast into western Canada and then across the Rockies and kind of through the like Jasper Banff area and just back down through the American Rockies and sort of meandered our way with no plan. We didn't have an agenda. We had no reservations anywhere. And but I you know to me when you go someplace with with no expectations,

99 times out of 100, it's always a good outcome, you know. But when you go someplace where you're, you know, your entire trip is scheduled out for you and you have expectations of each place you're going, you can come away disappointed. So I love going places where I know nothing about the place. we just have sort of a loose window of time and a budget and usually not a lot of money and you know just a rough route that we want to take we know we want to hit this place and wherever and maybe this place and then whatever happens in between there is whatever happens so a lot of fun discoveries traveling that way

Well, I think on that profound note, we're going to leave it right there. Tom Hill, thanks for making some time for Slow Baja. Thanks for having me. Delighted to be here and finally meet you. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. Thanks for having me.

All right, we did it. Hey, well, I hope you liked that conversation with Tom. Cool story, sailing with his grandfather. That's something I would have loved to have done with mine. I travel with my grandfather a lot. Anyhow, if you like what I'm doing here, folks, if you like what I'm doing, please, I urge you support the show, find a way, make a donation. You know, I'm always asking for something here.

Support the kids playing baseball. Support the kids from the high school who brought their postal jeeps to Baja. Well, you know, slow Baja. Got my little tin cup out too. So if you like what I'm doing, buy some merch, buy some stickers. Drop a couple of tacos in the tank. Come see me. June 28th through 30th.

I'll be in Overland Expo up in Bend, Oregon, the Pacific Northwest show. Come up and say hello. Leading a bunch of classes there. So if you're in the Pacific. Northwest and you're here in this podcast come out to bend to say hello i've got a number of bahaw conversations on the schedule and a class that less is more and bound for baha so love to see you and bend if you're up there i've got some stickers i've got hats t-shirts are super thin and i'll just tell you that that is always a reflection of my current state of financial due rest that i don't have t-shirts

in stock but there's a few black ones there so if you see your size pull the trigger immediately do not hesitate do not put it in your cart and come back because it'll be gone white shirts are all out. I hope to get a new batch of shirts coming soon, so drop a taco in the tank and help get me a little closer to that goal. All right, enough of that. Mary McGee, Mary McGee has been making the rounds.

Holy Toledo. Lewis Hamilton was showing her round of Formula One race. Mary McGee, she's got a new film out about her life. Yeah, that Mary McGee, that Mary McGee plucked out of obscurity by the Slow Baja podcast. Well, you know, Mary was always cool. always cool back in 62 she was at a new year's eve party and steve mcqueen who was probably the only person cooler than mary at the whole party said hey mary you come out to the desert ride a motorcycle with me and she

did and uh you know she was the first person to solo baha 500 on a motorcycle she's a cool cat but her pal steve he loved baha and he said baha's life anything that happens before or after it's just wait. You know, people always ask me, what's the best modification that I've ever made to slow Baja? Without a doubt, it's my Shielman seats. You know, Toby at Shielman USA could not be easier to work with. He recommended a Vero F for me and a Vrero F XXL for my navigator, Ted, as Ted's kind of a big guy. And Toby was absolutely right. The seats are great and they fit both of us perfectly. And let me tell you, after driving around Baja for over a year on these seats, I could not be happier. Shieldman, Slow Baja approved.

Learn more and get yours at shieldman.com.