September 2nd, 2026
Greetings from Carrboro,
The cool kids these days call them collabs. And that’s usually to reference pop stars or brands working together who might not be such obvious, you know, besties. But I like to believe mere mortals can do it, too. So, in that we-so-trendy spirit, our travel company, The Olive Road, is teaming up with Chapel Hill’s Bloom Yoga Company for a glorious trip to Tuscany next fall. Think warrior pose on top of an 11th-century castle with a delicious glass of wine waiting in the wings and you’ll be on the right track.
One of the founders of Bloom, Sara Harward, worked with me at Acme when she was a student at UNC. That was, let’s say, a few years ago. And both Sara and her business partner, Ashley Gangloff, launched Bloom with a north star that shares our regard for place and the deep belief in this community. On Sunday, September 13th, we are having a Spritz-fest of sorts with snacks @ Atlas beginning at 5pm to talk about the trip to Tuscany and answer any questions for those of you who are interested in joining us. Keep reading if you want to understand our collab and how yoga, travel, and all things delicious go hand in hand.
The Olive Road to Tuscany
I’ve heard it called a lot of things. The golden thread. The through-line. The narrative of our lives that weaves meaning into the path we’ve taken, looking back on choices that once seemed random but now surge with meaning. How the youthful confidence in our life’s direction was, at best, a very helpful mirage. There’s a reason that the first card of the Tarot deck is The Fool, cheerily stepping off a cliff with his loyal dog at his heels.
At 20, we’re all concerned about what we’re going to be or, often more intensely, how we’re going to get there. And as we make our way, the question we all begin to ask isn’t what or how but why. The lifelong journey to answer that question asks us to look back at our past choices and discern them more honestly. And it also makes us choose our present path with greater intention, valuing those things—big and small—that nourish our lives in meaningful ways.
I’m in the restaurant world. We feed people. A favorite guest was a woman who retired here but grew up near Beaufort, in Eastern North Carolina. In the early ’50s, she moved to South Florida where she started and ran several PR firms. She later married a man who produced Broadway shows and was the person who “discovered” Robert Redford. So definitely a woman who lived a very glamorous life before moving here.
She wrote to me after eating at the restaurant one night to say that it was the greatest meal of her life—a plate of grits and shad roe, a very seasonal, very Eastern North Carolina specialty that isn’t served much anymore. (Shad are fish that spawn upriver on the East Coast, similar to salmon out West.) As a child, she would go before dawn with her father to where the spring shad, running upriver, were brought in by commercial fishermen. The smell was terrible with so many fish. But they’d wait, and then her father would buy the often-discarded roe to take home and cook for breakfast. He thought it was the best thing in the world. And she had abhorred it. Every single year.
At Acme, 75 years later, she had shad roe for the first time since those mornings in her childhood – and she loved it. It made her remember her father and his rough hands and how he gently cooked the roe as the sun came up all those years before. She said her friends at the table were so concerned when she couldn’t stop crying halfway through the meal.
In truth, like the woman above, we are each fed by many things. By food, by relationships, by careers—an almost infinite list. But in that vast Venn diagram, it is where those elements intersect—by giving our story meaning and purpose—that we are most deeply nourished. We all know that feeling when we’re lucky enough to find ourselves at that wellspring. And the almost random way it finds us as much as we find it. You could even be sitting with new friends, eating fish eggs and grits in a certain small-town Southern restaurant.
At The Olive Road, we travel in search of that intersection. Through the lens of food and wine, we explore European destinations that have a centuries-old relationship to the profound natural rhythm of place and culture. At a time when we can feel overwhelmed by the list of never enoughs that greets us every morning when we open our computers, The Olive Road provides a reset and a reconnection to the things that nourish us in ways an Instagram feed never can.
Our collaboration with Bloom Yoga Company underlines our shared values and belief in the deep importance and resonance of human connection. Of reclaiming your time for yourself. That right now can be pretty damn great. It’s part of both our companies’ DNA to explore old places and practices that nourish the deepest parts of ourselves, so often neglected in our hectic, 24/7 world. And where better than an 11th-century castle in Tuscany? Right?
At heart, both yoga and travel are about self-discovery. So when you travel with us to Tuscany, the most interesting person you meet just might be yourself.
Well, that’s all the news from Carrboro. The Staff at Acme look forward to serving you soon.
Cheers,
The Staff at Acme
Wanderer, There Is No Road
Wanderer, your footprints
are the only road, nothing else.
Wanderer, there is no road;
you make your own path as you walk.
As you walk, you make your own road,
and when you look back
you see the path
you will never travel again.
Traveler, there is no road;
only wind-trails in the sea.
—Antonio Machado
