They’re hard to miss around campus: they ride their longboards everywhere they go, they’re both over six feet tall, and until recently they both had shoulder-length hair.
Seniors Alec Olschner and Nick Grow met in Arend Hall their freshman year.
“Nick was sitting in the lounge listening to a comedian on his computer before classes started,” Olschner said. He sat down to listen and the two hit it off immediately.
“The first two weeks of school we just walked around and quoted Mitch Hedberg,” Grow said, laughing. The two hung out together all the time and Grow started longboarding with Olschner, who picked it up in high school.
“I picked it up through Alec,” Grow said. “It was something we could do together.”
Olschner made his first longboard when he was a junior in high school because his youth pastor’s husband asked Olschner to make one for him. Olschner looked it up online and then found he could make more than one board with one piece of plywood, so he and several of his friends made their own boards.
“We cut out the shapes in my parents’ basement and bought the trucks on eBay,” Olschner said. “The first batch wasn’t the greatest, but they got better.”
Grow saw the longboard that Olschner had made and decided to make some with a friend from high school.
They both started selling their boards, each with separate brand names, in the fall of 2006. Grow’s boards are called Shralps and Olschner’s are called Yettis. Both kinds are a little more noticeable around campus because they are five-foot boards, instead of the typical 40-inch board.
“It spread by word-of-mouth,” Olschner said about how he started selling longboards. “People would be like ‘would you sell me one?’” Olschner thinks he has made at least 40 boards since high school.
“I haven’t made a substantial amount of money from it,” Olschner said. “But it’s enough to support my hobby and have a little bit of extra money.”
Grow, who made his boards with a friend from high school, sold his at a higher price and made enough money to pay for studio time to record a CD with a band he was a part of in high school.
“I started riding to class out of the utility of it,” Olschner said. “But it wasn’t a huge part of who I was in high school.”
Eventually though, longboarding became more than just a quick way to get to class, thanks to two longboarders, Adam Colton and Adam Stokowski, who put out several longboarding videos.
Olschner and Grow were getting bored with just carving around the loop about the time these videos came out, Grow said.
“It was very simple and flowy,” Grow said. “It wasn’t like skateboarding where you’re pushing yourself to do a new trick.”
After that, Grow and Olschner were almost inseparable from their longboards. However, there is one thing that can stop them from longboarding: rain.
“It makes us cringe when we see people riding longboards in the rain,” said Grow, while Olschner winced at the thought of it. It’s bad for your board, explained Grow. They have boards specifically for when it rains. They took old skateboarding decks and drilled holes farther down the board to make it more like a longboard.
But still, there are times when they have to put away their longboards for more than a day or two. Specifically, once it snows.
“All I want to do is longboard, but it’s snowy outside,” Grow said about the winter months.
“You miss it a lot,” Olschner said. “I took a water color class over Jan term…”
“He painted nothing but longboards!” Grow interrupted.
Olschner even tried to make a longboard to ride in the winter using skis, but it didn’t work out so well. However, the two have learned to deal with the break.
“Every spring you have to get back on your board and teach yourself how to longboard again,” Olschner said.
Longboarding has become something more than just a way to get around for Olschner and Grow, it’s now something they consider a part of them.
“I started riding to ride, I had no destination, just the sensation of carving under my feet,” Olschner said.
They even coined a term for it: Shralping.
“Shralping is longboarding with no destination, just cruising,” Grow said.
It’s hard for them to describe the feeling they enjoy so much while they longboard.
“Can you even describe it?” Grow asked. “It’s fun. It’s a simple pleasure like when you’re eight and you love riding your bike and moving fast. It’s that feeling of the wind in my hair. It’s very fluid, not technical.”
Olschner agreed with Grow on all counts.
“There’s a big sense of freedom feeling the board move under my feet, and interacting with my surroundings,” Olschner said. “I can go anywhere.”
Contact Caitlin Richmond at caitlin.richmond@whitworthian.com.
Schralps and Yettis: For two seniors, longboarding is more than a quick way to get to class
Published: Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Updated: Saturday, February 28, 2009
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Seniors Nick Grow and Alec Olschner pose with longboards. The longboards Grow makes are called Shralps and the longboards Olschner makes are called Yettis.
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