Menu

O2 on the Longboard

The Fraser Valley is for boarders.

Obviously, in the winter, there are multitudes of snowboarders up here, sure. (Skiers, too!) But summertime boarding in the valley usually refers to another increasingly popular sport, and one of O2 Creative’s favorite pastimes: longboarding.

Longboards are similar to skateboards, but only slightly so. For one thing, longboards tend to be…well, longer. This longer design means they’re better suited for coasting long distances. Different wheel and truck designs also allow longboards to turn more easily. Besides that, there’s almost no end to all the shapes and sizes in which longboards are offered.

O2Longboards
Long boards, Colorado’s Favorite Playground, Fraser Valley

Longboarding is more akin to surfing than skateboarding. Longboarding was actually invented by surfers, and the sport has even been described as “surfing on concrete.” We think this is a reasonable description, although it may not entirely do the sport justice. The high-speed thrill of cruising effortlessly through the area’s forests, meadows, and parks – it’s just tough to put all that excitement into words.

Grand County is quite the venue for longboarding as well. The county boasts plenty of paved paths perfect for a good longboard cruise, the most popular of which being the Fraser River Trail. This trail meanders along the river at a gradual, steady downhill slope, which is perfect for maintaining speed on a longboard for miles at a time.

O2LongboardEric
Eric VanHerwaarden, Owner and Art Director at O2 Creative Design and Marketing, enjoying a cruise through the countryside.

In fact, the Fraser River Trail’s change in elevation allows boarders to roll without stopping from the Winter Park Resort all the way down into Fraser…and right up to O2 Creative’s office!

O2longboardingJaryd
Jaryd rolling right past the office!

When we’re not hard at work in the office, we’re often on our longboards speeding down one of the area’s many great trails. We’re forever grateful that Colorado’s Favorite Playground affords us so many longboarding opportunities, and also thankful that many of our clients dig the longboards, too.

Foundry long boards
Custom Long Boards designed by O2 Creative for The Foundry Cinema and Bowl, Fraser Colorado

So if you happen to cruise on by our office one day, feel free to stop and say what’s up to a few of the fellow longboarders in town.

Shout out to our friends at the Fraser Longboard Alliance. Check them out on Facebook for sweet videos, photos, and other cool longboarding info.

Click here for our next blog post – the benefits of a good graphic designer! 

O2 Culture – an introduction

At O2 Creative, we’re all about the most innovative ideas in marketing and design. We take our jobs very seriously, and strive for professional excellence. We work hard.

With that said – we play hard, too. We get to work and live in Grand County, Colorado, and it is an absolute privilege to call Colorado’s Favorite Playground our home. We are afforded so many amazing adventures – hiking, biking, fishing, camping, rafting, and long boarding, just to name a few. We try to take advantage of, and draw creative inspiration from, all the unique opportunities that Grand County has to offer.

We’d like to announce an expansion of the creative direction for our blog. We’ll still write posts offering our own unique insight on important marketing and design topics, but we’d also like to occasionally share stories about our own personal interests, giving our readers a taste of what we call “O2 Culture.”

To start things off, we’d like to share one cool element of O2 personality – we’re avid fly fishermen. As anglers, enthusiasts, and ambassadors of Grand County, we want to share a little known fact:

Grand County fly-fishing sucks.

Don’t come here expecting to catch lots of beautiful wild trout. Any rumors you might have heard just aren’t true.

We don’t have many meandering miles of secluded mountain streams, full of fat feisty cutthroats and brook trout. These fish are not outrageously fun to catch on a 3-weight rod, so don’t even bother.

O2BlogCutty

Nor do we have countless alpine lakes hidden away in the higher reaches of the county, along the Continental Divide and in Rocky Mountain National Park. These lakes are not full of eager trout ready to chomp down the flies of the few anglers who are crazy enough to brave the rugged terrain.

O2BlogColumbineLake

We don’t even have a big river, like the Colorado – biggest in the American Southwest. Fly fishermen have no chance of landing dozens of brown trout all on dry flies in a single afternoon, nor does anyone ever hook into the Colorado’s elusive trophy-size rainbows. Those are all entirely…well, fish stories. Don’t be fooled.

O2BlogRainbow

Even if there were any fish to catch, it’s not like the scenery alone make the trip worthwhile. The lakes and streams and meadows and snow-capped peaks are not, in fact, breathtakingly gorgeous in their own right. So don’t come here expecting awesome Rocky Mountain landscapes, because this area couldn’t possibly impress anyone. Not you. not even your dog.

O2BlogLakeRoscoe

So, yeah, you heard it here. Don’t show up to the awesome trout waters in Colorado’s Favorite Playground expecting to have an epic day of fly-fishing. It couldn’t possibly actually happen. Just keep fishing somewhere else.

Click here for our next blog post – O2 on the Longboard!