Snowboarder Safety - The Dangers of the Board Dungeon

Snowboarding. One of the most extreme of the extreme sports. Flying, flipping down snow-covered mountains, staring peril in the face at every cliff, glade, and crevice. Those lucky enough to call themselves snowboarders know the inherent danger that is the tightrope walk of snowboarding. Too much ice renders useless even the sharpest of edges and most engineered of cambers, catch an edge and you can find yourself on the tumble of your life, and there’s always a risk of avalanches popping without warning.

With all of these dangers lurking at every turn, snowboarding’s most dangerous and most nefarious aspect is often overlooked.

Board clutter. All over the world, boarders tiptoe cautiously and uncomfortably through a maze of boards. That’s right, friends, board dungeons pose a serious threat to winter athletes everywhere whether in board shops or homes. Board overload can creep up on you without even a hint of warning until one day you’re at the downstairs fridge grabbing a refreshing Smir Ice for a few pals and you find yourself stuck taking the long way back. Or worse, a precarious surfboard falls and cuts off your only access back to the civilized world.

In some extreme cases your route is so cluttered that you are forced to take 1 bag of groceries at a time in place of your usual… all of them at once. That’s when you realize things are more serious than you thought, did you ever imagine that a simple thing like not buying a snowboard rack would ever affect the simple pleasure and ultimate satisfaction that is unloading all of the groceries in one trip?

Board hoarding is an inevitable and completely understandable situation. After all, how are you supposed to throw away the Tony Hawk skateboard on which you first ollied or your 9’5 longboard that Robert August was kind enough to sign when you saw him at Surf Expo during the 50th anniversary of Endless Summer? Impossible!

Luckily this, like many other stories of hope, has a happy ending. There is a way to avoid board accumulation and that is through proper organization and board storage. If your board dungeon has you down you must simply look up.. to the walls. Chances are your walls are the solution to this problem. Often empty and waiting to be used, walls give us a chance to get our clutter off the floor and out of the way of our feet and let us make our living space more efficiently organized.

Now that the ski season is over, you’re probably looking at your equipment and scratching your head about the best way to store your snowboards. Grassracks products let boarders store and organize their snowboards in a way that is appealing to the eye. Not only do our products look incredible but they are incredibly strong. Our bamboo has a higher tensile strength than steel all while being one of the most eco-friendly resources on our planet. Combine that with the easiest and strongest installation system on the market and you have your perfect snowboard rack. Give your boards the respect and protection they deserve and check out our Moloka’i Series and other products today!

*Grassracks makes and designs the industry's premium board racks from bamboo. With the easiest-to-install and strongest mounting system, strongest cradles, best-looking racks, and most comprehensive line of equipment options, our products are the only choice to organize and store your sport and home equipment.

(Snowboarding and other extreme sports are to be enjoyed but can be dangerous. Make sure you’ve done your homework. Check that your boards, binding, edges, etc. are maintained; know the conditions and your lines; be cognizant of other riders and look out for each other.)

Spring Cleaning - How to Organize Your Gear

There is no doubt that rising temperatures signify a change of seasons. Spring is here and you know what that means, Spring Cleaning.

Yes, that bittersweet time of year when we clean out the house. We organize, complete projects, and get things back in order. We get our home to a point that’s livable and are sure that it will never get cluttered again..before life happens.

The change in season begs some important questions:

- What do I do with my winter gear when it’s no longer winter?

- How should I take care of the gear that I’ve spent hundreds and thousands of dollars to acquire?

- How do you organize this stuff if you have A LOT of gear?

What do I do with my winter gear when it’s no longer winter?

For the avid outdoorsman, Spring also brings a change in sport. Your winter gear, which has served you so well in the snow, needs to find a place to rest in the off season. Your summer gear-- bike, surfboard, paddle board, wakeboard, or longboard-- awakens from its hibernation. The easy solution is to toss your gear in the basement to forget for the next 7 months. Spoiler Alert: You will have the same reaction every November! How did these get so rusty!? Where did this chip come from!? How did these get so moldy and scratched up!?

Perhaps you’re familiar with this dilemma. Your skis or snowboard are practically family but it’s hard to find them a home within your home. You can’t throw them under the bed, your closet is already bursting at the seams, and, for the love of everything good, don’t relegate your gear to the dark abyss of the basement. This is gorgeous gear, it deserves to be protected and displayed.

How should I take care of the gear that I’ve spent hundreds and thousands of dollars to acquire?

We’ve all gotten the talk from our parents about taking care of our things. “Take good care of your belongings and they will last you a lifetime.” Fortunately with age comes wisdom and mom and dad were right. That mantra doesn’t just apply to your car, house, or phone, it very much applies to skis and snowboards.

So what does proper snowboard and ski storage entail? They should be kept in a place that is safe and dry. Moisture and humidity creates rust and mold on your gear. Your gear is meant to get wet but not stay wet permanently. Wet or humid conditions can create situations where you gear deteriorates faster than normal.

How do you organize this stuff if you have A LOT of gear?

Keeping your equipment safe can happen in a number of different ways but always involves some sort of organization. There are sports closets and storage rooms, floor racks, ceiling racks, and the very popular wall rack. While we have a few floor racks, we realized that the most practical way to store summer and winter gear is generally to mount it on the wall. This opens up the floor, makes use of otherwise wasted wall space, and keeps your equipment out of harm’s way while putting it somewhere it can be easily accessed and appreciated. After all, you’ve spent lots of hard-earned money on your gear, shouldn’t you put it somewhere that it can remind you of some of your best memories?

Spring Cleaning doesn’t have to be so daunting, but it does need a plan. Luckily, we have you covered there. Your boards, bikes, and skis no longer have to part of the problem but can instead be one of the easiest solutions. Our racks have been meticulously measured to give your boards, bikes, and skis, the right about of room to keep them safe and show them off. Our bamboo & designs are gorgeous and strong to accent and support even the heaviest boards. Finally, our installation system is the easiest and most versatile on the market allowing you to adjust for different boards or easily change Series all together for different sports.

Now all that’s left is to decide which wall gets to boast your finest stuff and where to put your old photo albums..

5 Attributes of a True Surfer

Surfers are a special breed.  We have our own distinct lifestyle, culture, and unique community.  People don’t always get us and we don’t always get other people.

Not just anyone can be a surfer; perhaps this is what sets us apart.  Surfers are truly mavericks.

Our differences are found deep down in our core.  You can’t just move to the beach, buy a surfboard, wetsuit, and cool bamboo surf rack and call yourself a surfer. It’s certainly not walking around the beach in swim attire with chiseled abs. Being a surfer is a mindset and way of life, a journey rather than a sprint. Becoming a true surfer cannot be achieved in one day but rather takes years, it’s a total physical and mental transformation.

We learn some of our most important life lessons in the ocean. These lessons become part of our character and how we take on the world.

Resolution

Surfing is a journey as is each day on the water. Nobody ever goes out intending to catch one wave and call it a day. It takes a combination of strength of endurance to get through each session. We made a joke about abs, but surfers have to be fit. Not Hanz and Franz meathead fit, but strong throughout our body and mind. We need to be physically strong to paddle through the break and catch waves but we also need the drive and resolution to keep going even when we’re getting pounded. The ocean is a powerful thing and it takes the drive, strength, and endurance to navigate it.

Good things take time and most of the time the good part doesn’t come until you’ve put in a lot of work and hurdled some major obstacles.

Foresight

Keep a weathered eye on the horizon. We spend countless hours watching lineups with our back to the beach waiting for our wave. Dare we say that we have good anticipation and foresight that translates to our daily lives? This may not mean we stick to plans but the ocean has taught us a great lesson about thinking about the future and what may come. It also teaches us patience..

Patience

We’ve all spent hours on the ocean waiting for that perfect wave. It’s an easy place to learn patience but has often left us not fully satisfied. Surfing is a lot like golf, you can hit 83 mediocre shots and then when you’re about to sell your clubs you hit an impossible 8-iron from the rough and land it 2 feet from the pin. Faith restored.

While surfing is almost always less frustrating than golf, it’s that perfect wave that keeps us coming back and the patience that gets us there.

Courage

Nobody’s ever looked at a 50 ft. wave and not felt intimidated. As commonplace as it may now seem, it takes courage to venture into the ocean, as land mammals, amidst storm swells, blind to what’s below, and do what we have learned to love. The power of nature and the ocean is tremendous and we are but tiny specks on an enormously powerful planet. There are big scary (beautiful) fish down there in addition to sharp coral and powerful rip currents ready to welcome us to stay with them.

We’re courageous. Look at the superheroes and superheroines that surf Mavericks and Cyclops and tell us they don’t have major cojones. Impossible.

Balance

If you don’t have balance, you fall off your surfboard, duh. Obviously you need great balance to ride a wave, keep from capsizing while scoping the lineup, and paddling through the break. This is one of many characteristics that carries through to our life. While others may thinking our surfing means we play too much and need to focus more on life, we plead the contrary. We’re here for a good time not a long time. We’re here to have FUN.

It’s so easy to get wrapped up with work and life but hard to remember to keep that balance. Like yoga, fitness, and church for some, surf is what brings us back to a place where we step back, relax, and remember why we’re here.

One of the most important parts of balance is recognizing our relationship with the environment. After all, if we don’t take care of it, we may find ourselves paddling out through empty bottles in a lifeless ocean full of dangerous microplastics.

In a world full of cell phones and computer screens, surfing is our escape. It brings us back to nature and gets us away from the annoyances and hassles of everyday life. Out on the water we get a chance to meditate and appreciate life without buzzing or horn honking, just the steady crash of waves. It’s where we go to relax but where we end up doing most of the learning the shapes the people we are and will become.

The SUPIA Ultimate Giveaway is Almost Here

Once upon a slow Tuesday as the summer was drawing to a close, some of the Paddleboard industry’s leading accessory brands sat down for a chat.

Summer is exciting; the holidays are exciting; but it’s undeniable that there’s a gap from September to the end of November where the excitement drops off. Shouldn’t we, as paddleboarders and outdoor enthusiasts, have something amazing to look forward to before the holidays?

And so The SUPIA Ultimate Giveaway was born.

The Ultimate Giveaway is a month long contest with weekly prizes from some of the top brands in the industry. Essentially, aside from a board and paddle (for now), by entering the Giveaway you have the chance to win nearly everything necessary to become the ultimate SUPer.

This year you will find brands like FCS, Grassracks, and Kanulock and products that range from board racks and locking tie down straps to performance apparel, PFDs, and leashes & fins.

The SUPIA Ultimate Giveaway begins November 3^rd and ends December 1^st. There are 4 1-week prize packages and there are some easy ways to give yourself a better chance to win..

1. Enter (You must enter to win. You can enter easily through the SUPIA Ultimate Giveaway Facebook Page tab “ENTER HERE!”.)
2. Share the Giveaway from the entry form. (You will receive 5 bonus entries if one of your friends enters and uses a code that the form will provide you.)
3. Follow and Share the Contest and Brand Pages. (Bonus entries will be awarded for sharing through various social mediums.)
4. Stay tuned to Brand Pages for further holiday promotions and Giveaway updates.

That’s it! Easy. REMEMBER that there are 4 separate giveaways starting each Wednesday in November so don’t forget to enter and share each week!!

There are a lot of great prize packages from awesome brands so mark your calendars and tell your friends because the more entries we get, the bigger and better this contest will become.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE ENTRY PAGE!

The Holidays are Coming..

The holidays are coming so lend an ear. It’s time to start thinking about those special people in your life that deserve a really great gift this coming holiday season. But what do you buy for the Surfer who has everything or the Paddleboarder who just got a new SUP and paddle? Or what about the skier or snowboarder in your life? How about the lifelong skater with a million boards in the closet?

Choosing the perfect gift is difficult. You know that your spouse is an avid biker but what if you don’t know much about the industry?

Relax. We have you covered.

Regardless of the sport, one of the most common problems with them is finding an easy and convenient storage solution. The even more difficult part is finding something that’s worthy of the gorgeous equipment accumulated by athletes. Well, it was difficult, but no longer..

That’s where we come into play. While some have described Grassracks as the perfect holiday gift for athletes, we like to be a little more modest.. We’re the best imaginable holiday gift for athletes.

If you find yourself constantly listening to stories about amazing trips in the waist high powder of the Swiss Alps or a masterfully crafted all-carbon bike frame that can be lifted with two fingers but are tired of seeing the equipment responsible for such stories strewn across the house, your prayers have been answered.

This year, give the gift that gives back. Let your friend or loved one display and show off their prized boards, bikes, and skis while you finally enjoy an organized and uncluttered house. No more tripping over boards or having skis slide down your wall.

You may be asking yourself why you would want some ugly metal rack on in your house and you’re absolutely correct. You don’t! Well, we don’t use metal for our racks. We use gorgeous, strong, and eco-friendly bamboo crafted into sleekly engineered designs.

So this holiday season, don’t give a crappy gag gift that’s going to be tossed a few days after. Get a gift that matters and that will make a difference in their life. CLICK HERE to visit the vast array of board racks and home décor items that are soon to grace your living space.

Freestanding Vertical Paddle Board Rack Release

This past September marked Grassracks’ 6th appearance at the Surf Expo in Orlando. As per usual the show was full of surfers, skaters, paddleboarders, and bikini models galore. As per the norm, full of some of the coolest people in the world.

For Grassracks, we had our typical listings and new designs plus the release of our new freestanding vertical SUP rack.. 

It's always exciting to buy a new Stand Up Paddleboard and especially nice for shops to display these boards for sale. But there is always the question of how to store such a massive product. While we offer horizontal wall displays, it's often impossible or impractical for shops to store their boards like this. In the world of free standing vertical racks there was a dire need for something better.

After all, a board isn't just a means of transportation, it is a piece of art and deserves to be shown off with a nice frame, if you will. That's why, like our other racks, we design something beautiful and sturdy to take the place of the typical metal and foam alternatives. Needless to say our racks were a hit for everyone from retailers to board manufacturers.

 Shops and board owners aren’t the only ones that need storage options, though, board manufacturers also need solutions for the countless shows they go to every year and they need a solution for the shop they sell to. For an industry of nature lovers and outdoor enthusiasts, there's no better way to show off a board then on something as gorgeous and eco-friendly as bamboo.  To see our new designs click the link here.

The Show Us Your Rack Contest - Only 5 days left to enter and win!

-Only 5 days remain to enter and win our Show Us Your Rack Contest-

Our goal as a brand is to incite a change in the way athletes take care of and appreciate their equipment. Some are meticulous and careful while others embrace the carefree lifestyle of action sports through to storage. What we do is make a safe, easy, and beautiful way to display and store your things so you don’t have to think about it. With the Show Us Your Rack Contest, we want to see unsightly quiver and equipment situations worthy of a makeover and make them right.

How to Enter:

1. Tell us your story: Take a picture of your current equipment situation. It can be thrown in a corner, a garage, displayed with DIY rack, etc.
2. Tell the world: (A) Post your picture on Instagram (B) follow & tag @Grassracks, and (C) hashtag #ShowUsYourRack
3. Share: Tell your friends! The more entries we receive, the more racks we will add to the giveaway.

Essentially we want to make this...

...from this!

FOR MORE DETAILS CLICK HERE!

7 Reason the Kaua`i Series is the Best Surfboard Rack on the Market

Today’s the day. For weeks, months, or even years you’ve been making a list of likes and dislikes: sizes, shapes, fins, art, finishes, materials. You have the perfect board picked out and you’re finally ready to take the plunge. Congratulations, you have a new favorite to add to your quiver.

You’re excited, you get home with your new board, bag, and leash, but you’ve forgotten one important thing.. You swore the next board you got would go ding-less since it’s happened time and again. Time and again you love your new board but are hapless with its storage and care, causing careless dings that could have been easily prevented.

Your attention now turns towards protecting and displaying your new (and old) boards. Where do you put them? And how do you put them somewhere they can be seen but safe? Just a hint: look to your walls. Generally in houses and apartments there is a lot of clutter on the floor but a lot of open wall space so it's time to make use of some of the space, add some art, and clean up that floor with a wall mounted board rack.

You start trolling the internet but you’re quickly disappointed. You run into 3 major problems with the racks you find: they’re made from chintzy material which you don't trust to support your babies, they are made from metal and foam and look terrible, or they look decent but only hold one board. Fret not, we have you covered. 

Our mission has been to create the perfect board rack and we kept you in mind. The following are the 7 reasons that The Kaua`i Series is the best surfboard rack on the market and why it’s perfect for you.

1. Gorgeous Bamboo

We were careful with our material selection. Bamboo is an increasingly popular home décor material because it’s gorgeous. It’s a fibrous and grainy material and looks amazing with our protective finish. Our racks get away from the industrial metal, plastic, and foam feel and get back to the basics of the nature that is the source of our surfing memories.

2. Strength

It’s no secret that bamboo is strong. It has been engrained in societies for thousands of years, used as housing material and even scaffolding for buildings up to 60 stories in Asia. We use ultra strong 1/2" 3-ply cross directional bamboo plywood and a mounting system that would impress even Hercules with it's strength. The Kaua’I Series is rated to hold 150 lbs., which is overkill for your boards but we’d rather be safe than sorry.

3. Design

Our design is engineered from our mounting system to the angle of arms and board spacing. We’ve designed each rack to hit the sweet spot in between total space efficiency and total displayability of your surfboards. This Series displays your quiver while also being very space efficient AND has two utility hooks for helmets, paddles, wetsuits, etc.

4. Ease of Installation

Most racks are big and bulky or have to be completely dismounted to remove them from the wall. We took a lot of time developing our mounting system to make an easy installation rack that has some amazing benefits.

• Installation takes only a few minutes once studs are located
• Our Mounting Bar system allows you to pop racks on and off in seconds in case you are moving furniture, need to paint, etc.

5. Adjustability

The nature of our Mounting Bar allows for easy lateral cradle adjustment in case you need to accommodate for fins at different widths. With every Grassracks wall rack using the same Mounting Bar, you can easily interchange between our different series for a nice and quick change of scenery and board types.

6. Material

You not only get a gorgeous and strong material in bamboo, you’re getting a sustainable and eco-friendly material. Blah blah blah, right? Actually, no! In the last few decades, scientists have been heavily researching global climate change and what types of plants can pull carbon (CO2) out of the atmosphere... bamboo is an absolute winner. Not only is it the fastest growing plant in the world, it ranks very highly among plants with the best carbon sequestration. Why does that matter? It means that bamboo is helping clean our planet up and keeping it the way we know and love.

7. Support a growing American brand.

If you’re not sold by now here’s one more reason that Grassracks is perfect for you. We’re a young, growing, American company. We consist of two friends from high school that have set out to make a positive impact in the world by offering innovative and eco-friendly products that will actually make your life better. In a time when everything is being shipped out and ripped off by other countries, we’re keeping it here at home.

So what are you waiting for? Check it out by clicking HERE now! Have a friend that would be interested? Share us on FB, Insta, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.!

Mick Fanning's J-Bay Open Shark Attack - Out of Something Awful, Something Awesome

This past Sunday, the surfing world was shaken as a shark attacked Mick Fanning during the J-Bay Open in South Africa. We thought we were losing one of our beloved brothers but when the dust settled we realized some pretty amazing things.

The scene was set, two Australians in the finals, the competition had been intense, the waves were right and then something terrifying. A thrash and an enormous fin. Before we had a chance to catch our breath, Mick was away from his surfboard swimming towards shore and getting scooped up by a ski and then quickly onto a safety boat. In the background, Julian Wilson paddling quickly to Mick’s aid before also getting picked up by a ski.

The GoPro Hero4 Session and Lily Camera - Turning Average into Amazing

The world of extreme sports filmography has been blowing minds since the first images were captured decades ago. Epic Bruce Brown surf, Warren Miller ski, and countless other films have turned athletes into idols, each frame capturing something never before seen on a television, until now...

Extreme sports videos have come a long way since the days of The Endless Summer, a Bruce Brown classic which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, progressing to the Red Bull cinematic genius that is The Art of Flight featuring legendary backcountry rider Travis Rice. Then GoPro came to be..

GoPro has revolutionized the industry. Like Grassracks, GoPros and other action cameras allow us to tell our story but, unlike our brand, they allow us to show real life dynamic footage of our memories. This opened up countless opportunities and creative minds all over the world. Starting as purely an underwater camera, GoPro has evolved into a powerful 4K, 12 megapixel, Wifi and BlueTooth enabled, nearly indestructible piece of the future that weighs less than ½ pound. With the recent release of the Hero4 Session they’ve made an already tiny, light camera even tinier and lighter. The introduction of current GoPro models let athletes from Mountain Bikers and Skaters to Backcountry Powder Shredders to leave the fisherman tales at home and show their experiences first hand.

Enter The Lily..

The concept of the Lily is amazing. Drone meets high definition action camera. Even more amazing, it has different settings like ‘follow’ and ‘action hero style fly by’, can land and shut off in your hand, and is waterproof (that’s right surfers, paddleboarders, and wakeboarders.). The Lily also has 1080p 60fps or 720p 120fps video resolution and slow motion capabilities that initiate when the drone senses the rider leave the ground based on tracking movement patterns. That means when skateboarders or snowboarders hit verts or gaps, your camera will automatically create a dramatic, slow-mo clip. The super video drone can also initiate flight by being throw in the air which you are about to see..

What the Lily does is convert the average, everyday riders into the superheroes that they grew up watching on screen sans high tension cables and helicopters with high def cameras.

It’s a really exciting time to be an athlete. There’s something magical about being able to relive your experiences through video. With a GoPro and Lily, you’ll have both the 1st person and 3rd person account of some of your best times. Coupled with your bamboo board racks, you can show off your latest adventure and the board, bike, or skis that got you there. With these two pieces of technology, something as mundane as throwing your dog a tennis ball can be exciting, so imagine what that means for the exciting memories you're already creating. Whether you’re young or seasoned, these are things that everyone can appreciate, so why wait?

LIFE IS NOW!