What is DC SUP Couple?

Two years ago today we launched this platform - DC SUP Couple. Driving home from the 2017 Carolina Cup we were full of ideas and a desire to do something more with our DC SUP community. A lot, almost too much, has happened since then. We got engaged, started new day jobs, said goodbye to our black lab (Deke), got married, adopted a rescue mutt, and went through the heartbreaking process of watching Scott’s dad slowly slip away while in hospice care for three months. There’s been an immense amount of heartache, but also an equal amount of joy.

On the DC SUP Couple front, we stalled out. Until recently, we occupied this space pretty sparingly and without much direction. In part because of all that transpired in our personal lives, but certainly some was attributed to our inability to truly articulate what we were trying to achieve here. But something clicked for us a few months ago. Suddenly, we had clarity, motivation, forethought, goals.

In the beginning we said we weren’t a company or a brand. That still holds true to a certain extent. We're not a company. We haven't entered this space to compete with our friends who work their tails off to bring you rental opportunities, social outings, and dedicated lesson times.

But we’ve actually realized that we are in fact a brand. We started this venture to carve out our space in the growing SUP industry in DC. With more and more outfitters popping up in the area, we selfishly wanted to establish our history and experience in this space and to leave our own virtual footprint. But, our ultimate goal was to spread more stoke and try to create a more inclusive community here in DC.

So, what does that really mean? Who are we? At heart we’re just two adventurers who love to SUP and to get others stoked on SUP, too. How does that translate to this platform? Well, plain and simple, we want you to think of us first when you think of SUP in DC. If you need advice - from how to strap your SUP to the roof of your car, to what type of board you should purchase - we want to be your first stop. If we don’t always have the answer, we can point you to the people who do. We want to bring people together on the water and with our fellow SUP instructors and companies in the greater DC area. We want you to hire us to take you out for a SUP lesson or a tour. We want your company to hire us to take its employees out on the water. We want your SUP company to partner with us take students out on a new body of water or in a different type of water. Individuals, companies, and the SUP industry - we want to collaborate. We want to share the ohana.

What will you get in return? Well, we’ll continue to strive to inspire outdoor adventure both on and off the water. That’s a new tagline for us, but we think it describes what we’re after. SUP is one of the things we love most and it's how we first met. But there’s a lot more that inspires and motivates us. We get high on our winter adventures on the slopes. We love hiking new trails. We get our dog stoked on our year-round outdoor antics. And we feel a deep responsibility to protect this planet that allows us to do all of this - that offers us this playground of opportunities to have fun, to learn, to grow as humans, and to find purpose and meaning in this great big world of ours.

As DC SUP Couple continues to evolve and we continue to grow in our aspirations, we hope to hear from you on the types of things you’d like to see from us. Is there a topic you’d love to read about on this blog? A SUP workshop you’d like to see us offer? A question you’re dying to ask? A partnership or collaboration you'd like to see us make? Your feedback is the best way for us to get you, and more people like you, stoked on SUP in DC. And the best way for you to start is by signing up to hear from us more regularly. Click here to do that.

Thanks for sticking with us.