Details of the ongoing Why So Sad? mission for mental health can be found here.
Read on for a conversation with Carl Harling who is riding his bike and skating his way down the west coast in memory of Ben Raemers and in aid of the Ben Raemers Foundation…
Rattray: Okay, well, let’s start at the beginning. Who are you? Where are you from? Where are you going? And why are you in my back garden?
Carl Harling: So, I’m Carl Harling. I’m originally from the East Side of England. Well, Ipswich is the original town that I kind of grew up in. And I’m out in the States and Canada, doing a three-and-a-half-month cycle ride from Vancouver to San Francisco. Skateboarding as well, as much as possible. Checking out as much spots as I can.
And with that, I’m raising money for mental health. And just raising awareness as well. Because a friend of mine, Ben Raemers, took his own life earlier on this year, which had a huge effect on a huge amount of people. I know him from growing up together in the same town. He came to Ipswich when he was about, say, 14 or 15. He has connections through Munson, got him out there because he’s from that area originally. And just, yeah, just skating Ipswich Park together. And then we sort of grew up, I suppose, through skating together a lot until about the age of, I suppose, 16 or 17 when he eventually got on Enjoi. And then éS then Converse.
And then he went out to the States and kind of made his name as a professional skateboarder. And then in the last few years, I’d been seeing a lot more of him because he’d come back to the UK. And I was living in Bristol and he lived in London, so we were seeing quite a bit of each other. Both kind of at that point in life, 28, 29 years old. I was thinking of a change of career. He was a professional skateboarder. Maybe he was thinking he was wanting to get out of that a little bit, and possibly a bit worried about what he was going to be doing next.
So, yeah. And just chatting to him, I think it was never massively obvious that that was happening. Because I think we’ve all got stuff that plays on our minds. And when you talk to each other, it’s like your discuss it and you try to work it out together. But, yeah, he just couldn’t quite figure it out.
Rattray: When did you get the idea to go on the mission?
Carl Harling: Couple of years ago, my housemates did a similar trip. But they don’t skateboard. They cycled down from Vancouver to Mexico, on to the border there. Just into Tijuana. Chatting to them, it sounded like a really nice trip to do, like plenty of places to camp, and quite a straightforward one. For me being a skateboarder, the States is somewhere that I think I’ve wanted to come for a long time. You know, there’s a lot of good skateparks and good skate spots. And it’s kind of the mecca, I suppose, where it all kind of originates from.
Carl : And so, yeah, I had the idea to do the cycle trip. I think I even spoke to Ben about it. Because he was going to maybe come out, possibly, because he’s got links in the States. He was maybe going to join me for some of it or fly out and we’d hook up somewhere, maybe in California. And then the whole Shralp For Ben thing really came out of… after everything that happened, I think I felt a bit lost. I couldn’t focus on anything. And I wanted to do something that… I don’t know. Skateboarding has always been a massive release for me. It’s like if I’m feeling a bit lost and kind of shit, I can normally go for a skate. And it’s like almost meditative, maybe. You’re not really thinking about anything else apart from the skating.
Carl : And then the Shralp thing. The frontside slash grind, backside slash grind, that’s just something that when I’m riding my skateboard is just the most fun thing to do. It’s not a very challenging thing. But it’s like when I’m doing that, especially on pool coping and it makes that noise, you sort of forget about the shit that’s going on in your life. And then with that Shralp For Ben, it was somebody that I loved and a good friend of mine. It was just combining the two. Something that’s helped me through that.
I think maybe the first thing I did when I found out was… Because where I work, I ended up going to the skatepark. I don’t think I skated. I was just in a real sort of distraught mindstate. I had to leave work. And then that was kind of somewhere that was near and, yeah, I suppose it’s all kind of connected in a way. Certainly skating’s helped a lot, I think, with it not being on my mind constantly. It’s an escape, really, I suppose. Yeah.
Rattray: Where have you been so far?
Carl Harling: So, I started in Vancouver and skated quite a few parks there. Leeside. Hastings. That was really good. And then there’s quite a few new parks there as well. And then went across to Vancouver Island. Skated a few places on the way down to Salt Spring Island, another smaller island off of Vancouver Island. Spent some time there. There was this small skatepark in a place called Ganges that I went to. And then back across to Vancouver Island. Did a loop from Crofton to Lake Cowichan to Port Renfrew. And then back around past Sooke and then up into Victoria. And then up to Sidney. Caught the ferry across to Anacortes, and then came down Anacortes via Oak Harbor. And then through Port Townsend, Bainbridge Island, Seattle, and now Portland.
Rattray: Mission!
Carl: Yeah.
Rattray: So far. And then where next, do you think?
Carl Harling: So next for me is out to Seaside from Portland. And then out to the coast and then start heading towards San Fran, which is the end cycling goal. I’m going to hook up with some friends and my girlfriend out there. And then make my way to LA, where I fly back on the first of December. Back to the UK.
Rattray: Okay, and ultimately, what are we raising money for on the mission? And what would make you stoked and feel like it’d been a success?
Carl: There’s a new foundation being started in Ben’s name, the Ben Raemers Foundation. His family is starting that up. And it’s to do with tackling mental health, and I think focusing on it within the skateboard industry. Making sure that youngsters that are coming up have the equipment to kind of deal with it. Because it can be a hard thing, especially going into it young, not maybe having something when you… This can be a short-lived career for some people. It moves quickly.
So, the funds raised will be going towards that. I’ve got it up as five grand as the goal fund. I’ve managed to raise I think about £1,200 so far and I’ve been really stoked with that. So, yeah, keep going as much as possible. Raising money for this new charity and also mental health awareness, getting people talking about it and it being a more… I don’t know. It seems that it’s a bit of a taboo. You don’t want to be the one bringing the downer to the session. If you’re out skateboarding it’s like, “Oh, we’re here to have a good time.” But people can be going through some pretty gnarly stuff. I think just making people feel more comfortable about approaching it and dealing with the way they’re actually feeling.
Rattray: Yeah. That makes me think. It is tough to talk about that stuff. It’s just good to continue to always put it out there that there’s times and places where it’s safe. And it’s okay to speak about when you’re stressed. That whole idea of “a problem shared is a problem halved.” It’s a clichéd expression, but it’s cliché for a reason. Because there’s truth to it. That when you share what’s going on and you figure it out, and you spend some time figuring out what it is that’s stressing you out. You share that with someone and it can just help. Like relieve a bit.
Carl : Definitely, yeah.
Rattray: And it sounds like, talking about Ben and what he was thinking about, he wasn’t able to quite share exactly what was going on with him. It sounds like he was stressed about what’s going to happen in the future after his skate career. There might have been more to it than that. I’m sure there must’ve been a hell of a lot more. Do you think-
Carl: I think, yeah. It was kind of like when you’d talk to him, he was opened up. You’d get chatting to him and then it was like, “Yeah, it’s all good though. Let’s move on.”
Rattray: And that comes back to what we just said. He didn’t want to be the person to go really into it.
Carl: And I think he was perceived as this… Because he was, the majority of the time growing up, he was an extremely happy, just a great personality. He just gave off good vibes. If you’ve met him once, you felt like you were his mate. Having that sort of persona, I think, and then feeling the way he would have done, I think he didn’t want to… He kind of felt maybe that he had to keep up this sort of happy-go-lucky sort of personality. And especially being in the limelight in the way that he was and people are in that profession. And social media, another big factor that can affect people.
Rattray: That can definitely play into it in negative way. It can be positive too, if you use it right.
Carl: Yeah. Going back to just talking to people as well. I’ve found that, through this, it’s been strange one. Because sometimes I just lock up and I don’t want to… I’m like, “Nah, I’m good. I don’t want to,” sort of thing. And then I’ll get chatting to someone random who I don’t really know, and it all will be spilling. It’s just the time. And I think when you feel like it’s the time, that’s when I think, “Yeah, you’ve got to try to just express that.” Like you were saying earlier, the whole “why so sad?” You know, we have to try to figure that out…
Rattray: Like we said, easier said than done. But that’s ultimately the question I feel like is the simplest one that we need to answer.
Carl: Yeah.
Rattray: Last thing, you were talking about you’ve had some random conversations with some random people. What’s the best example of that so far in the trip, do you think?
Carl: There’s been a couple but one sticks out a fair bit. It was someone I met the other day actually, at Burnside. We were chatting about how it’s kind of been for her. She was saying she suffers badly with depression and suicidal thoughts. We were chatting, and I think through the fact that we had that connection, through what’s happened recently with me and then what she’s going through, she was really just stoked to be talking to someone about it. Just a stranger that she had met. She said, “You know what? It’s really nice that you actually were open about this.”
Carl: And the fact that we don’t know each other, we’re strangers, really. We just met at Burnside. She was able to kind of open up and talk about what she’d been going through. I think that was a great example of just that whole talking about it. And talking about how you’ve been and how you’re feeling. And not being like, “Oh, this person’s down and depressed. I don’t really want to get involved in their shit.”
Rattray: Yeah. Hopefully the more we do stuff like this and talk about it, we can build up kind of a, not a secret society, like a network of people that you know are your go-to people you can speak to about this stuff. I think it can help us.
Carl: Yeah, yeah. Definitely. Yeah.
Rattray: That would be, for me, from what I’m doing, that’s kind of the ultimate goal is to keep building those networks and connections of people that we know we can speak to about this stuff.
Carl: Definitely, yeah.
Carl is currently riding down the west coast of the United States.
You can follow his shralps on Instagram @shralpforben.
You can support his efforts here.
BONUS Factoid:
Carl Harling: I first heard the term, “Shralp” from a friend of mine called Ken who I met in Australia when I was living there. He told me that “Shralp” comes from Scotland and skating Livi and the fact that the coping makes that Shralp noise when you grind it and they used to shout, “Shralp ya bas!” which is like “Shralp you bastard!” at people.
Rattray: Sort of like a war cry.
Carl Harling: Exactly.
SERIOUSLY:
If you are struggling with depression or thinking of suicide know that your thoughts and feelings CAN change for the better. Call your local crisis support line. Confide in a friend. You can get through and learn to defuse the pain without having to resort to suicide.