Do you go by Bill?

Yeah.

Okay.

Who came up with Stretch?

Gus and Guy Bergstrom.

Tell me more.

That is a subject that really can't be.

It's from, can't really go too deep into it it's from night surfing Malibu

and I was never very shy about or modest and so I would just walk around in the Malibu parking lot naked

wow so I'll figure that one out well congratulations on that Bill Stretcherchredel

Bill Stretch Redell is our guest on today's show.

We cover his origin story and board building history in our conversation,

so I don't really need to belabor that here.

The key details that will help you appreciate the context, though,

are that his father, Mike Riddell, was a board builder in active in Malibu during a very important

time in surf history. He was friends with Mickey Munoz. His best friend was Tom Mori. He worked

at McDonald Douglas with Bob Simmons and a few other board builders. The vast majority of

surfboards at that time were made out of balsa wood. But the aerospace industry was

using materials that these guys realized would allow them to make lighter surfboards. So Mike, Bob,

and the crew would actually take EPS foam, fiberglass, epoxy resin, toss it over the fence at work,

and then come back after hours to collect it,

and then go make surfboards on the weekend and test those boards in the water at Malibu.

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