A basic question, but with the prevalence of longboarding amongst this year’s Wyoming Catholic College freshmen, onlookers are starting to wonder how they’ll manage to keep up their sport through the coming winter. And more pointedly, we wonder how they’ll even get around at all, so dependent as their class is on the device. Ryan Milligan, for one, as we profiled last month, can barely even walk unaided without it, so dependent as is.

Here’s the impact of one person losing ability to longboard. Imagine this , but for a whole class, and you get the scale of the problem at hand.

Though for now most have been able to limp by, taking an hour or two to get down to the classrooms from the dorms, increasing snow is just about to make riding longboards fully impossible, something that worries freshman Clare Decker. “Without longboards, we’re stranded and if we’re stranded we’re at an unfair disadvantage compared other classes.”

Snow like this will obviously put a halt in longboarding

Some Lander organizations such as the Kiwanis Club have taken note of the pending danger of this problem and propose a “detoxification program” to assist in moving freshmen off of their “longboard addiction,” as club president Samuel Clapper characterizes the problem.

Lander Kiwanis Club President Samuel Clapper

But such a characterization “will scare freshman away from seeking care and finding other modes of transportation,” Clare warns, “as what we really need is some progress in developing snow-capable longboards that will allow students to make whether or not they longboard up to them, and give them a chance at actually choosing to live in moderation with them.”

Some freshman are working on the idea but results are slow, making it likely that many freshman actually will be stranded up at their dorms.

Snow Capable Longboard Prototype under Development (3D-Graphic-Model provided by Hiram Inc.)

But even as others are greatly concerned, Wyoming Catholic College officials are unmoved, as school executive vice president Saul H. Ciwoknot says “We’ve dealt with addictions before like the biker gang last year with the current sophomores. It’s a great way to weed out people from a class. By removing the ability for people to carry out their addiction, as with the providential bike thefts last year which just about destroyed the biker gang, snow will help force out those unwilling to move beyond their transportation addictions.”