Coastal Highway
I named the company on a stretch of road between Bethany Beach and Dewey Beach. Summer 2024. Driving alone. Windows down. I had been turning it over in my head for an hour. The phrase showed up. It did not feel like a brainstorm. It felt like a recognition.
Onward Upward.
By the time the car reached the bridge, the name was settled. Within weeks I filed the LLC. The work has not stopped since.
Before the rebuild had a name
The rebuild started before 2024. In late 2022 I was 209 pounds and the math on my life was tight. The doubt around me was loud. In 2023 the weight started coming off. Something quieter started showing up. The rebuild had not named itself yet, but it was already underway. I wrote about the math of those years in The Quiet Compound. The body kept getting stronger. The head kept getting clearer. By the time 2024 arrived, the foundation was further along than anyone watching could see.
2024 was a hell year
Most of the visible rebuild milestones happened that same summer and fall.
I started CrossFit in August. I formed the LLC in September.
I walked away from corporate on October 18.
I moved to West Chester in November. I signed the first partnership in December.
The hell part was not the to-do list. The hell part was the year before the rebuild, when I still owed myself the conversation I had been avoiding. Sussex County is where I had that conversation with myself. Bethany. Dewey. Sea Colony. The stretch of road between them.
Sussex County does that to me. It has been doing it for a long time.
I have walked into Sea Colony on the worst week of a year and walked out with the next chapter half-written in my head. I have stood on a Bethany sidewalk and felt a quiet I cannot manufacture anywhere else.
The mile between Bethany and Dewey is where the noise drops out. The signal sharpens. Decisions get made on their own.
Somewhere in the middle of that summer, a fortune cookie said the quiet part out loud.
You can see it in my face from that summer. Carrying weight I had not yet put down.
Two years on, the work compounds in measurable ways. The work, the relationships, the reputation. None of it would exist without a stretch of road in southern Delaware where I found the name.
Going Back, 2025
A surf session at Skudin Surf at American Dream had been on my list for three years. I finally booked the day in June 2025. Two hours from falling to riding. The day retreat was worth every minute.
In August, I went back to Dewey. Two nights. The trip read like rest. It was not. Months of critical decisions came due that week. The biggest one landed at the beach. The finance team got upgraded. Departments restructured. New people in the right seats. The operating shape of the business reset.
Day two of that trip, I rented a jet ski for the first time in my life.
Full playlists if you want the rest of the footage. Skudin Surf June 2025. Dewey August 2025. Day Two on the water.
The Delaware Pattern
The past two years have run a clear pattern. Good things keep coming from this place, or from the people in it. The company name. Sarge Athletics, who helped me keep the rebuild physical when it could have stayed in my head. Tennis friends from this strip of coast. The first jet ski. The people who get who I am and where this is going.
What the Place Reads
Some places read you well. Some people do, too. Bethany. Dewey. Sea Colony. Coastal Highway. The Sussex County stretch knows what I look like when I am paying attention. When I am rebuilding. When I am ready to ship something new.
That is where I keep landing.
Places. Who we become in them. Who we keep returning to. Who we keep being with.
Andrew Motyka
President, Onward Upward Sports & Events
