EVERYTHING
FOR YOUR FAMILY
KID
QUIPS
During last July’s 5.8 earthquake, 3-year-old Bronwyn told her 1-year-old sister, “We’re going for a wiggle.” READ MORE
Get in the Game
|
||||
|
Barbara Odanaka gets out her “indoor” skateboard and begins zipping around the house. “You’ve heard of a stay-at-home mom,” she says. “Well, I’m a skate-at-home mom.” Odanaka, 41, has a freckled complexion with long, bushy strawberry-blond hair that she wears tied back and under a baseball cap. Dressed in khakis and a gray T-shirt, she weaves around the dining room table, through the living room and around the cat scratching post, which serves as a cone. “My goal is to do this as long as I can without hitting the wall.” (If you’re wondering, she has ashwood floors throughout the house.) Odanaka, the mom of Jack, 7, is a new breed of skateboarders. She’s a skateboard mom. Skateboard moms aren’t the latest trend and you’re not likely to spot too many at the local skatepark. But they’re out there and she is determined to find every last one. “I was tired of being the lonely only.” So she started the International Society of Skateboarding Moms, put up a website, and soon moms were sending in their photos and sharing their stories. “The reality is there were a lot a girls skating in the 1970s,” she says. Today, some of them are moms. This past Mother’s Day, Odanaka gathered skateboarding moms from all over for the first annual Mighty Mama Skate-O-Rama at Laguna Niguel skatepark. Really cool Skateboard moms might not grind on rails or ride on picnic tables, but they are cool. They can talk boards with a young hotshot. They’re in good shape. They can wow their children’s friends. More than that, skateboard moms have discovered a secret joy, typically reserved for boys younger than 16. Odanaka, now a writer (see book review), got her first skateboard a Hobie Super Surfer for Christmas when she was 10-year-old Barbie Ludovise. The board was short and the wheels were made of clay. When the “Cadillac wheels” came out, “I became completely obsessed.” Riders could do new tricks with urethane wheels because they could ride over rough surfaces without getting thrown. She later lived up to her skateboard’s namesake. When she was 12, she won a spot on the amateur Hobie skateboard team. But like other skateboard moms, she stopped skating in high school. “I quit because my track coach told me I could get hurt.” Skateboarding fights the blues It wasn’t until after she became a mom that she again picked up the sport that brought her so much joy as a kid. She was 35 and had gone through a stressful pregnancy and she suffered postpartum blues. Jack was born premature, weighing only 3 pounds. Paul, her husband, surprised her with a new Sector Nine longboard, considered an “old school” board or one for “soul” riding or cruising, as opposed to tricks. Today, Odanaka likes doing a little of both cruising and tricks. Out in the cul de sac in front of her Laguna Beach home, she jumps up off her skateboard and over the knee-high, homemade hurdle, landing on her board as it rolls underneath the bar. “Do it again,” says her 7-year old son, impressed with his mom’s jump. She has other tricks. She can whip her board around in a 360 and ride 2 skateboards stacked on top of each other. She’s still working on her Ollie. An Ollie is done by snapping the tail of the board off the ground while jumping up. “When I have writer’s block, I Ollie,” she says. “When I have Ollie block, I write.” New mom/skateboard mom About 4 years ago, Jennifer Brewer of Orange got back into skating with her husband, Dustin, for exercise and fun. She prefers individual sports. Brewer is now 29 and has a 2-year-old son, Vincent. She is cautious, still feeling vulnerable as a new mom. “If I fall and break my arms, before it was no big deal. I don’t do anything that risky yet.” They go out as a family to the skateparks on the weekends, she says. The couple take turns skating while the other watches Vincent, who got a skateboard for his second birthday in May. Her goal is to skate the pools at the parks. But she also likes to cruise. Like Odanaka, she started skating when she was young and dropped it when she got into high school. “I just didn’t have time for it.” Pro mom/skateboard mom Isabelle Caudle didn’t pick up skateboarding until she was a 37-year-old mom. “Last year, I went pro in my downhilling,” she says. Her top speed is 48 mph. She rides for Gravity boards, among others. “I don’t make much money off it,” she says, but she gets a lot of free gear. Caudle, a high school teacher, who just turned 43, is from Encinitas. She skates with her husband, Mitchell, and her daughter Marie, who is 11 and Russell, who is 13. Marie is a beginner, she said. She says more girls are skating, but there still aren’t a lot of moms. Mark Sperling, founder of Laguna Beach-based OP Girls Learn to Ride, has seen quite a few moms and their daughters at his skating clinics. The clinics, held in Orange County and around the U.S., teach girls and women how to do sports that they don’t traditionally do, like skateboarding, BMX and surfing. Next year, he’s starting the Women Learn to Ride series. “Women learn 20 times quicker than men do,” he says. “They’re laughing, having the best time.” That’s why skateboard moms are looking for others to share their enthusiasm. If you want to join the club, visit skateboardmom.com. Sherri Cruz is a Newport Beach-based writer. THE REAL THING AN OC writer puts words to her passion Barbara Odanaka has put her skateboarding passion to words in a new book, “Skateboard Mom.” The Laguna Beach mom and journalist has crafted a story, wonderfully illustrated by JoAnn Adinolfi, about a birthday gift that slips through the child’s hands and ends up taken on a ride by mom’s feet. The story, written in rhyme from a child’s perspective, has all the shock and awe that one would expect in seeing mom take off down the street. The illustration of mom running out the door, with Junior’s helmet on and a mischievous grin, is worth the price of a purchase. A skateboard queen, indeed. “Skateboard Mom,” by Barbara Odanaka, illustrated by JoAnn Adinolfi (G.P. Putnam’s Sons), 34 pages, $15.99. By Craig Reem |
||||
RSS Subscribe
Digg This ArticleSEARCH THE SITE
