Life’s where skateboards take you

Mates on wheels - Lucas Anderson and Jordi Pratt. Photo Bruce Barnard.

There are opportunities out there if you just go looking for them. But sometimes you have to take a global perspective.

That's the inspirational message from a young Mount Maunganui barista whose skateboarding skills have landed him a four-month contract with a kids' camp an hour out of the Ontario provincial capital of Toronto in Canada.

'If I am not making coffee or sleeping, I am skateboarding – it's a way of life,” says Jordi Pratt, 21.

Now Jordi and his 1.9 metre skateboarding sidekick Lucas Anderson – 'I have stopped growing, thank God” - are off to the Muskoka Woods Camp – a lakeside resort offering 50 different programmes and activities for kids aged seven to 17. Including skateboarding of course.

Every year the camp hires what it says are '350 of the best and brightest young adults from around the world to bring a spark of creativity and the dream of a unique adventure.” Amongst them our Jordi Pratt and Lucas Anderson.

'It was a bit of a process to get there,” says Jordi. A Skype interview - How would you handle this crisis? How would you cope with that child? What would you bring to our operation? And of course any criminal record? 'They wanted to know everything about these guys on the other side of the world. They really put us through the hoops,” says Jordi.

Jordi, originally from Christchurch, and Lucas from Auckland, were just two young men living and working in Mount Maunganui when others their age had gone off to university and other adventures. These guys were also looking for something more to do and elsewhere to do it, so they went online to see where life might take them. Fate presented them with the opportunity at the summer camp.

'And we get to take our skateboards with us,” says Jordi. He says he cruises the 'bowl events” around the country when they happen. And so they will be looking at skateboarding events in Los Angeles, New York, and Portland while they're in North America.

'We will be teaching kids who want to learn to skate as well as working with accomplished skaters who want to learn new stuff. Two weeks with them and then a new lot come on board for us.”

The irony of two Kiwis travelling 14,000km to teach skateboarding where skateboarding was invented is not lost on Jodi and Lucas. They just laugh. Skateboarding, as we know it, was probably born when Californian surfers looked for something to do when the waves were flat.

Talk to a young enthusiast like Jordi and skateboarding is clearly something much deeper than a sport or hobby. 'It can lift me out of the doldrums, it helps me think and make decisions; it helps me on all sorts of levels.” For Lucas skateboarding and Muskoka Woods Camp will give him his first OE, his first world adventure. 'That's pretty exciting.”

And on the rare occasions they climb down from their boards they have their music. 'I play guitar and sing –skate punk hardcore. Lucas is the writer. 'Lyrics, rap.” And when camp's out they will take their skateboards and music to New York. Who knows?

Jordi finishes with The Weekend Sun and disappears back inside Luca's Café in the heart of the Mount shopping strip to make more long blacks and Luca edges his board out into the stream of traffic down Mainstreet and skates off.

They're in for a world adventure. 'We're just keen to encourage and help others get there too” says Jordi.

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