Road Trip!

     On May 30th, four kids in the Hendersonville Kids Alliance to Skate headed out to Kettering, Ohio to visit the first skate plaza in the country, the Rob Dyrdek/DC Shoes Skate Plaza.  We had plans to speak with Kettering Mayor Don Patterson,  and Parks & Recreation director Mary Beth Thaman about the process of bringing the plaza to their town, and how the plaza has been doing in their community.  It took a whopping eight hours until we finally arrived at Kettering. The drive wasn't so bad since we had a TV, but it seemed long. We were staying with my great uncle, and when we got to his house it was 10:30 and dark.  We were really excited to get up the next day and get out to the plaza.

     In the morning, we got up and went to the plaza to test it out for ourselves. It's smaller than it looks in the video and pictures, but it still takes up almost an acre of land. When we first jumped out of the mini-van we thought we were in heaven. We skated for a few hours until Mary Beth Thaman, and Mr. Fleener came and talked to us about the plaza.

     Later in the afternoon, we went to a local skate shop called One Love. After buying a bunch of cool stuff we met with Mayor Don Patterson. We soon realized how he's pretty cool for a mayor. He pretty much answered any worries of having bad kids or problems at the plaza. He said there have been no drug, smoking or alcohol problems at the plaza. He also said that there has only been one major injury since the opening of the park over a year ago. We were surprised to learn that Kettering is also a retirement community much like ours. Mayor Patterson even let us sit with him in the City Council chamber. After our meeting, we ate some dinner and went to a gigantic mall with a really big skate shop in it. We looked around for a while and then went back to he house where we were staying.