Things People Do : HOLIDAY ON WHEELS : Hybrid of Ice and Roller Skates Has a Character All Its Own

The Mission Beach Boardwalk was dotted with a typical mixture of locals and tourists one afternoon last week.

Among the walkers, cyclists, joggers and roller-skaters was Ollie Ready, a 16-year-old junior from Mission Bay High School. Most of the parade cruised by generally unnoticed, but Ready was turning heads. He was not walking, cycling, jogging or roller-skating. He was “blading.”

“Half the people I pass on the boardwalk won’t see my face,” Ready said, “because they’re all looking at my feet.”

Rollerblades, a registered trademark of the North American Sports Training Corporation in Minneapolis, are described as the original “in-line” roller skates. The four wheels are aligned rather than side by side as on conventional roller skates. The design results in a different maneuverability and feeling.

Rollerblade skates are like a combination of ski boots and hockey skates and give more stability to the ankle. The boot is made of a molded polyurethane and has a padded liner.

“I hear the phrase ‘ice skates’ a lot,” Ready said. “A lot of people say, ‘That guy must be a hockey player,’ ‘cause the boots make it look like hockey.”

Ready, who said he wasn’t a good ice-skater and doesn’t play hockey, is one of two San Diegans who are sponsored by Rollerblade Inc. to just blade up and down the boardwalk as a living advertisement.

“I enjoy passing up people and doing fancy footwork to make them look down at my feet,” Ready said. “Once they notice my feet, I like to watch their expressions. First, it’s like (I’m) some hot-dog skater. Then it turns to disbelief because they are seeing ice skates on the boardwalk. Their faces completely change once they notice they are Rollerblades. They’ve been brought up with normal side-by-side wheels, and when they see these, it just catches them off-guard.”

Ray Hamel owns Hamel’s Action Sports in Mission Beach. The store is one of the largest sellers of the new product, according to the manufacturer.

“It’s the latest craze there is,” Hamel said. “It’s almost like an addiction. If you get someone who has ice-skated or played hockey before, if they put on a pair of blades and go less than four feet in them, they get that little boyish grin on their face, and they have to have a pair.”

It began with a Dutch invention first patented in 1840--a clay wheel-and-oak skate equipped with primitive straps. In 1979, brothers Brennan and Scott Olson rediscovered the invention when they ran across the “ice skate” with wheels in a straight line in a rummage shop in the Midwest and decided to expand on their find.

Rollerblade, Inc. introduced the original model to National Hockey League players in 1980 as an off-season training tool. Rollerblades are now sold in the United States, Canada and Western Europe. Rollerblade says it also supplies the U.S. ski team, U.S. biathlon ski team, U.S. disabled ski team, Cross Country Canada and the Boston Bruins.

Both skiers and skaters use them for off-season conditioning, the company says, adding that runners also benefit because they can get a workout and avoid the normal pounding.

Rollerblades also are being used by other athletes for cross-training. Among those who have tried them are Tony Gwynn of the Padres; Joe Norris, a former NHL player living in San Diego, and Todd McPhee, a San Diego-based professional boxer.

“It helps me cardiovascular-wise,” said McPhee, 22, who blades up and down the steep grade near Tourmaline Surf Park 15 times a day. “It helps with the strength in my legs. It works my legs a lot, and it works my butt. I got to have legs and butt to push out with on my punches. In my last fight, it really helped. I nearly got knocked out, but I had legs under me. I just think I’m benefiting from them.”

Gwynn is one who says he hasn’t really been helped.

“I used to use those, but I hurt my knees,” he said. “I used those for a while, then I went to the regular roller skates, then I went back to (Rollerblades). I still have them, but they don’t get much use. We (the Padres) have them here, but they are like a lot of other things. Guys get tired of them.”

But others continue to praise them, once they get started.

“One of the first things everybody asks is, are they hard to skate on?” Ready said. “I just tell them it’s not as hard as it looks. It’s mainly the boot construction, the hard plastic. When you tie it up real tight, it gives you so much support, you don’t have to worry about going sideways. That’s all taken care of by the boot. And they are so much fun once you try, you never want to get off them.”

Ready, who has grown up in Mission Beach, is rarely off his pair. He blades to school and back from his house in South Mission Beach. He figures he’s in them 10 hours a day.

“When I’m not in shoes or in bed, I’m in Rollerblades,” he said.

But he doesn’t seem to be just a show-off kid cruising the boardwalk. Despite his age, accented by a glistening retainer on his teeth, he is a mature representative for the company.

“They have increased fitness advantages,” he said. “It depends on what you really want. If you get them for fitness, then you get a lot of fitness with a little bit of fun mixed in. If you get them for fun, you can have a lot of fun and have a little bit of fitness at the same time.”

The company cites a study conducted at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, which showed that endurance increased for a test group over an eight-week period, to back the claim.

Another activity that is growing out of blades is roller hockey. A group of guys at the beach get together about every week or so to play hockey at the Mission Beach school near Hamel’s. Hamel is planning to get a sign-up sheet in his store to organize a league.

The skates retail for between $80 and $165. Hamel said that he has been renting and selling Rollerblades for about two years and that interest has expanded over the past three months.

“You’ve heard the phrase, ‘Can’t keep ‘em in stock’?” he said. “Well, I can’t keep them in stock. You’re always surprised by the success of something new, and there is always something new. Rollerblades are where skates were six or eight years ago. You couldn’t get enough skates--now you can’t get enough blades.”

Stacy Marty, a San Diegan transplanted from Fairbanks, Alaska, where she used to figure skate, saw a pair and had to give it a shot.

“I’ve always like to roller-skate,” she said as she skated circles on the carpet inside Hamel’s. “These are fun. You can maneuver more from side to side, like figure skating.”

Hamel likes to tell a couple of stories. The first concerns the vacationing Princess Chulabhorn of Thailand, who came into the store at the end of May.

“She came in with her whole entourage, at least six guys. They all rented bikes,” Hamel said. “Then she came in and tried on a pair of Rollerblades. She had to have them.”

Hamel sold her a pair of skates and wrist guards, which he says “is something you have to do. It’s a very cheap insurance policy.”

The other story involves a biker, who used to just hang around the beach near Hamel’s watching people blade. He finally bought a pair. The next time Hamel saw him skating near the store, he asked the man what he did before he bought them.

“All I did was just sit in a bar (and buy drinks),” the man said. “Now I got more money than I know what to do with.”