Sky Zone

UPDATE: Turns out Sky Zone is coming to Albany in 2014!

While we visited Kansas City over the summer, one of our outings was to Sky Zone Indoor Trampoline Park. Basically, it’s a huge space full of trampolines. The main area feels about as big as a small school gym, and it’s surrounded on three and a half sides by tilted trampolines, so your kids (and you, too) can literally bounce off the walls.

There are other spaces set aside for trampoline dodgeball games, spots with basketball hoops over the tramps so you can dunk the ball, and a foam pit.

 

The rules were pretty basic–one at a time on a trampoline, and you had to either wear their loaner shoes or be barefoot. Cute W, M, J, and I all bounced quite a bit, and let me tell you, it was a workout. In fact, they also do fitness classes there.

There isn’t one of these near us, and Cute W was convinced that they’d never be in New York because our state is so litigious. But apparently they’re sweeping the nation, so if you’ve been looking for a business to open, hey, I bet a franchise would do pretty well around here.

And now for the part of this adventure that could very well be TMI for some of you. I’m just warning you now.

Okay, have we cleared the area, now?

Can you guess?

Well, perhaps if you, like me, you are a mother of children whom you birthed by pushing those little dumplings out, you can guess what my issue was with the Sky Zone.

I kept wetting my pants.

I say this not just to get a cheap laugh (although, hopefully, I did). It’s also for all those new mamas who are grappling with transformed bodies. I’m here with you, sisters. And if there are any brave men left reading this, now’s a good time to consider a small gift to the mother of your children in honor of the many indignities of parenthood that she is unable to share with you.

It wasn’t a potty-training-preschooler-accident-in-a-ball-pit situation. Just enough of a dribble to for private humiliation, at a rate consistent enough to make the entire visit demoralizing.

When I was pregnant with M, I was an avid exerciser. Once she was born, I wanted to exercise. Oh I did. My body was accustomed to exercise. But I was foiled, again and again, by my massive nursing knockers, a baby staunchly opposed to the jogging stroller, and the inability to hold my water. Have I told you about the times I’d try gyms and try to leave M with the daycare, only to have them fetch me because she screamed because I abandoned her? And then I’d skulk out of the gym and strap her into her car seat and sob in the parking lot?

Ahhh, good times.

Anyway, the swelling went down and I bought some industrial-strength bras care of Title Nine’s Bounce, neither of my kids every really loved the jogging stroller, and I did a bunch of Kegels (my trick was to do Kegels while nursing–that’s multi-tasking, yo). So that long and frustrating era passed eventually. And the Kegels did help, because I usually don’t have a problem. Seriously, I’m fine 24 days out of 25. I can jump rope and run and do Zumba with nary a drop. I’m f. i. n. e. fine. I am a fully-functional human being, most days.

But there was something about the trampoline jumping that just killed me.   And we were there for, say 90 minutes? And I’d paid to jump, so I was going to jump, dammit. But I kept running to the bathroom. Literally, I went to the bathroom 4 or 5 times in the 90-minute session, trying to . . . address the situation. It was, to put it mildly, a buzz-kill.

So, if you do decide to open up a franchise, and you invite me to come to your jumping-on-the-trampoline workout class, please don’t take it personally if I decline.