There is no mistaking Matt Yoder's calling

If the spiky Mohawk and pierced lower lip aren't clear enough indicators, then there's the fact that when the weather is fine and the pavement is dry Yoder is more likely to be on a skateboard than doing anything else on Earth.

When the 20-year-old Palmer High graduate is not skateboarding or working at a local pizza restaurant, he can be found in a place that is perhaps second only to heaven -- Bandwagon Skate and Snowboard Shop, where he works two days a week.

"It's every skateboarder's dream," he said of working at Bandwagon. "It's taken me years to get this job -- there's a line for it."

But even before he was an employee, Yoder was sponsored by Bandwagon. In exchange for telling other skateboarders about the shop and using its equipment, he got a discount.

This type of sponsorship is a part of Yoder's long-term plan. Eventually he would like to travel around the country doing ollies and backside methods while making a living through contests and sponsorships.

In the meantime, Yoder tries to scrape enough money together to travel to skate parks around the country.

"Basically I work my butt off while I'm here and then I go out of state with no job," he said.

He has placed in the top five in several competitions in Alaska and Washington, and he said when he brought home his first contest money it helped change his parents' perspective on skateboarding.

"They spent a long time trying to talk me into chilling out," he said. But now that he is able to earn some money through contests and his job at Bandwagon, and proven that skateboarding isn't just a trendy whim, he said his family has become more accepting. And as for his girlfriend, she's got her own skateboard and the two are a duo on the half pipe.

For being so young, Yoder has a relatively long history with the sport.

"When I was a little kid I had a little banana board," Yoder said. But it wasn't until he was 13 that he got serious about skateboarding. One day he was playing soccer, the next he was trying to do tricks on a skateboard. One of his buddies got a skateboard first, and after a month or so Yoder was tired of having to borrow it, so he got his own.

"I just knew I was hooked," he said.

When asked what it was specifically about skateboarding that grabbed him those seven years ago, he said, "I have no idea. I still don't know."

But just as athletes and artists will talk about the moment when everything comes together perfectly and it is as if they reach a certain harmony, so Yoder talks of capturing the perfect trick.

"But then I'll be in the middle of a crash and I'll be asking myself why I do it," he said.

He's been known to joke with customers at the skateboard shop that these things come with an expensive accessory -- medical bills. He himself has somehow managed to escape all his crashes without any broken bones. But last year he jumped a two-lane road, came up a couple of feet short and hit a rock. He was left with the joints in his left foot dislocated.

"I had to walk across town to get to my car," he said.

But he said that these injuries are actually uncommon.

"Skateboarding is usually all right," he said, then reached over and pretended to knock his knuckles against the wood counter at the shop.

Scrapes and bruises are not the biggest nuisances for serious skateboarders, however. That status goes to wannabes and judgmental adults.

In the past few years, skateboards in Alaska have become vehicles to coolness.

"There are a lot of people who just wear the clothes and do it for the identity," he said.

A handwritten sign in the skate shop addresses this trend, saying that Bandwagon isn't there just to make people look cool.

More often than not, Yoder said, it is these people who are just into the look and not the sport who earn skateboarders a bad name. Yoder said when there was a problem with graffiti at the Wasilla skate park, many people assumed skateboarders were responsible. But the Wasilla police chief said as they cracked down they quickly discovered that virtually none of the perpetrators were actually skateboarders.

But Yoder admits there are always a few in the bunch who deserve the reputation. Drugs, vandalism, bad attitudes -- for a relative few these are part of the skateboarding lifestyle. But what angers Yoder even more than the bad apples are the people in the community who jump to conclusions about all skateboarders based on a few.

"I just don't like it when you judge a whole group at once," he said. "The Valley is very close-minded … Usually they think we're there to just trash the place."

It is this type of stigma that eventually led to the outlawing of skateboarding on public property in the cities of Palmer and Wasilla.

"I think it's BS, basically," he said. He said he's read the laws and feels the inclusion of things such as pogo sticks and unicycles are just there to make it look as if they aren't discriminatory.

Despite these hassles, Yoder said it is still possible to find places to skateboard in the Valley. In addition to the skate park in Wasilla, he said some Palmer businesses are OK with skateboarders as long as it is after-hours.

But this is not enough for Yoder. He plans to spend some time traveling around the Lower 48 and eventually hopes to settle in Ocean Beach, Calif., where he says his Mohawk and body piercings won't make him stand out like a sore thumb.

"It's all piercings, tattoos, free spirits," he said of Ocean Beach. "They're a bunch of laid-back hippy surfers."

And it is a sure bet that when he arrives there, Yoder will have a skateboard with him.

"It's so much more than a sport … It's an art form, a lifestyle. There's always new stuff to learn," he said.