Andy, age 56, even flies kites in the winter, as long as the temperature is above 45; he says when it dips below that, he gets a little antsy.

I've been flying fighters since '97. Before that, I flew sport kites. The sport kites got to be more trouble than they were worth, with the time it takes to set one up and put it away; a sport kite can take you 10 or 15 minutes just to set it up. Whereas with a fighter kite, all you do is grab it out of your car and go play with it.

I got started flying kites when I saw an advertisement in the back of Popular Mechanics for stunt kites, and I said, "You know, hey, that sounds like something that moves!" And it so happened at the same time, one of the guys I was working with was out in Oregon and saw someone flying one, and went and bought a little 36-inch F-36 stunt kite. So we took that out and started flying it, behind work. At the same time I went out and picked up what for us was a big kite, a whole 48-inches across, and we thought that was a big deal: it was a whole 50 bucks! Little did we know what we were getting into! It rapidly progressed to $100, $200, $300 kites. Which I have a whole bag full and never use now!

Everybody knows I'm a kite flyer...basically 'cause I've given them all kites by now! It's just a fun thing to do; everybody fits in somewhere.