Techies with daredevil hobbies are hardly the rarity.

Your compatriots on the other side of the negotiation table, working for vendor organizations, have their share of derring-do, too. Mary Nugent, a vice president at BMC Software, spends her free time kayaking in the shark-infested waters of the Gulf of Mexico, about an hour's drive from her Houston home. She once faced down a four-foot-long shark stalking her as she paddled.

Your derring-do

On the other side of the planet stands mountaineer Alan Arnette, general manager for Hewlett-Packard's Digital Workplace Services. Arnette climbed Mount Everest in April, driven by his philosophy of exploring personal boundaries, he says.

Motorcycle motocross racer Randy Rector, manager for a WorldCom enterprise services marketing unit, has experienced his share of thrills since he began riding motocross at the tender age of 4. If he's not on the track at a regional or national event, he's lovingly preparing his bike and equipment for the next race, he says. Mark Green, a contract project manager for BEA Systems, is experiencing firsthand the danger of motocross racing. Although a seasoned competitor, earlier this year he broke his femur and tore a knee ligament in a racing accident at a track in Hollister, Calif. But, he'll be back on the track soon, he vows.

In fact, techies seem to have a partiality for motorcycles. Ryan Vaughn, network operations center technician for ISP Rockynet, uses a Yamaha sportsbike for his daily commute. If he's heading out for a client installation, he'll strap a router to his back, he says. But that's work. For play, he's learning to pilot a plane and skydive.

The need for motorcycle speed isn't limited to those who work for vendors. Users such as Marc Throne, systems analyst for law firm Oppenheimer, Wolff & Donnelly, engage in what's known as "extreme YSR" motorcycle racing. The Yamaha YSR model is a smaller-sized racing bike. The stock YSR has a 50cc motor, but extreme racers replace them with far bigger ones. Throne raced a 125cc YSR last season and upgraded to a 250cc bike this year.

Instead of firing up an oversized motor to get his thrills, Baron Rawlins, network services manager for Washington & Jefferson College, runs into burning buildings as a volunteer firefighter. Scarier still are the bomb-threat calls that come to his fire department, he says. He is a first responder for such emergencies, while waiting for the distant bomb squad to arrive. So far, all such calls have been false alarms, rather than real ticking bombs, he says.

Sharks or skydives, rocket motorbikes or bombs, so many techies spend their free time in daring, dangerous exploits.

- Julie Bort

Photo subject: David Sanders, network manager, J&A Advertising.