Category Archives: Fun stuff

Seeking your passion? Grab some popcorn


You never know where you’ll find inspiration. You could, for instance, think you’re passing some idle time at work by surfing the web and — viola! — you stumble across a video that makes you think, “Wow! I’d like to do that!” Or, in the case of some of the following videos, “Wow! I’d like to do something like that but without risk of loss of limb or life!” read more

Curt Dobbins pursues a third cycling passion

Since he was a kid growing up in Florence, S.C., Curtis Dobbins has had a thing for bikes. Riding them, naturally, and because he was an inquisitive lad, tearing them apart and figuring out how to put them back together. He began riding seriously in high school and found work as a mechanic in a local bike shop. He moved to Raleigh in 1981 to go to N.C. State and got into bike racing at a time when Raleigh was one of the country’s hot spots (the old Capital City Criterium offered as much as $20,000 in prize money, enough to attract some of the nation’s top cyclists). read more

Fitness pioneer Fred Morrison

A pioneer of American fitness whose simple invention may have made more people healthy than any other device died Tuesday at his home in Utah. Walter Fredrick “Fred” Morrison, who was 90, invented the Frisbee.

Morrison first got the idea for a flying disc tossing tin cake pans on the beach with his wife, Lu. After serving in World War II as a pilot, he pursued his fascination with flying discs, selling a more aerodynamic version of the cake tin at county fairs and department stores. The public’s intrigue was piqued during the 1950s during the nation’s fascination with UFOs. Ever the entrepreneur, Morrison painted little portholes on his discs, creating a toy that not only was fun to throw and catch, but carried with it the prospect of little green men paying a visit. In 1957, Morrison sold the manufacturing and production rights to what he called the “Pluto Platter” to Wham-O Manufacturing. read more