View additional photos:
	Photo by Doug Koontz Kline, Eli Hanson, of Gettysburg, and Asper appear regularly at The Gaslight Inn in Gettysburg, Pa.

He stood up and took a deep breath.

"When you're eating fire," Kline said, "it's the wind that is the real enemy. It can gust up pretty quickly. You'll have flames rushing across your mouth, your face and up your nose.

"And that's not really any fun."

Kline lives in Frederick and commutes to his day job in Gaithersburg. He describes his semi-professional hobby as a "stress-reliever." Watching him, of course, you'd assume the opposite was true.

Each Tuesday night, Kline and Eli Hanson, 28, of Gettysburg, drive over to Jeff Asper's big yard in New Oxford, Pa., to master fire spinning, breathing and eating. The trio calls itself Pyrotechnotics and after about a year of solid practice -- they have the scars and skills to prove it -- they've begun performing at festivals and smaller gigs.

They started last April, when Kline, visiting his parents in his hometown of East Berlin, Pa., decided to visit an old classmate, Asper's wife Kim, while on a casual bike ride. Jeff Asper, 34, a former bronco bull cowboy, barrel jumping horseback rider, mountain bike enthusiast and motocross racer, happened to be outside that evening, teaching himself how to spin balls of fire -- known as "poi" -- at the end of short ropes.

"Actually, no, I guess I wasn't that surprised," Kline said of his reaction to Asper's latest leisure endeavor. "I knew he'd always been something of a daredevil."

Asper suggested Kline try some simple moves with a pair of weighted socks. He told Kline he'd been working on spinning fire for a few months and had connected online with a young woman, Hanson, also interested in the fire arts. They were happy to include a third person. They weren't looking to perform, at least initially, outside Asper's yard.

Kline, 34, a bio-tech facilities manager, had been skydiving twice, but otherwise didn't consider himself the dangerous type. He played the clarinet in his high school band, the sax in his college jazz ensemble, never attempting any other perilous pursuits. Yet, he said, "OK."

Asper had picked up quite a bit of knowledge online and Kline started researching fire-eating and fire-breathing as well. Asper makes many of the fire "toys" himself, wicks, jump ropes, poi spinning balls, staffs, rods and various clubs. His side yard is dedicated to practice. A sturdy wooden table and the ground near the driveway are filled with equipment and containers of oils, fuels and lighters -- plus large towels for tamping out "accidents."

Together, the trio attended a fire-performance camp in Connecticut where they began to compile tricks of the trade.

"We started to see what we could do after that camp and started to push the envelope a little bit," Kline said.

Hanson, for example, does an exotic fire spinning "poi" routine with flaming balls on 18-inch ropes. She holds them in each hand, dancing and swinging them in tight circles over her head, around her shoulders, between her legs and in front of her body, so that with the Middle Eastern music blaring from a boom box it has the feel of a belly dance performance.

"It's definitely a good workout," she said, joking, "we've been thinking about making a fitness video.

Asper, meanwhile, is adept at fire spinning and twirling flaming 5-foot staffs around his neck and shoulders in a martial arts-like exhibition.

Kline excels at swallowing fire.

"Nothing to protect your mouth," he said. "When you close your mouth it generally goes out pretty quickly -- like placing a cup over a candle. There's enough saliva in there to prevent anything from happening as long as the torch doesn't actually touch anything. It's warm, though."

Developing new spinning techniques, like "the weave," "the buzz saw" and "the butterfly" has proved challenging. Cross the rope the wrong way or get a chain tangled around the inside of a leg or forearm and it's ouch time. That's how Asper earned the nice scar on his calf.

We've all had minor burns," Kline said, lifting his shirt to reveal a thick scar on his stomach. "I was spinning with my shirt off and was transfixed when a little fuel, a blue flame, hit me. No one else saw it and I thought, 'That kinda hurt.' So, I tamped it out. It comes with the territory."

The wicks at the end of their roped poi sticks are made of wrapped Kevlar and soaked in white gas-based camp fuel. The Kevlar wicks hold on to the fuel, but do not burn themselves. For breathing fire, Kline and his compatriots use ultra pure lamp oil. It has a high flash point (meaning it takes a lot of heat to light) and has fewer toxins than other fuel.

"It's as safe a fuel as we can find, if there is such a thing," Kline said. "And the taste isn't that bad."

Chugging off a mouthful of the lamp oil, each of the Pyrotechnotics simultaneously spew flames 15-feet in the air. They also do it spinning in sync full circle. It's their "360 Dragon." Believe it or not, Asper's rural south central, Pa. neighbors don't seem mind.

"Naw, they usually come over and watch," he said.

In another move, Kline pours fuel down his shoulder, his tattooed bicep, forearm and palm, then up to Asper's palm, forearm, bicep, forearm and shoulder. Lighting the fuel at his shoulder, Kline literally passes the quickly spreading flame to Asper as both men use the fire to light torches held in their other arm.

"All the hair has been singed off my arm, but that's intentional, that's going to happen so I usually try to remember to shave before a performance." Kline said, deadpanning, "Nothing smells worse than burnt hair."

They've played Phoenixville, Pa.'s Main Street and annual Firebird festivals. The Pyrotechnotics (www.pyrotechnotics.com) have a standing Saturday night gig at the coincidentally-named, Gaslight Inn in Gettysburg, a bed and breakfast owned by Hanson's family.

The inn has several balconies and they perform in the rear courtyard. Friends, family and locals often stop by for the 9 p.m. shows which are free to the public.

They make a little bit of money for festival work, but are still happy to perform almost anywhere at this stage -- it's that much fun.

"Basically we want to be able to cover our gas -- for the drive -- and our fuel expenses," Kline said. "I don't know if it'll ever become a career, a career sounds like a job, which means work. I don't want this to become work."

--"I don't think this," interrupts Asper, a robotics technician, "will ever seem like work."