Testing gear is a great gig, especially if you love the outdoors as much as Mark Anders, an avid surfer, mountain biker, and kayaker. This spring, while the rest of us were at our desks thinking about lunch, Anders was in the water off Wilmington, North Carolina, testing a jet-powered surfboard. You read that right: The carbon-fiber longboard houses battery-powered jets that the user controls with a wrist-strap remote ("Summer Test: Water Gear," page 61). The board makes for especially zippy rides and trips out to the break—no paddling required. But given the too-cool-for-school attitudes of most surfers, none of the guys in the water deigned to notice what Anders was riding. "It was hard to keep a straight face," he says.
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