An abundance of irrigation pipe.

Actually, that's just one reason why a childhood activity born of the 1950s is finally bridging the generation gap to adulthood. Another reason: a technological advance is doing for hooping what the oversized racket did for tennis in the 1980s and supersized golf clubs did for golf in the '90s: making the activity fun for the masses, especially those who may not have the coordination and energy of a 10-year-old girl. And you need to factor in our growing desire to make workouts fun as well as our quest for spirituality.

Spirituality? Through twirling a Hula Hoop?

"When I'm hooping, I'm visualizing," says 46-year-old Mary Water of Chapel Hill. "I think about my goals, my aspirations."

Over the past 10 years -- and particularly over the past two -- a growing number of people have been finding emotional relief and physical release inside the rotating ring. What started as a gimmick by the band String Cheese Incident to get its audiences up and dancing now has all the earmarks of a nascent fitness craze: formal classes, spiffy how-to DVDs, local clubs (called tribes in hooping circles) and rising stars who have achieved celebrity status in the tight-knit hooping community.

"There certainly isn't any data about how many hoopers there are," writes Philo Hagen, editor of the San Francisco-based hooping.org magazine, via e-mail. "But whatever that number is, it has definitely grown exponentially in the last six to 10 years."

And perhaps nowhere has hooping taken hold as firmly as in the Triangle's most eclectic nook, Carrboro.

"Carrboro is a hoop scene unlike any other," says Hagen, "and it is one that is having an impact on hoopers all over the world."

Most hoopers date the birth of adult hooping to 1990s jam band The String Cheese Incident. To get people up and dancing at their concerts, the band tossed hoops into the crowd. The hoops went over big. Soon, hoops began showing up on the rave scene.

Beginning in 2002, a group of women in Carrboro began embracing the hoop. Every Saturday, Julia Hartsell, Vivian Hancock (who now goes by "Spiral") and others took their homemade hoops to the Weaver Street Market and jammed. They brought extra hoops for any onlooker who wanted to join in. Some didn't know what to make of the scene.

"I was shy about it at first," recalls Beth Williams of Chapel Hill. "I was very self-conscious." But she had with her the ultimate ice breaker for such occasions: her 5-year-old daughter. Her daughter wanted to hoop, so Williams, who was into rock climbing and yoga, found herself hooping, in public.

The scene also attracted an art major from UNC, but for a different reason.

"A friend of mine told me there were all these pretty girls at Weaver Street on Saturdays, that I should check it out," Jon Baxter says. At the time, Baxter had just bought a new bike and was into cycling. But the day he bought the bike, he went down, crushing several bones in his right hand (not a good thing for an art major). Within a year, he went down again, breaking his collarbone. Hooping was starting to look pretty good.

Not only was it looking good as a safe fitness alternative, but Baxter saw something that made him think it could help rehabilitate the atrophying muscles in his shoulder. The Weaver Street women didn't confine their hooping to their hips; they got their whole bodies -- including their arms and shoulders -- involved. Pretty soon, his homeopathic hoop therapy was making an arm out of his chicken wing.

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