Mark Montgomery is your typical guy — nearly done with college, has a job in the city, just moved into an apartment not far from Georgia Tech. He's filled it with two chairs, a bed, a TV looking for a table and a 4-foot cutout of a Converse All Star high-top sneaker.

Oh, and he has yo-yos — 200 or so, he figures.

Hyosub Shin/AJC (ENLARGE)

Mark Montgomery will compete against people from across the planet who, like him, get in a spin over something as simple as an orb attached to a string.

Hyosub Shin/AJC (ENLARGE)

'If you ever hit yourself,' said Montgomery, of Boston, 'you don't want to do it again.'

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When you are among the world's best, getting ready to compete for international bragging rights, you have to have a proper inventory.

Fwip! A silver metal yo-yo smaller than a doorknob headed toward the ceiling. It moved like a rocket. Montgomery flicked his right wrist. The yo-yo reversed course, landing on its own string. The yo-yo roamed the string like something on a leash, back and forth.

And then — fwip! — the yo-yo was airborne again. Montgomery repeated the process — reversing course, landing on the string, roaming...

...and then did it again. Then a fourth time. The yo-yo bounced, flew, returned.

Montgomery shrugged — OK, enough. He flicked his wrist again. Still spinning, the yo-yo returned to his palm. It rested there like something catching its breath.

His performance done, Montgomery paused for a moment and smiled. The rocketing/roaming act is part of the routine he's planning for next weekend, when the 23-year-old graphics student takes his best moves to the 2008 World Yo-Yo Contest in Orlando. He'll compete against people from across the planet who, like him, get in a spin over something as simple as an orb attached to a string.

Is he nervous? Montgomery, who finished fifth last year in the single-A (single yo-yo) division, shrugged. "Umm, kinda-sorta," said Montgomery, whose tricks are featured on YouTube. "It depends."

It depends on how spectacularly you can perform in three minutes what is a basically simple act: retrieving a spinning disc attached to a string. Extra points for not bonking yourself in the process.

"If you ever hit yourself," said Montgomery, of Boston, "you don't want to do it again."

The people coming to Orlando are past the point of injuring themselves, said Gregory Cohen, a Tallahassee entrepreneur who's in charge of the competition. By late Thursday, he'd received preregistrations from across the world — the United States (362) , Japan (42), Canada, (12). Italy and Mexico (nine each), and more. Some are coming merely to watch and learn; others are in it to win. They've paid entry fees that range from $30 to $50 just to measure themselves against others. No one is going to walk away rich.

"This competition," he said, "will be wonderful."

It won't be the first. According to Cohen, whose Web site (www.yoyoguy.com) offers an array of yo-yos, the first gathering of spinners took place in 1932. The place: London. The winner: a cheerful Brit named Harvey Lowe.

Yo-yoing goes back a lot further. A history of yo-yos tracks the first spinners to 500 BC, when Greek citizens may have offered them to kids in coming-of-age ceremonies. They may have been used, centuries later, by hunters hiding in trees.

And, though yo-yos have changed since then, one factor remains constant.

"These people," said Cohen, "are all accuracy junkies."

Accuracy does not come easy. When Montgomery bought his first yo-yo, a $1 model, he was capable of the simple stuff — retrieving the yo-yo, maybe doing a couple of easy tricks like "walking the dog," in which you roll the yo-yo along the floor. That was eight years ago.

But he changed tactics after a teacher, a former circus juggler, introduced Montgomery to the world of real yo-yoing — real yo-yos, too. Montgomery, then 18, bought a performance yo-yo. Compared to his first yo-yo, which had a simple wooden axle that connected the string to the disc, his new yo-yo was as high-tech as a space shuttle. It had ball bearings where the wooden axle had been. It could spin, with the faintest of whispers, for minutes. He could perform all sorts of tricks — the atom smasher! the gunslinger! Buddha's revenge!

"I got really inspired," said Montgomery, who's in his final year of studies at the Atlanta campus of the Savannah College of Art and Design.

He got really good, too. In 2001, he entered a regional meet in Rhode Island, where he tied up the competition, winning two divisions. That led to a sponsorship with that monster of yo-yo makers, Duncan. Other sponsorships followed, and today, he is backed by One Drop Design of Eugene, Ore. whose top model is the $110 Project MarkMont. Montgomery is taking his MarkMont and a few others next weekend.

"Mark's amazing," said David Metz, a One Drop co-owner. "He's the nicest guy, full of style."

Style takes work. Montgomery is practicing regularly these days. Standing in his bedroom, a small stereo oozing electronic music, he works on his technique — spinning, twirling, flipping. "It's very fatiguing on the fingers," he said.

Not on the eyes. Watching Montgomery go through a series of tricks is like watching something unfold in a dream: You see it happening, but it doesn't look real.

Fwip! An anodized orb rocketed toward the ceiling, came back, landed on the string. It roamed like something alive.