SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Old McDonald has a windsurfing board. E-I-E-I-O. With a scuba tank here and downhill skis there ...

In this case, it's Dr. Terry McDonald, 72, and he's a member of Team Advil. Team Advil is a loose group of a dozen-plus skiing and windsurfing enthusiasts from Portland to Carmel, Calif., the oldest members of which are McDonald and fellow orthodontist Larry Hughes, also 72, of Eugene.

The spring chicken of the group?

"I think our youngest member is 60," he said.

Why Team Advil?

"Because we were taking so much," McDonald said with a laugh, "and we needed a name for our group.

"Somebody said we ought to call it Team Advil, and we thought that was a great idea."

The group started with a friendship between McDonald and Hughes.

"We were part of a professional study group, and we started hanging out together in 1967," McDonald said. "We started out skiing, and then we got into helicopter skiing.

"And then when windsurfing started to take off, the Eugene folks kind of got into it a little earlier than I did, because I thought they were too old."

He chuckled.

"And they kind of shamed me into it," he said.

That was in 1993, and it was love at first ride.

"It's a tremendous rush," McDonald said. "You know, flying across the water under wind power, controlling the board.

"The only thing that I can say that I've done that compares to it is helicopter powder skiing. That's quite a rush, also."

Not to mention a certain satisfaction in blowing by someone less than half your age and watching the expression of incredulity on their face.

"It's kind of like the Lance Armstrong thing, that 'ho, ho, this old guy's not going to beat anyone,'" said McDonald's wife, Shirley, herself an avid windsurfer and Team Advil member. "And some of those old guys can actually show up some of the younger guys."

Despite the name, Team Advil is noncompetitive. Its biggest get-together is a nine-day annual gathering around Memorial Day weekend at a rental beach house on Maui.

It's a pretty eclectic mix, Terry McDonald said.

"We have a retired heart surgeon, an internist, no, two internists, two dentists, three orthodontists, a paint salesman and a lawyer," he said.

Some of the skill sets of the other team members already have proven valuable.

"We actually had to use that medical attention. We've done a couple of minor suturing, some minor repairs, on a pool table in Maui," Terry McDonald said.

He's had a few scrapes and dings of his own.

"I've got a few scars on my leg from running into the fin (the fixed rudder fin on the underside of the board), but really nothing major."

Added Shirley: "I don't think I have any scars. But I think I'm a little more cautious than Terry would be."

Neither are "big-air" riders who try to fly off of waves or wakes.

"I don't like to leave the water," Shirley McDonald said.

To which her husband added with a laugh, "We do leave the water ... unintentionally.

"My friend in Eugene, Larry, at age 72 he still flies off the waves. Fortunately the water's very forgiving, so it's not like falling on the asphalt."

Terry McDonald has been a practicing orthodontist in Salem for more than four decades, and was joined by his son, John, during the past dozen of those.

Terry McDonald said he's even considered parachuting on his 85th birthday as George H.W. Bush did.

"I've thought about that," he said. "But all of your eggs in one basket? I'm not sure I like that."

Shirley McDonald added, "I was going to let him do that one alone."

Windsurfing is somewhat like skiing in that the better you get at it, the less effort it takes, Terry McDonald said.

"It requires a lot of upper-body strength when you're first learning, but once you learn, you use the wind instead of your muscles," he said.

And then it's almost effortless, like a perfectly carved turn in skiing.

"So it's the wind that pulls you out of the water up onto your board; it's the wind that allows you to do a jibe and a turn and then come back the other way," he said. "Once you get over the learning curve, which takes a long time, you can go out and stay out one hour, two hours, without getting fatigued."

Windsurfing has taken the McDonalds all over the world, from Bonaire and Isla Margarita off the coast of Venezuela to Aruba in the Dutch Antilles in the Caribbean and Maui in Hawaii.

Closer to Salem, the couple's favorite destination is Floras Lake near Bandon on the Southern Oregon coast.

And they take their motor home for an annual monthlong stay around April to South Padre Island, a barrier island off the south coast of Texas.

"That's a big destination resort for the AARP crowd," Terry McDonald said half-jokingly, adding that he met a definite windjammer for the senior division on Team Advil, "a retired math professor from the University of Minnesota at South Padre Island, and she is 78 or 79."

Wherever they have gone, the exotic locations are matched by the quality of the company, both said.

"It's the whole scene," Shirley McDonald said. "It's the people, the destinations that you go to sail, and the activity. It keeps you young, young in spirit, in mind and body."

Terry McDonald laughed, "and it keeps you going to the gym."

And the shared passion for windsurfing has brought them together more closely.

"It's fun to have a partner who enjoys some of the same things that the other partner does, and it certainly makes planning vacations easy," Terry McDonald said.

"Absolutely," Shirley McDonald added. "And the friends that we have made."

So what happens if the wind doesn't cooperate?

"A lot of these places, since you're dealing with warm weather and warm water, you can also go scuba diving," McDonald said. "And both of us are qualified scuba divers."

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.