(Not that record, I’m talking vinyl records)

I gave a talk to the kids at Futures Public Charter School describing my journey from not being smart enough for the gifted program to getting an electrical engineering degree from MIT and from having no Guinness World Records 4 short years ago to having over 130 today.

I juggled, balanced, and hopefully inspired kids to believe they can do more than they thought possible, especially when working on challenging problems. I loved the kids’ reactions and their support.

I then attempted to break the Guinness World Record’s Title for “most vinyl records smashed in 30 seconds”. The previous record was 38. The records were removed from their cases and inspected for micro fractures before the attempt. A few were found with small holes drilled near their center (maybe indicating that they were no longer playable?) Those were all removed before the attempt.

I had 30 seconds to break them completely, one at a time using only my hands. I started off strong and did well until I got a few records that were more flexible than the rest and instead of breaking they only flexed. In practice, I discovered it’s much faster to drop it and move on to the next instead of trying even hard. If I take up precious seconds there’s a chance it might break, but sometimes the records just bend all the way in half and never breaks.

When time was called I had broken 38. It was good enough to tie the record but I wanted to do even better. We lined up another stretch of records and tried again. This time I went even faster. I was doing great until again, I ran into a stretch that just flexed. I touched 46 records in 30 seconds but 7 didn’t break and had to be disqualified. The final count was 39. A new Guinness World Records Title!

As soon as I finished I realized my hands were covered in a half dozen cuts from the shards of the fractured records. The kids could see the blood and showed their concern but I was happy to have broken the record and assured them that my hands would be fine. It was a wise decision to wear safety goggles for this one.

Thanks to Amanda, Estee, Chris, and Future’s Public Charter School for having me out to inspire kids to pursue STEM with a Growth Mindset!

Happy Guinness World Records Day 2019!

I broke a 21-second record during my lunch break since I didn’t have a whole lot of free time on this special Guinness World Records day. In the end, it took 21.69 seconds to surpass the previous record of 32.05 seconds.

The record was for the Fastest time to transfer 40 lbs of weight hand to hand 100 times. It turns out my 40lb dumbbell actually weighed 42 lbs so I did a little extra. At no point can both hands come in contact with the object at the same time. I had a 16.7-second attempt that was disqualified because one of the frames on one of the 100 passes showed both hands came in contact with the barbell at the same time. We reviewed it in slow-motion video and it looked good. It wasn’t until I did a frame-by-frame analysis that I realized that 1 of the 100 transfers had both hands touching the dumbbell at the same time. It also wasn’t 100% clear that I didn’t just “tap” it instead of full grasping and taking control of the object. The rules disallow simply tapping the object.

My fingers paid the price for this record but they will heal.

Grit, growth mindset, and hard work lead to another Guinness World Records Title.

It’s not every day that I can hit a tennis ball faster than my tennis idol Roger Federer. Here’s another one of those Guinness World Records that real people might not even attempt. Alternating hits on a tennis racquet is actually a pretty common activity to entertain yourself on a tennis court (just like juggling, but more accessible) so maybe Federer has tried it. If so Roger, let me know!

182 isn’t MPH, it’s the number of alternating hits I got in one minute. That’s over 3 per second for an entire minute. When I first started practicing for this record about a year ago the 1-minute record was only 135 hits or just over 2 per second. It was readily accessible but the 30-second record was 90 hits, and much harder to reach. I was tempted to just go for the easy one and move on but I decided to approach my practicing with a growth mindset and try to break both of them at the same time.

90 hits in 30 seconds seemed impossible and so out of reach that I nearly gave up a few times but stuck with it. In the meantime, the 1-minute record of 135 hits was broken by a run of 160 hits so that one became just a little more challenging as well.

I got all the folks together for this attempt and had one hit on the frame of the racquet just about at 30 seconds disqualifying the first attempt but I nailed both of these on just my second attempt with the news station on hand.

This one got tricky. I have previously held the record for “most poker chips balanced on one finger” when I balanced 100 poker chips for over 5 seconds on my right index finger. This time I had to beat the current mark of 132.

You only have 10 minutes to prepare the stack and you can only use one hand plus the finger you’re going to balance the chips on. It gets tricky because when I stack over about 120 poker chips in a single stack on a perfectly level surface, it falls over on its own. I have to keep my right index finger on the stack past 120 chips while I’m reaching for more to put on. And then to keep it balanced, you can’t simply have a perfectly still finger, or they’ll still fall over…

Keeping this stack balanced requires positive feedback, and I don’t mean the kind that makes you feel good inside. I mean micro-movements that are quick, small, and fluid. Each movement sends a shock-wave through the chip that’s amplified as it goes up the stack. Just a slight movement is enough to send the chips falling so I had to kneel on the floor for more stability and even then it was extremely difficult. I can keep a pool cue balanced for over 4 hours on one finger since it’s rigid and all you have to do is keep the finger under the object. For this one, you have to move the finger almost before you can see which way the stack is going to lean before it leans. After years of balancing practice plus more for this attempt, it took over an hour and a half of official tries to finally complete a 5-second run. I had one attempt that lastest 4.99 seconds after frame-by-frame analysis and a couple of others over 4.5 seconds. The final run was 150 chips balanced for over 7 seconds for a new Guinness World Records Title.

I went for a half-hour at noon and then came back and tried for another hour at 4.

Four years ago at the Cradlepoint block party held in Boise Idaho in the Basque Block, I broke my very first Guinness World Records Title for longest duration blindfolded juggling. 🤹‍♀️ I’ve broken another one here every year since and this time I decided to get other folks from Cradlepoint involved.

The record was for “Fastest time to pass T-shirts along a chain of people (team of 10)”. I didn’t create this record, but whoever did was unsuccessful in breaking it. The minimum mark was 2 minutes. The way it works is the first person starts with all 10 t-shirts on. They then take one off and pass it to the next person. They put it on and take it off and pass it down the line until the last person who only puts it on. Meanwhile, the 2nd shirt is making the same journey through the 10th. There are 90 complete takeoff and put on t-shirt cycles that have to be complete.

It doesn’t matter if the t-shirt is inside out or backward so long as the 2 arms are through 2 different armholes, the head is through the head hole and the t-shirt is pulled down flat on the body below the waist before being removed again.

We practiced several times as a group individually. One guy took it so seriously he literally wore his ear off and was bleeding. A drill we used was each person got their own shirt and had to put it on and take it off 10 times in a row. Everyone needed to get below a minute for us to have a chance and 3 of us got down to as low as 42 seconds for 10 cycles.

It took a few attempts during the official event and it was very cold so we’d huddle under the propane heaters to stay warm in our single mosture-wicking base layer that allowed for easier shirt sliding.

The final result was 1 minute 59.49 seconds.

I don’t mean I skipped running a planned half marathon. I mean I skipped a half marathon.

I started training for this Guinness World Records Title at Disney Land. I mean, where else can you start skipping without being judged? OK, so I was probably judged, but my family was heading to the next ride and I was off skipping to get our fast-passes and meeting them at the next ride so they didn’t care.

The training profile in 2019 looked like this: 141 miles skipped, 250 miles run, 1040 miles biked. I was planning to skip the Famous Idaho Potato Half Marathon in May but I fell off an electric ride-share scooter in some light rain 2 days before the race (don’t ride them in the rain!) and ended up in the emergency room. I needed to take some time off and delayed the attempt until Oct 13 at the City of Trees Half Marathon. (Boise comes from “Les Bois” in French meaning “the trees”).

The previous record was 2 hours 27 minutes 1 second or about 11 minute 13-second miles. I trained for enough time that I was sure I could break the record but wasn’t sure by how much. I never trained with food or Gatorade and barely had any water on a hot 12-mile training skip. I had 2 power gels and plenty of water and Gatorade at this even which helped immensely.

The biggest problem is the skidding of the feet on the ground. In only 141 miles of skipping I have completely destroyed 4 pairs of shoes. My shoes weren’t a problem. My feet were the problem. Watcher beware on the video above, my feet are absolutely shredded. I got blood-blisters covering the entire ball of my foot during the training runs and the half was probably the worst of them all since I went the furthest and fastest even though I build up huge callouses before.

I had two runners following me for the entire attempt and stuck with the 2:15 pacer for almost half the race after I caught up (I started a minute after the start horn to avoid the crowds). I pulled away at the halfway mark and finished in a time of 2 hours 13 minutes 41.8 seconds. I far exceeded my goal and really hope not to have to do this one anytime soon (hopefully I’ll be able to walk soon).

This is what I wanted to look like for the picture…

This is what me trying to skip after the race actually looked like…

You already saw the most kiwis sliced on one minute with a samurai sword while standing on a swiss ball. Now it’s time for most grapes sliced in one minute while standing on a balance board. It’s both easier and harder than the kiwis.

The roller board is much easier to stand on than a swiss ball. This helps dramatically. I did have one of the grape pieces roll under the balance board which made it harder to roll until I squished the grape. At first, I didn’t realize what was happening and worried I might fall off.

The grapes are harder to slice for 2 reasons. The first is obvious: they’re much smaller so I have to be more precise. The second is that the sword doesn’t slice through them as easily. I think it might be for a couple of reasons. The skins are a little bit tougher than kiwis and have a little more give so it takes more force to break the skin instead of just bouncing off of them. The other is that the grapes have less mass and momentum than kiwis so it’s not hard for them to just bounce away vs the kiwi is going to keep on coming even when it gets hit.

Jonathan got about 70 grapes thrown in the minute and we found 114 grape pieces on the floor when it was all over.

This weekend I flew to Toronto, Ontario to help promote the Science of Guinness World Records Exhibit being put together by Science North in conjunction with Guinness World Record’s their parent company.

I made an official Guinness World Record attempt at the Association of Science and Technology Conference in front of about 150 spectators with an official Guinness adjudicator on site. The dignitaries went first and I was a bit (but not totally) surprised when two of them broke the current mark of 30 feet 1 inch.

On my first throw, which was otherwise phenomenal, it hit the wall since we were constrained to a narrow space. It wasn’t counted against my 3 attempts. On the second attempt (my first attempt that counted) I broke the current record but didn’t best the dignitaries’ marks. On my third throw, the tortilla skimmed the ground before covering a considerable distance. From the adjudicator’s position, it wasn’t readily obvious that the tortilla hit the ground (see the video) so he marked it where it hit the ground the second time but disqualified the attempt when it was revealed it did indeed hit the ground early. On the last throw, I had a good release that flew within between the wall and the spectators and covered 54 feet 5 inches before coming to a rest on the ground besting the previous record of 30 feet 1 inch by over 80%.

It was a phenomenal event overall with so many like-minded people that have a passion for STEM education and reaching out in ways that engage students and adults alike to consider the importance and power of STEM education.

Check out the Science of Guinness World Record exhibit opening at Science North in Sudsbury, Ontario in March of 2020 and reach out if you’d like it to travel to your local science center sometime over the next 5 years!

News coverage: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2019/09/23/Man-throws-tortilla-54-feet-5-inches-to-break-world-record/1791569267369/

Trying to break an official Guinness World Record’s Title during a motivational talk to a live audience makes it a lot harder. I was actually packing up my cameras after giving my alternate closing speech after a failed world record attempt when I looked at my watch and realized I was still on the schedule for 10 more minutes.

I confirmed with the conference organizers of the Idaho DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) county conference that I had time for one more attempt. We set up another 120 matches on the table so I could take another shot at breaking the current Guinness World Record’s Title more most matches snapped in one minute of 84.

On the first attempt, I broke about 112 matches but 32 of them didn’t break fully into 2 pieces leaving me with only 80 completely snapped matches. I thought I had broken the record, but when I got to the final count of 80 completely snapped matches the crowd groaned but then cheered. My whole message is how we should respond to failure, and I had just faced one. I was ready to go back to my day job as a technology product manager when I realized I didn’t need to give up just yet.

On the second try, I didn’t get to as many match sticks, but I was more deliberate when I broke them to ensure I didn’t have nearly as many disqualifications. I still had to move fast, but on the 2nd try, I only had 12 DQ’s with 103 matches broken resulting in a new Guinness World Record’s title of 91 matches broken in one minute.

Thank you to the Idaho DMV for making me part of your conference. It was truly an honor for you to hear my story and I’m so grateful for your support.