This is not a good record for cold season, allergy season, or COVID season. I have had this application open for nearly 5 years and I finally found a season where I can blow my nose and have something other than snot come out. Don’t get me wrong, snot still came out, but after blowing my nose on a tissue several times and into nearly 100 balloons, the snot was pretty much gone.

The record was for the most balloons inflated with the nose in 1 minute. The previous record stood at 9. For the first few times I tried this record over the years, I could barely inflate one balloon since I couldn’t get a good enough seal on the balloon on my nose to actually inflate it. That coupled with copious quantities of snot in my nose led to me giving up before I got too far.

This time I wasn’t going to give up. I tried time after time after time. My fingers were fatigued from trying so many balloons, my nose was raw from all the rubbing, and I nearly fainted once because my 4-year-old son handed me a balloon he wanted to be inflated after a particularly hard attempt and it was a strong balloon that didn’t want to inflate. Fortunately, I was able to sit down before I fainted.

I got 9 balloons inflated 3 times before I finally got a run with 10 balloons fully inflated per Guinness regulations, tied with no holes, and released from my hands before the minute expired. After verifying the diameter of each, it was time to celebrate my clear nasal passages.

I didn’t create this record but I think I’m the first to successfully break it. The record is for the Most volleyball touches with alternate wrists in one minute.

The minimum mark Guinness set was only 60 but I wasn’t going to be happy just breaking this record, I wanted to practice it to actually make it hard to beat. It was surprisingly tricky to get the hits to be consistent enough to even finish an entire minute of hits without losing control of the ball. I thought the record was going to be cake but after trying it several times I actually gave up on it for a couple of years and moved on to other things.

I decided to come back to it with a growth mindset and practice with a vengeance, finally finishing a full minute of hits with almost 200 hits to working on speed and control and getting it over 200, over 300, over 400 where I thought I would like to land but then finally extended the mark to over 500 in one minute breaking the record at a local sport and art camp my son was attending. The official mark was 515 hits in one minute.

Chris and I have talked about breaking this record for years. It’s daunting. It’s scary. One drop and it’s over. Chris is moving soon so we decided it was now or never.

We’re no stranger to Frisbee Guinness World Records with the most passes in one minute (110), most passes in an hour (5,341), and fastest 20m 5-person frisbee relay. During the hour-long record, we dropped the frisbee about 15 times. That was because we were moving as fast as possible. If we could reduce that drop rate 95% we’d still average one drop before breaking the current record of 2,944 catches. We needed to improve it 100%

We were set up 3 meters apart but no part of the body could cross the plane of the lines so we had additional lines set up for each of us just over an arm’s length behind those lines which made our throws closer to 5 meters apart. Once we started, we couldn’t stop with a maximum delay from catch to throw of 5 seconds or the attempt would be over. We started off confident.

Chris chose the safer and more room for error pancake catches where he uses both hands to catch the frisbee, one on top and one on the bottom. He paid for it the next day.

I used the higher risk but faster catch and release underhand catch with two hands. I did have about 40 catches that were wide enough that I only got one hand on them and 2 of those were with my left hand. We had several close calls with near misses on the catches or 3-4 seconds from catch to throw wiping off sweat or taking a drink, but we were able to blaze by the current record in just over an hour.

We then picked up our pace considerably and completed 12,345 catches in 3 hours 58 minutes 4 seconds without a drop. We chose to end since the witness restriction is only 4 hours.

The hardest part of this record when I first broke it may have been procuring the Japanese poi scooper game from Japan. The record is for the most water pistol target hits in 30 seconds. But what’s a target with a squirt gun? I’m glad you asked. It’s breaking the paper on the poi scooper. What’s a poi scooper? I’m glad you asked. It’s a plastic circle with a handle in which a very thin piece of paper is placed. The goal of the poi scooping game is to scoop out as many live goldfish from the water without your paper breaking. To break this record you have to break as many of the papers in 30 seconds as you can.

The last time I broke the record I broke 36 poi scooper papers in 30 seconds. My mark was passed with 37. This time I came back with a better technique and more practice and was able to successfully puncture 47 of the poi scoopers in 30 seconds.

I have finally reclaimed the record for the furthest distance to throw and catch a hot dog in a bun. I broke it with Jake Smith in early 2019 with a throw of 105 feet. It was then broken by some MIT students at my alma mater and then broken again recently with a mark of 156 feet 3 inches.

Jake is a phenomenal athlete and climbs ice falls, scales mountains, and flips on skis; but he decided his fastball probably wasn’t practiced enough to the dog to go over 50% further than last time.

It took multiple days of tries at the Cradlepoint Sales Summit in Boise starting with the all-hands BBQ gathering but the record has been reclaimed. Cradlepoint is over 1,200 people now with hundreds joining since the last time we got together so it was an open call at the BBQ for anyone who wanted to try their arm. We warmed up with baseballs and the former football and baseball players came out of the woodwork chucking baseballs well over 200 feet.

We then switched to hot dogs and several folks took turns hucking them as far as possible. Many broke on release. Others faltered in the air. There were a couple that traveled just over 156 feet but I failed to make clean catches in the bun losing the dog in the trees, having to dodge trees myself to get in position, or the dog hitting the bun at the wrong angle to fit in the slot.

After exhausting our supply of multiple types of dogs and buns the top performers were hungry to try again. We identified the top dog and I went out and bought a bunch more. We convened the next day at an open softball field to try again. After another hour and a half of failed attempts (2 we thought were good but on the review, the follow-through stepped across the throwing line), many broken dogs, exploded buns, close calls where the dog was caught but also touched my hand so was disqualified, cameras overheating and shutting off, Russell Phillips threw a hot dog 167 feet 5 inches and I cleanly caught it in a bun breaking the previous record by over 10 feet. Russell used to have a 90 MPH fastball and after 2 days of translating that motion to perfect the dog-throwing motion, he has broken his first Guinness World Records title.

Thanks to all the other throwers and those who helped out! Dillon Lukehart, Nick Horton, Brian Wood, Ken Tucker, Stoney Tuckness, Jennifer Erfurth, Marc Bresniker, Matt Anderson, and many more!

I snapped 91 matches last time I did a match-snapping record in 2019. This time I got 83. Why were both Guinness World Records titles? In 2019 I broke the 1-minute record and this time it was the 30-second variety.

Practice, percervierence, patience. I increased my speed dramatically using hand-strengthening exercises and a single-hand technique to break each match. I also had 21 matches I snapped but didn’t fully separate into two pieces so I was averaging nearly 3.5 broken matches per second but only 2.77 per second counted.

My sons and I then lined up all the broken matches in homemade playdough to make a fire snake.

This record was a pain in the neck.

I had to fight a light breeze on an object that likes to catch the cross-winds. I took on the Guinness World Record’s title for the Greatest distance travelled while balancing a guitar on the chin. After over 1 hour 7 minutes and over 13 laps, the guitar finally fell off my chin (official mark 5.479 kilometres). I had to lay on the ground for a while to recover and my 3 year old ask me if it hurt (yes), why I was laying on the ground (too dizzy to get up), and he even laid down with me to give me a hug.

I had some help staying on the track with a witness walking with me telling me what lane I was in so I didn’t walk off the track.

My brother-in-law, Kevin, came in town for Father’s Day weekend so I made a typical Father’s Day request: can you rapidly shoot marshmallows off a catapult into my mouth?

Fortunately, he agreed and we went at it all weekend. It had to be a homemade catapult from commercially available items typically found around the home.

I have tons of practice catching things in my mouth so all the pressure was on Kevin. He handled it like the former D1 scholarship athlete he is. He quickly ramped his abilities and after over 1,000 marshmallows shot he was able to launch 65 marshmallows in one minute, of which I successfully caught 59 in my mouth surpassing the previous record of 47 by 25% with a catch rate of over 90%

We kept clean sheets on the floor so any dropped marshmallows could be reused.

It may not seem like it should happen, but after so many near misses that hit my lips and smashed the marshmallows into my teeth, I was left bleeding after a couple of the practice sessions.

This record is special to me because it made such a great visual I used it for the cover of my book: Breaking Records: 21 Lessons from 21 World Record Attempts.

I first broke it in 2017 balancing a chainsaw on my forehead for 5 minutes and 1 second surpassing the required 3 minutes. Someone else broke it recently with a time of 6 minutes and 48 seconds. I could not let that stand. 31 minutes 25 seconds later the record is securely back on my forehead.

Balancing a chainsaw on the forehead is quite a bit harder than on the chin because the visual cues are much harder to follow. It’s more about feeling than sight. When balancing the chainsaw on the chin I can see the top which is what moves the most when it starts to tip. When it moves a little I adjust to put my body back underneath it. When the chainsaw is on my forehead the body blocks the top so all I can see is the bottom of it right near my eyes. It barely moves at all so I have to feel the chainsaw to keep the balance.

I’m hoping I can keep this one for a while again since it holds a special place for me.

This is another deceptively hard record. After spending so much time and wrapping paper wrapping Joey up in wrapping paper at the end of last year, I thought wrapping him up in newspaper would be a piece of cake. It wasn’t.

In fact, Joey stood through I don’t know how many attempts of wrapping with newspaper and I had to raid my parents’ Idaho Stateman recycling several times over a few month period to keep myself flush with double fold large sized newspaper sheets.

Two of the hardest problems with this record is that newspaper is so easy to rip and it doesn’t like to not rip when being pulled around curved surfaces. Joey is a competitive gymnast and his muscles are just a little too well-defined. I did get to experiment with different types of tape and which sheets to add when and which sheets to tape on the ground vs on the body. I got so close on one attempt but there was just a tiny tip of his shirt showing so it didn’t count.

I then recruited my niece Cypress of a final attempt. She met the 5-foot minimum height requirement and is growing tall fast so I wrapped her up in 2 minutes 53 seconds beating the previous mark of 3 minutes 5 seconds. She was a great sport about it and we had lots of fun. Happy Birthday!