I spit a table tennis ball.

This is not unusual (for me). I often spit table tennis balls but usually, I try to catch them in my mouth again. In this case, I tried to spit it as far as I possibly could. I was pleased with my result. The ball traveled 58 feet 7.75 inches in the air before landing in the raked sand at the Hobble Creek Park softball field.

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It was a bit cold but my two year old had fun helping me rake and measuring the start line. It had to be a flat surface with sand so the ball would make a mark when it landed.

I had to try this record attempt a few times. The first time was a the Kymeta dinner at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain with several influencers in the mobile industry. I got nervous which is detrimental to grabbing small chips and carefully and quickly placing them precisely on a different stack of chips. but on the first attempt I tied the current record of 188 chips stacked in 5 minutes (1 at a time). I decided I wanted to beat the record which took a couple more tries. I finally got 189 and we called it a night.

I went to upload the evidence the next day and discovered the current record had been updated to 200 chips stacked in 5 minutes since I had left for Spain. I took my chips to the dinner the next night at Tapas but the restaurant I was at didn’t realize I was with a group of 8 people who had ordered 40 plates of food and felt that I wasn’t worth the 2-foot by 2-foot table space I was taking.

The next night our group wandered around looking for a place to get drinks for an hour before we settled for a bar with no table space for the record so I packed up and gave up on breaking a record in Spain.

I took the supplies to Germany and broke the record there instead. It was in Buchloe 45 minutes southwest of Munich. Again, I got nervous, but not quite as nervous and stacked 204 chips in one minute (in the practice right before I got a lot more). On my 2nd try the stack fell down so we stuck with 204 as the official number.

Today I had a multi-repeat record. I broke the record for longest duration balancing a guitar on the forehead for the second time and I also performed at the Kid’s Fair at Expo Idaho for the second time.

I originally set this record at Porter Pickups a bit over a year ago at 10 minutes but Ashrita Furman took it back with a run of over 11 minutes. I was signed up for the 10-10:30 AM slot and decided to use as much of it as I could for the record.

I balanced the guitar for 25 minutes 33 seconds more than doubling it. If Ashrita wants it back he can have it but he’s going to have to earn it. My neck was gettnig pretty sore by the 10-minute mark and I nearly fell off the stage at 25 minutes since I didn’t realize I was walking forward!

I ended the attempt by trying to sit down on the ground (successful), lean back (successful), and do a sit up (fell off on the way up).

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Thanks to everyone who helped: Jennifer, Robbie, Matthew, Isaac, Ashton, Allison, Cumulus Media, the Kid’s Fair, and many others!

My sons just see a UFO. Remember when CD’s replaced the Iomega drives and held 7x the data? Now there are only two things left to do with them: throw them into a bucket, and use them as chew toys.

The annual BSU Science and Engineering Festival was held today with thousands of kids and their parents flocking to the campus for presentations, live demos, hands-on activities, free giveaways and a whole lot more. It’s my 4th year giving a presentation. Three years ago was my 2nd ever Guinness World Record attempt. Today I was going for my 80th-something.

I had one of my better presentations with a bit of new material on the educational front, the juggling front, and the balancing front. It culminated with a Guinness World Record Attempt for Most CDs thrown into a target in one minute.

The target was a bucket 3 metes away, less than 30 cm in diameter, and the CDs had to be thrown one at a time. The previous record was 25. To start, I gave 5 kids and 5 CDs each to throw and one of them made a single CD into the bucket. You might think it was just the kids trying – but my first attempt I only got 2 CDs into the bucket! Today I had both speed and accuracy throwing 84 discs and making 42. When I got home I saw that one was a ricochet so 41 will be the new record.

I practiced for a couple months with some serious crunch-time training. I gave it 4 attempts on stage today and broke the record every time.

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Today I made my second attempt at “Most Socks Removed in One Minute (Blindfolded)”. The Gemalto Global IoT Summit in Athens was the perfect event.

I was honored to give the corporate version of a Growth Mindset talk with juggling, balancing, personal stories, and we topped it off with a group Guinness World Record Attempt. I had 42 sock-wearing volunteers and other crew of about 10 helping with logistics.

We spent a lot of time, cleaning, dying, and prepping the feet with Gold Bond Powder to ensure the socks didn’t stick to the feet and the volunteers were great.

I made one practice run with my eyes open. A preliminary run blindfolded in which I removed 66 socks and the final attempt resulted in 70 socks removed. It turns out taking off 2 at a time is faster than taking off one at a time with 2 hands.

Check back soon for a video of the attempt!

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Today I decided to try one I haven’t practiced a whole lot. I stacked 10 chips on my forehead on 10.33 seconds. They had to be placed 1 at a time and remain there for 5 seconds without falling. The previous record was 11.06 seconds. I practiced a good 50 times today before the attempt and it took me 5 or 6 tries since the stack kept falling off.

Dan Cox took took a shot at it after I was done.

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Today I became the fastest 1-finger typist in the world (at least according to Guinness World Records). I typed “Guinness World Records has challenged me to type this sentence using one finger in the fastest time” in 24.27 seconds besting the previous mark of 28 seconds by well over 10%. With 99 characters, that comes out to 49 words per minute… with 1 finger! That’s faster than I could type with 10 fingers until high school. (And it doesn’t account for the capital letters which take 3 keystrokes each!)

I practiced casually over a few months period but got serious on the flights from Boise down to Dallas. The seatmate next to me on the plane never said anything about my extended frantic 1-finger typing but I’m pretty sure they must have at least read the sentence I typed over and over again and figured out what I was doing.

It took me two tries (on the first I had 2 typos even if it was a bit faster). I’m pretty excited to break 25 seconds even if I think I could go just a little bit faster. Here’s to setting records all over the country and the world!

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What better way to kick off the new year than to break a world record in Costa Rica with my family and the flight crew from KLM (based out of Holland).

At the famous El Avion Restaurant in Manuel Antonio in Costa Rica I broke the record for the fastest time to bounce 5 ping pong balls into 5 glasses. The previous record was 5.09 seconds and I nailed it in under 3.5 seconds. The hardest part may have been tracking down glasses that were exactly 16 ounces but I found some in a Houston restaurant on our layover on the way down to Costa Rica.

It took several attempts once I got set up at the restaurant but the KLM crew, a guide from Costa Rica, and a man from Spain acted as timers, witnesses, and videographers while the rest and my family cheered me on.

On Friday, December 14th at 3:30 PM at Cradlepoint Plaza during the Cradlepoint Christmas party I completed my year-long goal of averaging one Guinness World Records Title broken per week in 2018.

Chris Knight and I made 110 passes of a Frisbee in one minute to break the title for “Most flying disc (frisbee) passes in one minute by a pair”. Over a hundred watched as we took down the previous record is held by YouTube Ultimate trick shot phenom Brodie Smith which stood at a crisp 87 catches in one minute using a single disc. The distance separating us was over the minimum 3 meters (~10 feet).  

On the disc we used was written “Cake”: Chris’ nickname on the ultimate field since he made everything look so easy and today’s record was no exception. It’s also Chris’ first Guinness World Record Title. It took hours of practice and some very sore arms and fingers but the final result was our best run ever right when it counted.

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Here are some highlights from the rest of the year:

Most bites taken out of 3 apples in one minute while juggling: 164 https://davidrush4stem.com/3-apples-164-bites-1-minute/

Reclaiming the title of World’s Fastest Juggler with 556 juggling catches in one minute https://davidrush4stem.com/worlds-fastest-juggling/

Most consecutive Axe Juggling Catches: 839 https://davidrush4stem.com/841-axe-catches/

Most Bowling Balls Juggled: 3 https://davidrush4stem.com/david-vs-gravity/

Longest Duration Balancing a Bicycle on the Chin: https://davidrush4stem.com/why-my-neck-hurts/

 Most Corn Kernels eaten in 3 minutes with a toothpick (picked up by national news): https://davidrush4stem.com/skewered/

Most juggling catches on a balance board Blindfolded (75th overall) https://davidrush4stem.com/juggle-and-balance-blind/