I thought this was going to be an easy record to break. Four seconds into my first practice, I realized it was going to be harder than I thought. In fact, after a full practice session, I put this one on the shelf for months not sure if I wanted to spend the time to be able to break it.

The record is for the longest time to keep 2 balloons in the air with the head. It doesn’t seem like it should be too difficult, but it’s deceivingly hard. One rule that makes it ten times harder is that you have to alternate hits on the balloons with the head.

This means to have to hit each balloon up consistently because if one goes much higher than the other, the wrong balloon is going to come down first. By the time you hit the other balloon back up into the air, the lower balloon is too low to get the head under. It also means that mid-air collisions are detrimental because they usually result in the balloon that was the last hit with the head sending the balloon you want to hit next up and the one you can’t touch right back down. That ended up being what got me at this end of this attempt. The balloons not only have to be hit up far enough apart not to hit each other, but they also have to be close enough to be able to have time to shuffle back and forth between them. The footwork reminded me of the last few steps to get into the perfect position to hit a tennis ball.

Joel Strasser of toothpicks in his beard fame (3,500) came and acted as a timer. He’s from the Boise area but now lives in Oregon. He was back for the holidays. The previous record was 1 minute 9 seconds and I had my best run of 3 minutes 40 seconds.

Thanks to Bob and Tom Show for providing the balloons. They send them for a different record attempt but they ended up being too large for the Guinness rules on that attempt but they worked great for this attempt.