Jun 29, 2007
A few days ago, I visited New Orleans and attended a program dedicated to the courageous spirit of the people of the city. The function was the brainchild of Ashish Verma, the General Manager of the renowned Windsor Court Hotel. As part of the program, Mr. Verma invited my spiritual teacher, Sri Chinmoy, to say some encouraging words and give a short concert.
Also, a couple of New Orleaneans were honored for their outstanding efforts to help rebuild the city. I was so inspired that I decided to attempt a Guinness record the next morning at a local track even though I wasn’t completely trained.
The record was for an event which involved running the fastest mile while balancing an object. I invited the media, had all the proper witnesses and timers, and also had a person taking video. This was one of those records which requires a complete videotape of the record to be submitted. In front of a crowd of startled teenagers training at the track, I survived the 90-degree heat and broke the record by more than 20 seconds. However, the battery of the video camera died halfway through the mile and only the first part of the attempt was recorded. The record didn’t count because of technical difficulties!
Which brings me to a story that Mr. Verma told me afterwards about technical difficulties that occurred to a guest in a hotel that he used to manage in New York City. The guest was from a foreign country and must have been impressed by all of the latest innovations which we take for granted in the U.S. For example, the bathrooms at the airports all boast motion-activated water systems and when you call the airlines nowadays on the phone, you can converse with a computer.
Jun 20, 2007
I had everything I needed for my record attempt in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia except for one small item – a 4-foot by 5-foot plank of wood! I had the regulation stilts, I had a jump rope and I had the official witnesses in the car with me. We were on our way to the Ulaan Bataar airport to catch a flight to Dalanzagad, not much more than an airstrip deep in the Gobi. I was going to attempt the record for jumping rope the most times in a minute on stilts. I needed the wood to bounce on because the stilts would sink deeper and deeper into the sand without it, preventing me from cranking out the 102 jumps required to break the current record. I was trying not to dwell on the fact that if I didn’t have the wood with me already, how was I going to find a plank of wood in the middle of one of largest and least populated deserts on the planet?!
I’m not as disorganized as you might think. When we left for the airport, I actually had the perfect piece of wood in the backseat of the taxi, but I lost it! The wood was part of a construction project that my friend was working on. He gave me permission to take the plywood with me as long as I promised to bring it back. However, minutes after we left the hotel, my friend called my cell phone in a panic! He had to finish the project in a few hours and he needed his plank back immediately. With a sinking feeling, I told the taxi driver to turn around so I could return the precious cargo.
Jowan, the official photographer, was traveling with me and when I re-entered the taxi after surrendering the wood, he noticed my distress. Although young, he is wise beyond his years and he said, “Hey, don’t worry. We’ll find a piece of wood in the desert, I’m sure of it.” I didn’t see how he could be so sure.
Jun 7, 2007
As you might have guessed by now, I am an avid animal lover. So, a few days before I was scheduled to go to Mongolia, I began thinking about what kind of exotic animal I could possibly meet in Genghis Khan’s homeland. Mongolia is famous for its horses, but I’ve met hundreds of horses (in fact, I’ve been thrown off the back of a few!) and I was looking for something more unusual. And then I remembered reading that Mongolia has the second largest population of yaks in the world, next to Tibet. Now you can’t get more exotic than a yak! I don’t think I had ever even seen a yak in a zoo. So, with yaks on my mind, I boarded the plane to Ulaan Bataar and, somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, the idea came to me. I had been practicing for the sack racing mile record – why not race a mile in a sack against a yak? The plan seemed ludicrous so I knew it must be good!
Full of excitement, I mentioned the yak sack race to some friends who were traveling with me on the plane and I got a lot of feedback. One well-meaning friend responded, “That’s crazy, how are you going to find a sack big enough for a yak?” I had to patiently explain that I would be in the sack, not the yak! Another buddy said, “Bad idea, you’ll never get a yak to cooperate. Yaks are dangerous. I’ve heard that on mountain passes you should never pass a yak on the outside because they will bump into you and try to deliberately push you off the mountain! In a sack you’ll be a sitting duck.”
May 27, 2007
My friend, Sanatan, is an exceptional engraver and trophy maker. He has made exquisite plaques and trophies for such luminaries as Michael Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela and Mother Theresa, to name a few. However, like many artists, he is not that neat in his personal life. His room is a mess and his office looks like a thief has just broken in and ransacked the place! So when Sanatan called me last week from his hotel room and told me that he couldn’t find his passport, I wasn’t at all surprised.
Sanatan was calling from his hotel room in Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia. Both Sanatan and I were among a group of Sri Chinmoy’s students attending a ten-day series of events centered around Sri Chinmoy’s efforts to inspire world harmony. Our teacher gave lectures on art and poetry, offered a free musical concert dedicated to inner peace, and had a meeting with the President of Mongolia. Towards the end of the visit, a second meeting with the President came up and Sanatan was frantically trying to prepare the special award that was supposed to be presented by Sri Chinmoy to the distinguished statesman the next day.
Knowing my friend, I told Sanatan not to panic, his passport was probably buried under a pile of dirty clothes somewhere in his room. He insisted he had searched his room high and low and that he couldn’t waste any more time looking. However, since our flight back to New York was in 2 days, he wanted me to ask the airlines about postponing his departure for a week to give him time to get a new passport. He figured that his passport had either dropped out of his pocket onto the street or else he had been pickpocketed.
May 21, 2007
I can just see it now-
Dick Fosbury changed the high jump forever with his revolutionary method of jumping backwards over the high jump bar.
John Heisman virtually re-invented American football when he introduced the forward pass.
And Ashrita Furman changed the art of spinning a hula hoop forever with his unprecedented underwater hula hooping! Uh, well maybe not, but the idea certainly sounded like fun, and quickly became my focus for a new Guinness Record!
The concept first came to me last November. I knew right off the top that I would have to use something other than plastic, because a plastic hula hoop floats! My friend, Udar, loves these kinds of off the wall challenges, so I asked him to design a few prototypes of metal hula hoops. True to form, he came up with some amazing configurations including a 4-foot hoop made from thin sheet metal with sharp edges. I confess, I was a bit nervous about that one. I could just see myself getting sliced in half (like a bagel) as I practiced for the record! Anyway, I hung the prototypes off my shoulder and, with great anticipation, cycled down to the nearby YMCA to test out my new toys in their pool.
