Idaho unicyclist suffers embarrassing injury in Guinness World Record attempt

An Idaho man with his sights set on a Guinness World Record for juggling flaming torches while riding a unicycle had a hair-raising close call in his quest for glory.Hair-singeing, at least.David Rush, who holds several world records in both juggling and unicycling, decided to combine the unique skill sets into an attempt to break another world record: topping 37 successful torch catches from the seat of a unicycle.He charged headlong into the effort, “brimming with unearned confidence,” he wrote in a blog post, but quickly learned the high price of his hubris — and paid for it with his eyebrows when he underestimated the physics of the wind’s effect on the flaming kerosene torches.“I found that out within thirty seconds.

My eyebrows were instant casualties.The hair on the back of my hands was scorched down to the skin, and the garage filled with the heavy, stomach-turning stench of singed keratin,” he wrote.“I realized quickly that not all fire behaves the same way under centrifugal force.

After painful trial and error, I finally settled on kerosene for its predictable burn characteristics.I had to swallow my pride, put the fire away, and spend weeks practicing the entire routine with completely unlit torches just to build the muscle memory without melting my face off.”Scorched but undeterred, Rush resigned himself to practicing with unlit torches before taking to the streets last Halloween night to make his official attempt.After dipping the wicks and igniting the torches, Rush mounted his unicycle and instantly dropped all three of them on the ground.“Failure in under three seconds,” he wrote.On the third attempt, however, he got out of his head and into the groove — ignoring the nagging flames flying inches from his face until he shattered the record, managing 175 consecutive catches.“I forced myself to zone out the panic and lock into the rhythm.

Catch after catch, I kept the pattern alive until I cleared the old benchmark and landed ...