It was years ago when I decided I wanted to break this world record. I'd mentioned it to friends and family who mostly responded by laughing a bit and asking why. At the time, I didn't even know that such a record existed or whether Guinness World Records would even be interested in acknowledging such a thing but the idea was stuck in my head and I had to try. Since I started playing dance games on DDR Extreme at the Oh Wow! Nickel Arcade in Merced, CA on 6/27/03 thanks to Nick DeOrnelas who'd introduced me, they've become literally the biggest part of my life. To the average person, this probably sounds pretty sad but a day in my shoes and they might think otherwise. Almost everyone I'm close to in my life now I've met through dance games and I've made some truly FANTASTIC friends! In addition, it's given me a wonderful excuse to travel and meet even more incredible friends as well as a way to enjoy exercise and have a semi-healthy social life that I'd more than likely otherwise be lacking. Anyway, if you're reading this I probably don't need to say much more to convince you that dance games are awesome since they're more than likely the way we met and I'm sure you agree! I will say this though: The relationship between these dance games and me was nearly love at first sight. Since then, I haven't been able to do or say enough to express what it all means to me and just how big of a part of my life arrow smashing is! All the traveling to dance machine locations nation and worldwide, all the arrow shirts and drawings and art I've made, all the arcade machines I've bought and have sitting in my house, all the countless hours and dollars I've spent playing..nothing seems like it quite does justice to what games like Dance Dance Revolution, In The Groove, and even Pump It Up and other various dance games have done for me! I wanted a way to really express this and I felt that maybe a Guinness World Record showing just how devoted and appreciative I was might be just the thing.
Little did I know then but maybe around the same time there was a handsome, adorable guy named Sean Greasley on the other side of the world in the UK (and on my Myspace page sometime thereafter too as we met at Nat'05 - the national In The Groove tournament in Las Vegas, NV in January of 2006) with the same idea and a lot of the same feelings! I married this guy last year, however (*see bottom of page for details), and it wasn't long before we realized just how much alike we are when it comes to dance games! We got to talking about our individual goals and breaking this record and made an easy decision: we were gonna take the record together!! By this time, we'd both started the process, reading over the old guidelines and requirements for attempting the record, getting in touch with Twin Galaxies (formerly in charge of the gaming portion of Guiness' records), and doing/collecting various things to prepare ourselves for the record attempt. Unfortunately, most of the info and such we'd gathered had become outdated so we had to get in touch with Guinness to let them know of our interest and discuss the current rules and requirements for this record. Sean registered for the record on the Guinness World Records website and I got in touch with a gentleman named Dan at Guinness. Here are some excerpts from a couple of the Livejournal entries I typed up last year to explain what happened next!:
5/16/12 - Getting in Touch With Guinness (While In London)
I checked my emails today and had a new message from Dan at Guinness Book of World Records! Not sure if I've remembered to post much more about this here but basically I sent several messages to Twin Galaxies probably a couple of years ago saying I was interested in breaking the dance game marathon record or even some other dance game record but never got a reply. As I'm sure I stated in a recent post, Seth ended up sending Guinness a message via facebook and got a reply right away! I was upset since they'd never gotten back to me so I sent a facebook message too and got a reply right away from a guy named Dan. We started messaging back and forth, discussing record setting and stuff and he was enthusiastic about having me set records, even discussing what type of dance game records would be worthwhile to set with me. I realized his office was out of London and told him I was actually in London with my husband Sean who also plays regularly at Las Vegas arcade, the arcade the dance game marathon world record was set at [taken later this year by some American lady playing Dance Central for a total of 24 hours 2 minutes 44 secs]. We finally decided to all meet on Fri at 2pm at the Las Vegas arcade. He got permission from the owner to do filming there and exchanged numbers with me so I'd be able to contact him in case anything changed before then.
5/18/12 - Meeting and Interview With Guinness at Las Vegas Arcade in London!
We got to Las Vegas arcade at 1:30 or 1:40pm and waited. No one else was at the machine so Sean played a couple of games while I prettied up. Dan got there right at 2pm with his group (3 guys and 1 girl in total). They were all so much younger than I'd expected-probably around our age, maybe just older! They were really friendly and positive and introduced themselves to us with smiles on their faces. They even gave Sean and me each copies of their Guinness World Records 2012 Gamers' Edition! We got to talking about dance games and the records that could/should be set and acknowledged and Sean and I decided to take the dance game marathon record together as a couple!! We might do others as well, which we'll discuss with Dan in the future, but that's what we're doing for now. As we were standing around talking, several of Sean's other dance game buddies showed up and watched/took pics of us and the Guinness guys. Next, Guinness sat me down and did a video interview, asking me things like my name, how long I've played, whether I've competed or placed in tournaments, how many and which arcade games I had in my house (since I think Sean had mentioned to them that I had some), etc. They asked Sean mostly the same questions and were impressed by both of our answers and just how involved we are with the community. Sean mentioned to them that he'd met me at one of the dance game tournaments he'd traveled for, Nat'05 (tho neither of us entered XD), and they decided to interview us together, asking us for the details about how we met. Then they paid for credits and had us play a few games (1 player singles, 2 player singles, doubles, couples, and we even got friends involved for a couple songs that required 3 people) for them while they recorded. They said they'd be putting the interviews up on YouTube by January next year, which is a long time from now but that's awesome because it gives us time to actually set the record before our interview is released!! Once they were done recording us, we actually convinced them to try a couple of games with us and they had a blast with it. :D They really enjoyed and were interested in the dance genre of video gaming and we all had such a good time hanging out! Before saying their goodbyes, we took lots of pics with them and Dan gave Sean and me each a business card so we'd be able to stay in touch with him easily and discuss things regarding our record attempt(s) prior to making the attempt(s)! Then they took off and we headed out soon thereafter.
Picture of us with Guinness World Records at Las Vegas Arcade in London:
Getting It Together!!
Location:
At the time, Sean and I were planning to most likely attempt the record on the Pump It Up machine there in the Las Vegas Arcade in London, despite me not being much of a PIU player, since our plan was for me to move out to London to be with Sean and that PIU machine was the best in the area. The way it worked out though, Sean ended up moving in with me here in Las Vegas, NV and we got the permission of Julie Murphy and arranged to do the record attempt at her arcade Gemini Arcade Palace instead!
Gemini Arcade Palace
4180 S Sandhill Rd Ste B3 & B4
Las Vegas, NV 89121
(702) 586-3686
http://www.gemini-arcade-palace.com/
Rules and Regulations:
It took a LOT of emailing back and forth between us and Guinness to assure we had all we needed to properly perform our attempt. We didn't want to miss anything, put all the effort in, and then have it all count for nothing. Some of the major things we checked on were:
Q. What's the amount of time allowed between songs?
A. 20 seconds for all human input to be entered (from the time the result screen appears until the new song begins. Time spent in the mod menu is included in the allotted 20 seconds!)
Q. What song difficulties are allowed/required during each part of the attempt?
A. Medium difficulty and higher is required throughout the attempt (changed from the old Twin Galaxies rule which required that the attempt began on the easiest difficulty. The change wasn't an issue for us though! In fact, it was far better because everything 9 and below seems pretty equal in effort except that when it's TOO easy we just fall asleep!)
Q. Are custom stepcharts allowed? (We explained the way the game ITG has lived on thru it's community, that the only new content being generated for it these days comes from users/players, etc.)
A. Yes, as long as the stepcharts are equal to at least medium difficulty and do not contain any breaks in steps of unreasonable length.
Q. Can this attempt be performed on our own ITG2 dedicated cabinet at home?
A. No. It must take place at a public location.
Q. If you fail a song, can you quickly select a new song and continue?
A. No. Unfortunately, once you fail a song during gameplay your attempt is over.
Additionally, we were informed of the following:
-You are allowed 10 minutes of break time at the completion of each hour and can use that break time as you choose (ie: to eat, nap, use the restroom, etc). Break time cannot be taken before it's earned. Break time can be saved up as long as desired to be used at a later point but it cannot be taken during The Final Hour of gameplay. No breaks may be taken within the final hour. Any unused break time will be lost and will not be added onto the total record time.
-If the machines errors, resets, etc you are allowed to take a forced break to fix, restart, and resume assuming you have enough break time saved up to cover the pause in gameplay.
-If needed, it is permitted to switch to another machine of the same version to continue the record attempt as long as sufficient break time has been acquired to cover the time required to do so.
-At least 2 witnesses are required at all times and must cover shifts of no more than 4 hours before their replacements begin
-Time-lapse photos taken every 1 minute of gameplay must be provided and must show both players (with respect to break time), the machine, and screen clearly. In addition, a clock [I believe we were told it must be an analog clock] must be present and displayed in clear view in each photo.
Our Evidence and Documentation:
During our communications, Guinness World Records put us in touch with a media company from London called Across The Pond Productions that films record breakers worldwide for Guinness. They said they'd be in the US along with a representative from Guinness in January filming for the television documentary they're doing and were wondering if they could interview and film us to include us in the documentary as well. Of course, we said yes and set the dates of our attempt accordingly! It WAS a bit tough coordinating dates since the media company was only set to be in town for a few days and Sean and I actually ended up having to schedule the finish of our attempt for the night before our 11am interview for his Visa application!
On the bright side, this made our workload for arranging and obtaining evidence a bit lighter, as mentioned, as having someone from Guinness present for a part of our attempt made them a bit more lenient about things like witnesses. Additionally, we'd be able to have our evidence reviewed and receive our certificate immediately and in person!
So here's what we did for evidence:
-720p HD video of the whole attempt (recorded with Tushar's computer and webcam)
-One set of HD time-lapse pictures taken at 30 second intervals (from video feed mentioned above)
-480p SD webcam video of the whole attempt (taken with Sean's computer)
-A second fail over set of time-lapse pictures taken at 30 second intervals (from video feed mentioned above)
-Private UStream feed of big portions of the attempt recorded with Sean's phone (angle from his ITG speaker)
-Public Twitch.tv Stream for a large portion of it
-Analog clock (borrowed from Julie) attached to my ITG bar in view of the webcams
-Witness logs/statements covering the entire attempt
I think that's everything? Thank you, Sean, for letting me steal most of the above list from you since I'm technologically impaired and wouldn't know how to explain it all otherwise. Also, thank you for setting the majority of it up for us! Thanks to Don for the Twitch.tv stream and for relaying messages to everyone interested, Tushar for letting us use his equipment, Danny for helping us put things together, and Julie for allowing us to use the clock (not to mention the machine, arcade, and everything else!). As you can see, we really went Above and Beyond requirements!
Final Preparation:
1/19/13 - Supplies and Such! (Also Danny's birthday)
In the middle of the night, we made a run to Walmart and picked up some necessities for our GWR attempt including sandwich stuff, shirts, a flood light, some rope to section off our area, food, and drink.
Back home, I made sandwiches, put the food together, and took inventory. In addition to various candies and snacks we already had, our Walmart purchase gave us:
-16 sandwiches (I packed 2 per bag - PBandJ, tuna, and bologna. I've never made so many!)
-6 hot dogs
-A bag of cheese blocks
-2 liter of Mountain Dew Code Red (mine!)
-2 liter of Pepsi Max (Sean's)
-A gallon of Tampico
-4 sports drinks
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It was now Danny's birthday so I made a couple of sandwiches for him too and left them on the drivers seat of his van with a soda and a tshirt we'd bought him!
Then Sean got stuff ready for the Visa interview we had coming up on Wednesday, the morning after our attempt. We decided to take our photo albums and souvenirs (including the Guinness World Records certificate we were about to get!) in addition to the paperwork and other things they require.
Once that was all ready to go, Sean started working on finding and testing the video recording program for our GWR attempt. While he was doing that, I designed us some cool shirts with our aliases (JOKR and s34n), arrows, and BBC roosters on them. These were a little hard to make using 6 or more year old half dried up and broken fabric spray and tube paints and stensils I created by printing and cutting out images but I managed.
The shirts:
At noon or so, Danny got home from his class and he, Sean, and I went to the M buffet for his bday. Since it was the weekend, they were having their seafood buffet so it was $40 per person!! We figured at that price we had to do our best to get our money's worth so we loaded up our plates and pigged out!..or at least tried to. Turns out my stomach's a lot smaller than my eyes! I tasted and enjoyed pretty much everything though and Sean even got some rose wine. (It was nasty!) Of course, my favorite thing was the creme brûlée.
Home again, we continued prepping for the record attempt. We chose about 300 songs from our ITG machine's hard drive and created a pack ranging in difficulty from 5 to 12 but mostly consiting of 9s and 10s to play for the 2 days, thinking our selection would be easy and have us dying of boredom but assuring that we weouldn't fail at any point. (During the attempt, however, we found that we should've included more songs of the 5 through 8 difficulty range.) Danny went out while we were doing all this but when he got home he let us use him van again (our car's still out of service and we've been a bit too busy to work on it) to run a couple final errands including placing a casino bet on the 49ers (last of 4 teams still in!) to win the Superbowl for our friend Greg.
Then Sean and I went home, Danny helped check over our song pack, and Sean and I went to sleep around midnight.
Here We Go!:
1/20/13-1/22/13 - Guinness World Record Attempt
January 20th..This was it!
Sean and I woke up at 7am and couldn't sleep anymore so we had ramen and various cereals with milk and bananas, watched more Lost, and sexed. :) Just after noon, we managed to get back to sleep for another 3 hours, trying to get some extra rest before heading down to Gemini.
We pulled ourselves out of bed around 3:30pm, bathed, got prettied up, got our bags full of supplies and anything else we'd need together, and drove down to Gemini Arcade with Danny.
It took us a few hours to set up the computers, programs, cameras, rope, food, etc. We put a table, which we'd brought from home, a couple of feet behind the ITG machine's bars and put the computers and witness forms on it. Under it, we put some extra clothes, sandwiches, drinks, flood light (to illuminate us and the machine for the videos), and other spare things. We ended up not using the flood light though because it heated up way too fast and we didn't think it'd survive throughout our attempt anyway. On the floor in front of the machine, we put our candies and snacks, sports drinks, my purse, Sean's backpack. On the sides of the machine, we put notepads and pens for anything we might have to write down. Then we hooked our phone chargers up on top of the machine, placed mirrors we'd brought from home on each side of the machine so we could keep an eye behind us and make sure no one took our stuff, and set Gemini's fans next to the mirrors to keep us cool while we were playing.
The setup:
While all of this was happening, Danny informed me that the 49ers had won their game against the Falcons today! I'd wanted to watch the game but obviously scheduling didn't quite permit. Nevertheless, WE'RE GOING TO THE SUPERBOWL!!
Back on topic, the gentlemen from Across The Pond, Oli and James, showed up with Rob Molloy, Director of TV from Guinness World Records' Officially Amazing, just after 6:30pm! They introduced themselves to us, chatted with us for a bit, and then had us follow them outside so they could interview us. The asked us A LOT of questions about things like how we'd met, how good we are, what made us decide to attempt this record, how long we'd been playing ITG, whether we played other games, what our families and friends think of all this, where and how we first started playing dance games, etc. They had to do a lot of retakes and shots from different angles and such so the whole process took forever! Additionally, they wanted to get some shots of us inside the arcade and on the machine as well as a couple of Oli playing a song with us. It was all pretty fun, really, but it ran so late we weren't able to start our attempt until 9:33pm (rather than the 7:30pm time we'd planned)!
Photo of us being filmed by James inside Gemini:
Once we finally began playing, Oli and James recorded a bit more while Rob observed how things were running. Then they said their fairwells and headed out not to return until we were just about finished with the attempt. At that time, the arcade was still pretty full of various gamers, friends there to give us support and watch the start or our record attempt, and volunteers acting as witnesses for us, including Danny!
4 hours into our attempt, long after Oli, James, Rob, and most of the other people in the arcade had left, we took our first break. My feet and legs were in SO MUCH pain - literally more pain than they've ever previously experienced! We'd played almost exclusively 9s through 11s so far. Normally this wouldn't be such a big deal but I guess after not playing ITG much in so long my body just wasn't accustomed to it all. By this point, we'd accumulated 40 minutes of break time but we decided to use only 15 minutes and save the other 25 in case we needed it later, whether for us or for anything that might go wrong with the machine. We spent most of our break cuddling on the the couch with our legs raised over the side! Despite how silly it probably sounds, it felt SO GOOD being wrapped up in Sean's arms and closing our eyes there if for even just a few minutes! We actually spent most of our breaks pretty much like this, lying in each others' arms on the couch or the floor, trying to recover both physically and mentally.
Sean and me cuddling on the couch during one of our breaks:
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Back on the machine, we started playing 2 hours at a time, earning 20 minutes of break time, saving 10 minutes for future use, and using 10 minutes for restrooms, vending machine snacks and energy drinks, and resting with our legs up and arms around each other. We also went from playing almost exclusively expert 9s and 10s to playing a mixture of everything from Medium 5s to Expert 11s (maybe even a 12?). I think it was sometime between 7 and 9 hours in that the pain in my feet and legs had mostly subsided as if I'd worked out the soreness or something. They were still the tiniest bit achy but no longer to the point of even bothering me. My left shoulder got progressively more sore throughout the attempt though until it was a sharp pain that wouldn't go away for days to come. Sean's left shoulder was pretty much the same as mine, probably because of our similar play styles. The tops of Sean's feet were REALLY swollen and in a lot of pain and they only got worse. They were really hurting throughout the entire thing but he beasted it out and pushed on! I didn't know it at the time but I ended up with a sprained middle toe on my right foot. The pinky finger on my left hand had gone numb by the time the sun came up probably from the way I put pressure on it while holding the bar too. Sean and I had alternated about 50/50 between playing bar and no bar and continued to do so throughout the attempt, me repositioning my left hand or not using it so that my finger could recover. (I thought I'd be playing with the bar the entire time but it turned out alternating was actually easier and less painful.) Still, even days later, my finger hasn't regained feeling.. I guess it will eventually, right? Another huge struggle we had was starting to see things from lack of sleep. Yeah, we were literally seeing things that weren't there!
So for the rest of our attempt, we took our breaks every 1 to 2 hours apart, saving up spare minutes at the start til we'd saved an extra 1 hour 40 minutes or so and then using our remaining time as needed. We realized it was MUCH easier on our bodies, especially our feet, legs, and minds, that way. Once we'd figured that out, I had no further struggles with the lower half of me really and my biggest problem became simply staying awake and sane. As far as difficulty, we continued to alternate difficulties from Medium to Expert depending on how our bodies and brains felt. There was a big portion of time when it got to the point where I was playing on Expert ONLY because I was falling asleep on songs with fewer arrows and Sean was playing on Medium because his feet were so swollen they looked like he'd been stung by bees and was HIGHLY allergic! Much later, my feet started to hurt a bit again and his were feeling slightly better so we switched. I think this was the first time he and I had ever played together on different difficulties!
During one of our breaks, Sean and I had to pull our signature move and have a little fun in the restroom. We didn't have the time or energy to get too crazy, of course, plus we didn't want to completely contaminate the place but knowing what we had in store for each other when we finally got home after all of this really helped to motivate us!
Our second night in (1/21/13) at 9:36pm or so, we'd beaten the previous Guinness World Record!!! We held hands and continued playing! We were pretty damn excited but at the same time we knew we had a long time ahead of us still so I don't think we quite gave the moment all the celebration it deserved. haha
Around 2:30am (now 1/22/13), we hit our big wall. We'd saved up a lot of break time and finally decided to take a 30 minute nap around 2am to regain our sanity. Unfortunately, once those 30 minutes were up Sean could hardly even walk. His feet were SO swollen and in excruciating pain. We used another 39 minutes soaking his feet and trying to decide whether we'd be able to go on. We ended up texting James (he, Oli, and Rob had left us their phone numbers), telling him we didn't think we'd be able to go on much longer, and asking what they wanted us to do since they'd wanted to be present for the end of the attempt. They said they had already been planning to come see and check on us in the morning so if we wanted to end early and do a final interview with them then that would be fine. I asked what time they'd be able to show up and they said 10:30am. Sean put his shoes on (we'd both been playing in socks up til this point) to help ease his pain and we decided and told them we were gonna push on until they arrived in the morning no matter how hard it was. We were Tough Enough. I'm really glad we'd saved up so much extra break time til this point or we would've been screwed! I'm also glad we were using My Favorite Game for all this. I don't think we would've even found the motivation had it been anything other than ITG!
During our attempt, Sean got ravenously hungry! I was exactly the opposite. For some reason, whenever I exercise I really hate eating. In fact, it got so bad Sean practically had to force me to take bites between songs!! We did almost all of our eating between and during songs, actually. All in all, this is more of less what we consumed. (Thanks to Sean for typing up the list!):
Sean:
-7 bananas
-A gallon of Tampico (juice)
-2 liter of Pepsi Max
-2 bottles of water
-9 sandwiches (1 was mine since I'd only made 8 for each of us!)
-3 sports drinks (Gatorade, etc)
-1.2 cans of Monster
-1/2lb of pretzels
-A slice of pizza
-3 boxes of Good and Plenty licorice candy
-2 boxes of Lemon Heads
-0.4 liters of Mountain Dew Code Red
-1 liter of Coca Cola
-0.8 Milky Way bars
-1 bag of salt and vinegar chips
-Some sherbert candy
-15 cheese cubes
Me:
-1.5 bananas
-1.5 sandwiches
-1/2 slice of pizza
-1.8 cans of Monster
-3 sports drinks
-15 pretzels
-1 bottle of water
-1.6 liters of Mountain Dew Code Red (yum!)
-0.2 Milky Way bars
-4 coffee candies
When Oli, James, and Rob got back to Gemini around 11:30am or so, Julie and Alma were there with us. We'd been playing for about 38 hours already, were ready to call it quits, and they decided to set up cameras and film our ending! Once they'd gotten enough footage, they said we could call it quits. They honestly hadn't really believed we'd even make it this long and were so impressed! It'd been 38 hours 13 minutes and 30 seconds since we'd started playing. We hadn't made it to the original 48 hours we'd planned but we'd beaten the previous 24 hour 2 minute 44 second record by over 14 hours! It took Rob a few more minutes to go through and validate our evidence and then it was time!!
Getting Our Guinness World Record!!
The cameras were busted out again and Julie, Alma, Oli, Rob, Sean, and I gathered while James recorded. It was the moment Sean and I had waited for for so freakin many years (most of them without even imagining we'd be lucky enough to share it with one another) and the moment we'd worked SO hard for these past days. Rob grinned at us, said a few words, and presented us with a Guinness World Records certificate with both of our names on it for the longest videogame marathon playing a dance/rhythm game! Wow..Against All Odds, we'd just become GWR record holders!
Rob from Guinness, James and Oli from Across The Pond, Sean, and me with our GWR certificate on the ITG machine! (I don't look too excited but I was actually a combination of ecstatic and exhausted.):
We took some final photos and videos with the guys and convinced Rob, Oli, and James to play a couple games of ITG (they had so much fun and we even got a couple videos of them!). Rob gave us 2 extra certificates, one with just Sean's name and one with just mine, that they'd printed in case either one of us didn't finish. Yay spares! Then we FINALLY got to sit down and really rest for a little while before packing our things up to go home and hibernate! lol
Rob (left) and Oli (right) ITGing while James records and Sean checks out our photo and video record evidence!:
The whiteboard behind the counter at Gemini! Thank you, Julie, for doing all this and more for us. It means so much! (Note to readers: Our start time actually ended up being 9:33pm):
THANKS!!!
Thanks so much to all of our friends and family and all those who supported and assisted us in achieving this, especially those who were willing to sacrifice time and effort to get us through! We LITERALLY couldn't have done it without you guys, especially since we were required to do it in a public location with numerous witnesses present throughout!
Just to name a few (please don't feel bad if you're not mentioned because you aren't forgotten!), HUGE thanks goes out to:
-Kyle Ward, Chris Foy, and the entire Roxor team from back in the old ITG days for all of the hard work put into the incredible game - the foundation of our record. Without them, I may have never had a game that could've motivated me enough to do a thing like this!
-Nick DeOrnelas who introduced me to dance games. Without him, I would've never started playing to begin with!
-Julie Murphy and her wonderful arcade, Gemini Arcade Palace, without which, we wouldn't have even had a place to perform! Julie has gone Above and Beyond and bent over backwards to help us in ways few, if any, other arcade owners or even just people ever would.
-Daniel Gonzales. Our car was down and he generously acted as our transportation both on the day of the event and beforehand when we had to pick up supplies to prepare. He had endless patience with us and all of our preparations and needs and acted as one of our witnesses, giving up his evenings over multiple days, as well as organizing and helping with the setup required for what we were doing, the paperwork, and the other witnesses.
-Marquee Simpson who quite possibly gave up the most consecutive time to be present as a witness for us when no one else would or could.
-the rest of our witnesses and people who showed up, posted, and texted us their words of encouragement and helped us in so many ways to get through, including John Bove, Alma Hernandez, Don Decarlo, Eric Bannon, Roberto Chan, Xero, Lani, Josh W, Ollie, Colin, Nate, Dylan, Gordon, and everyone else who was there and helped us - you know who you are! Honestly, getting witnesses there for all hours of the day and night was the hardest of the requirements to meet, especially with so many people bailing on us and not showing up for various reasons. Because of that, I really want to give a huge thanks to those of you who DID show up for us, sacrificing both time and sleep to make this all possible.
THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH!!
PS: Team BBC represent!!
Here's our certificate:
See additional photos on Sean's and my Facebooks, check out his blog post on the event here: http://s34ntravels.blogspot.com/2013/01/breaking-guinness-world-record-longest.html , and keep your eyes open for the rest of our photos and videos to come!
*Most of you know bits and pieces of how that story went but to summarize for the rest, Sean Greasley and I met in '06, exchanged a couple of words and smiles, crushed a little pretty much immediately, parted ways, and became distant Myspace friends exchanging flirtatious messages from across the ocean every now and then since he lived in another country and I was here in the states (still in California at the time). In April 2007, I moved to Las Vegas, NV. I saw Sean again in '08 at a Pump It Up Pro tournament in Las Vegas and we both wanted each other so much! We both had ties though and I guess the timing just wasn't right. In Febuary 2012, we met again for the third time at a Pump It Up Pro 2 tournament in Washington. I was with someone then too but the way I felt for Sean when I saw him this time was all too much and I couldn't seem to keep away from him anymore. I'd wanted him for so long, doing my best to ignore it all because he lived so far away and because I'd thought there was no way it could ever work out. Fuck that. I was done waiting. On Febuary 13th, he kissed me. I think it was the next night at Kyle Ward's house that he and I held hands for a minute. It sounds like such a small thing but to me it meant so much. Then we had to leave each other for the third time and I had no idea when or if we'd see each other again. We hugged not nearly long enough but for what probably seemed to the others there like forever. I cried so hard at the start of that long drive home... When we each got home we both realized we couldn't just ignore it all anymore. By this time, of course, I'd decided to split with my guy at the time. Sean came to visit me for a week in April. Neither of us had any idea where it would all lead and we were both scared that it'd just be a really fun week and then hurt even more when we had to say goodbye again BUT at the end of the week we decided, thanks to our friend Marquee Simpson for suggesting what I think we both would've been too afraid to consider on our own, to take a HUGE chance and get married!! Of course, I was so terrified and unsure of what might happen at the time but I was also so tired of saying goodbye to this guy who I was now so in love with. I liked "goodbye FOR NOW" and "see you soon, love!" so much better and I knew I could see myself with him forever if he'd keep me. It was so overwhelming but perfect when he showed me that he felt that way too. Wow... We married on April 10, 2012 and have been happier than ever before since! I love you, Sean!!!!
