By:
On:

Here is the news story from Dunedin, New Zealand about a show I did on Monday. A United States-born world champion skipping-rope fanatic left Dunedin’s Brockville School children screaming with laughter and speechless in amazement as he skipped over two people and did multiple jumps on a unicycle yesterday. Seven-time world skipping champion Peter Nestler interspersed motivational speeches with skipping-rope stunts in his half-hour performance. His message was simple. “Anybody can be a world champion, as long as they practise hard.” Mr Nestler is travelling around the country to help the New Zealand Heart Foundation celebrate the 25th year of the school Jump Rope forRead More →

By:
On:

I’m just about to start my second week of performing on my 2010 tour of New Zealand. The first week was filled with 9 schools from Auckland to Taupo with stops in Hamilton, Tauranga and Rotorua. If you’ve never been here before it’s like seeing the world in Technicolor. Every color explodes and it makes most other countries seem rather dull and lifeless. The reason for this is the massive amount of rain they get here. Thus it’s unusual (at least for this time of year) to have a nice sunny day without any clouds. We’ve been traveling to celebrate the 25th anniversary of JumpRead More →

By:
On:

We just completed the first day of the video shoot and it was amazing. I can’t wait for you to see the video we captured. It was quite interesting working out an entire sequence backlit that flowed from one type of jumping to another. We finished out the night jumping in a thin pool of water and got soaked! Some very amazing pictures and video. I only ate half a sandwich all day because of how busy we were. We’re about to head out for day 2 and it’s probably going to be just as busy, but it will be very interesting as we shootRead More →

By:
On:

Right now the World Jump Rope Championships are taking place in England. Over the last couple of days I’ve been watching on and off the live feed that they have online (isn’t the internet amazing) and I have to say, I see the same issue happening this tournament that has been going on as long as I can remember. Everyone is missing. I guess it would be a bit presumptuous to say everyone, considering that I haven’t been glued to the feed, but whenever I’m watching, there’s a ton of mistakes. A couple of the routines started out with a 5-10 second error, not good.Read More →

By:
On:

My final day in Nairobi was spent packing, running some errands and sitting at the airport. Right before I headed out to catch my flight, the owner of the guest house I stayed at decided to take me out to eat with his kids. We stopped at a pizza place since his kids had only eaten pizza twice in their lives and they really wanted to have it again. I couldn’t help but laugh thinking of the practical impossibility of finding any kid in the US who would have only had pizza twice. We parted ways at the Nakumatt and I took a cab toRead More →

By:
On:

I just got back from 3 amazing weeks in Kenya. As a quick overview, I was invited to help judge and teach at the first ever East Africa Jump Rope Tournament. To sum it up, it was an awesome experience. I spent time working with quite a few disadvantaged (as we would call them in the PC countries) kids, though if you asked them, they’re just kids. It was incredible to watch them work harder, and longer, than almost any kid I’ve worked with…plus they did it without shoes on half the time. Seriously, these kids did not stop. We would spend 8-10 hours teaching,Read More →

By:
On:

I leave today for a 3 week trip to Kenya! I will be performing and teaching over there and am really excited about the opportunity. I’m sure there will be quite a few stories and insights to share when I get back. Until then, have a great summer!Read More →

By:
On:

Not too long ago I was performing at an elementary school (actually I do this all the time, but…you get the picture). After I finished up and was packing away my stuff, one kid ran up to me and said, “I wish you were my dad!” I was quite flattered and said, “I’m sure your dad is pretty cool already” when he looked at me and said something I don’t think I will ever forget…”No he’s not, he calls me an ‘a’”. At that, he turned and ran off, for which I was quite glad since I really didn’t know what to say. After thinkingRead More →

By:
On:

Happy Purim (a week late)! Last week I performed at the annual Jewish celebration of Purim (one show was at a Synagogue, the other was at a community center). It was a really fun and interesting day for me since this was the first time I had performed for this particular celebration. The background for the celebration is the story of Esther in the bible and how she saved the Jewish people from annihilation by the hand of Haman. It’s a fantastic historical story and you should read it if you haven’t done so before. Anyway, at the festival everyone dresses (almost like it’s Halloween)Read More →