There are a lot of different kinds of handshakes, but nobody in San Francisco has ever taken glad-handing as far as Kevin Whittaker and Cory Jens are doing today.The two buddies put 'er there at 2:07 p.m. in front of San Francisco's Ferry Building and have been shaking all day long in an effort to break the world handshaking record.
Whittaker, 31, of San Francisco, and Jens, 30, of Muscatine, Iowa, don't plan to stop until about 11:15 p.m., when they will have broken the 9-hour record set by two Germans.
"World records were made to be broken," said Whittaker, a corporate litigator who also owns a fashion company. "In the course of human history there has never been a handshake longer than nine hours, so we are doing something that no one has ever done before in the history of humankind."
Hyperbole aside, Whittaker and Jens chose the handshake record because it sounded easy to break.
"I looked up what some of the weakest records were and I found that one of the records, the world record for handshaking was only nine hours and was held by two German gentlemen," Whittaker said. "I'm not going to break the 100 meter dash record, but I thought I could break this record."
He called Jens and asked him if he wanted to come out and try to break the record.
"Jens said 'I'll be there,' " and history was set in motion, said Whittaker.
He quickly put up the 300 British pounds and arranged for witnesses to send affidavits to the Guinness Book of World Records to confirm it when the task is accomplished.
All that's left is the handshaking. The two men practiced three weeks ago while attending the Coachella music festival in Palm Springs.
"It was so hot that we started sweating so much that we couldn't do it," Whittaker said. "Our hands slipped apart."
Their work is cut out for them. This morning, the two men bucked up for the attempt at a cocktail party, where they met Michael Lennon, 22, of Ireland, and Paul Gallasch, 22, of Australia, who are on an around-the-world tour.
The world travelers decided to join them in the attempt, starting about an hour after the Americans. The plan now is to break the record, buy champagne, and return and uncork the champagne when the foreign travelers tie the record.
It hasn't been as easy as they thought.
"We went to the bathroom around 5 p.m. and that was tricky," Whittaker said. "We were shoulder to shoulder. One was facing the urinal while the other was facing the inside of the bathroom."
Whittaker said he thinks the training in Palm Springs helped.
"We developed a couple of handshaking techniques," he said. "One involves putting both your pinkies out, which allows an opening where air gets in and cools you off. The other is that one of us shakes and does all the work while the other one relaxes."
Still, the joy of handshaking only goes so far.
"Its not that fun, believe me," he said. "I'm a little tired. My shoulder is tired. In fact, it's extremely painful."
"What I'm worried about," he said. "is that the Germans will get wind of this and they will call us and challenge us to a shakeoff in some neutral country like Iceland."
News Source : sfgate.com
E-mail Peter Fimrite at pfimrite @ sfchronicle.com
