Jeremy Hsieh

Aug. 30 Update: Peter Nestler says he made another attempt at the rope skipping and soccer ball juggling record on Thursday evening. He says this time, he completed 126 rope skips in the allotted time.

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The Ketchikan-born, Juneau-raised professional rope jumper is two for three on his world record attempts in Juneau.

Peter Nestler knocked out his second unofficial world record during a show Wednesday night at the Juneau Christian Center.

“Well, last night I hit 104 with the soccer ball,” he said. “Ended up being about 44 seconds without missing.”

The current record for most rope skips while juggling a soccer ball in one minute is 31, according to the Guinness World Records press office.

Before he leaves town Friday, Nestler said he’ll make another attempt to go the full minute.

Tuesday evening, he made a grueling attempt to hop the fastest mile on one foot while jumping rope at Thunder Mountain High School. He was on pace to beat the record, but about three-quarters of the way through, he tripped and fell, disqualifying the attempt.

Last week, Nestler unofficially set the record for most bum skips in 30 seconds at Glacier Valley Elementary School.

Nestler lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Sealaska Heritage Institute Art Director Rico Worl rubbed his fingers against the 26-foot tall Raven totem pole in front of the Gajaa Hit building off Willoughby Avenue on Wednesday.

Small bits of the soft wood flecked off.

“The wood is decaying,” Worl said.

And that’s just the beginning of his damage report.

“You can see this pole … the wing that fell off, a beak fell off,” he said, gesturing upwards. “Multiple parts have fallen off.”

A few feet down the sidewalk, he points out how the powerful Taku winds flow down Willoughby and strip the paint from the Eagle totem pole.

The Tlingit artwork has seen better days. And yet, flanking a similarly weathered Tlingit screen, the 35-year-old woodwork collectively still creates the imposing façade of a traditional clan house.

Around the corner, the project led by the Sealaska Heritage Institute has begun to replace the two aging Tlingit totem poles and the screen.

Wednesday was the first day of work outside the Gajaa Hit building in the Indian Village area of Juneau. Red cedar was in the air, and sawdust and wood chips piled up. Brothers Joe and T.J. Young were chain sawing, hammering and axing a cavity into the first of two massive logs.

The Haida carvers came from Hydaburg on Prince of Wales Island. They’re the same brothers responsible for the Eagle totem pole at the University of Alaska Southeast campus.

There’s an aggressive, but tentative timeline to have the first pole finished by October 1^st, before the weather turns, Worl said. The second pole and new screen are scheduled for next summer.

Worl wasn’t ready to disclose the exact cost of the carving project, but said a $150,000, one-to-one matching grant from the National Endowment for the Arts was a major part of it.

To retire the existing poles, a lowering ceremony is in the works. Traditions can vary, Worl said, but old totem poles may be “returned to the forest” – that is, put out to decay naturally—or they may be burned. He says it’s a decision that will be made with the Indian Village community later on.

The Sealaska Heritage Institute donated the cedar logs and hired the carvers. Additional grants came from the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council and the Juneau Community Foundation. And the Tlingit-Haida Regional Housing Authority, which owns the building, is paying for apprentice carvers.

After the Young brothers complete some initial work at the Gajaa Hit building, their carving operation will move to a more prominent work zone at Sealaska Plaza.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct Joe and T.J. Young’s tribe. A previous version said they are Tlingit. They are Haida.

Peter Nestler has unofficially broken the Guinness World Record for most bum skips in 30 seconds.

After reviewing the video of his third attempt on Friday in slow motion, Nestler thinks he completed 93 bum skips in the allotted time. The current official record is 82.

A bum skip is a way of jumping rope while seated. The rope is doubled over and spun in one hand beneath the jumper.

The Ketchikan-born, Juneau-raised professional rope jumper completed the feat during an assembly at Glacier Valley Elementary School.

That’s his second rope jumping world record this year. Nestler wants to break a total of 11 by 2014. He wants to check off two more in Juneau next week for fastest mile while hopping on one foot and jumping rope, and for the most rope skips while juggling a soccer ball in one minute.

A video and paperwork that includes signed witness statements must be vetted by the Guinness officials to become official.

Nestler lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Peter Nestler has been hooked on jumping rope since second grade, when he saw an exhibition at Glacier Valley Elementary School.

In third grade, he joined the Juneau Jumpers. By the time he finished high school, he had helped his team win seven world championships.

Now 33 and living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Nestler has come full circle. He’ll perform his world class rope and unicycle skills for a new generation at Glacier Valley on Friday.

“It’s where I learned to jump rope,” he said. “I was on the team there, pretty much my entire learning curve was at Glacier Valley. So it’s kind of neat, and I was thinking about where to do these records. And I was like, you know, it would be kind of cool to have one where I actually started.”

During the show, the Ketchikan native hopes to set a new world record for most bum skips in 30 seconds.

That’s right, bum skips. Nestler explains:

“Basically, you’re seated with your feet out in front of you, and you’re jumping while you’re sitting down,” he said. “For this particular record … you hold both handles in one hand, so the rope’s basically cut in half. And then you spin the rope so it’s making kind of like a helicopter motion, but it’s going, it’s staying on the ground and you’re jumping over that with every jump.”

The current record is 82, according to the Guinness World Records press office.

He already holds the record for most rope skips on a unicycle in one minute: 237. Nestler hopes to set a total of 11 new world records this year, three of them in Juneau in the next six days.

Unicycle Skipping World Record from Peter Nestler on Vimeo.

And yes, this is his day job. He’s been professionally unicycling, jumping rope, and spreading a kid friendly motivational message around the world since 2002.

“A lot of people look at people like me that are professional or really good at something and they just think, ‘Oh, you know, he’s just born that way,'” Nestler said. “And I’m like, ‘Well, no.’ I’m definitely one of the people, I don’t pick stuff up quickly, but I work very, very hard, and the reason I’m good at stuff is I practice more than anybody else at something.”

Separately, he performs for churches and youth ministries with a faith-based message. He said his faith and relationship with God has helped him get where he is today.

He’ll perform next Wednesday at the Hub, an after school program at the Juneau Christian Center. There, he hopes to beat the record for the most rope skips while juggling a soccer ball in one minute. That’s 31.

He’ll also try to for the speed record for running a mile on one foot while jumping rope. The time to beat is 34 minutes, 1 second.

Constant conditioning and performing hundreds of shows a year inevitably leads to aches and pains. Add the grueling travel schedule, and he’s questioned his career.

“You definitely have those moments where you’re thinking, ‘Well, is this really the kind of job you want?'”

So far, the answer has been yes.

“But at the end, when you get out and you’re performing, you just kind of see the look on these kids’ faces,” he said. “They see me out there jumpin’, and you kind of see sometimes, those light bulbs kick off behind their heads. It’s like, you know, this really is what I like to do and I love the opportunity to do it,” he said.

Check back Friday for the latest on Peter Nestler’s world record attempt.

A proposed marine shipping buyout of Northland Services by Lynden Inc. is one step closer to approval.

Though the two companies have third party competition elsewhere, Northland and Lynden subsidiary Alaska Marine Lines handle virtually all commercial marine shipping in Southeast. If they merged as-is, Lynden would have an illegal monopoly in Southeast, according to the Department of Law.

The department’s lawyers have  filed a plan in court that would leave Southeast Alaska with two competing carriers, but their operations would be intertwined.

The plan requires AML to assist Sitka-based Samson Tug and Barge with an expansion into Southeast. The specifics are confidential, but Samson would buy assets from AML, lease space aboard AML barges, have a guaranteed barge charter from AML during peak shipping seasons, and have the option to rent AML terminal facilities and storage in Southeast and in Seattle.

The filing opened a comment period that ends Sept. 27. After that, a superior court judge in Anchorage must decide if the deal can go forward.

The Alaska Housing Finance Corporation’s board has accepted longtime CEO Dan Fauske’s resignation and hired Department of Revenue Commissioner Bryan Butcher as his replacement. Both board decisions were unanimous.

Fauske will continue as president of the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation where he’ll focus on AGDC’s mission to prime the private sector to build a small-diameter natural gas pipeline primarily to serve Alaska consumers. Gov. Sean Parnell asked him to stop splitting his time between two full-time jobs.

“Especially after it was fully funded, you know, in this last go around,” Fauske said, referring to the legislature’s passage of House Bill 4 earlier this year. It lined up $225 million in state funding for AGDC, gave it the authority to borrow more, and makes it an independent corporation under the Department of Commerce. Right now, it’s a subsidiary of AHFC.

“I kind of welcome the opportunity, as much as I hate leaving AHFC. I’ve been fully engrossed in this gasline now for almost 3 years,” Fauske said.

At age 62, Fauske thinks the future of a small pipeline in Alaska will be resolved, one way or the other, before his career ends.

“I think we’re gonna have a pretty good answer in another year and a half as to the open season, whether it was successful or not,”  he said.

An open season is a regulated period when gas sellers, shippers and buyers can shop for each others’ business. It’s a key benchmark for determining the pipeline’s viability.

Fauske said other indicators are coming: Permits for trucking liquefied natural gas from the North Slope to Fairbanks, more information about Cook Inlet’s natural gas, and eventually, a decision from the big oil companies about whether or not to build a large diameter natural gas pipeline intended for exporting Alaska’s natural gas.

Fauske, who had been AHFC CEO since 1995, has a reputation for getting the job done. During his tenure, the corporation’s credit rating has improved, it’s loaned out more than $7.5 billion in its mission to foster affordable housing, and contributed $1.9 billion to the state’s general fund.

His departure may mark the end of the Legislature pushing megaprojects under AHFC oversight.

“And that’s one of Dan Fauske’s great talents, was he really built up a lot of trust from legislators, from governors, from others, that if you give him the chore, if you give him the task, he’s gonna get it done,” Butcher said. “And in fact, that’s why he’s at AGDC today.”

Butcher worked in senior management at AHFC before becoming the revenue commissioner in 2010.

“Whether they decide that there are projects and things that they think AHFC should take care of, that’s a question for the future,” Butcher said.

One outstanding megaproject is the Knik Arm bridge. House lawmakers floated the idea of putting the bridge under AHFC’s oversight earlier this year.  The bill is alive, but unlikely to be formally discussed again until January, when lawmakers return to Juneau.

Butcher resigned as head of the state Department of Revenue yesterday. The department is home to the state’s oil and gas tax policy experts. As commissioner, Butcher was often the face of the Parnell administration during the last three years of oil and gas tax deliberations.

Gov. Parnell praised Butcher’s “outstanding leadership” in a press release today.  Parnell credits him with Alaska’s AAA credit rating and with the passage of the Senate Bill 21. That bill dramatically reduced oil taxes in an effort to drive up oil production and economic growth in the state. It’s the target of citizens’ repeal by referendum. Opponents say the tax cut is an unnecessary gamble whose benefits do not outweigh the billions of dollars forecast to be lost in state revenue.

Fauske will maintain his $366,000 salary. Butcher leaves the revenue commissioner’s salary of $135,000 for a salary of $250,000 at AHFC.