Lauderhill man sells 'world's largest' rubber-band ball to Ripley's

Record-breaking ball loaded onto semitrailer truck for trip to Orlando

LAUDERHILL - The "World's Largest Rubber-Band Ball" rolled away from its Lauderhill birthplace Thursday.

Standing with dozens of spectators, the ball's creator, 28-year-old Joel Waul, looked on as the 9,034-pound behemoth was lifted by a crane and taken by truck to one day be showcased in a museum.

"It feels great to be the only one in the world to do it to this magnitude," Waul said. He spent the past five years wrapping rubber bands into the colorful mass that Guinness World Records last year declared the world's largest. "Not many people get to do this stuff."

Neighbors cheered and snapped pictures as a towing company arrived at Waul's Lauderhill home, lifted the 6-foot-7 ball and placed it on the bed of a semitrailer truck.

"I'm used to seeing it every day," said Darlene Bush, 50, a neighbor who watched with her family as the crane hoisted the ball. "I'm going to be mad tomorrow to walk outside and not see it there."

Waul sold the ball for an undisclosed amount last month to Ripley's Believe It or Not, an Orlando-based company that displays strange oddities in 30 museums in 10 countries.

Waul said he built the ball to break the Guinness record. He said he decided to sell it, partly because the ball was too large to store in his apartment and it was risky to keep outdoors. He often replaced or covered rubber bands that had melted because the ball was sitting in his front yard, under a tarp.

"It'll get out of the sun," Waul said. "It will be in a better place."

Edward Meyer, Ripley's vice president of exhibits and archives, said the "quirky" rubber mass would be a great addition to the company's worldwide collection. The ball will be stored at a Ripley's warehouse in Orlando. As early as next year, it will be sent to a museum, possibly in California or Korea.

But moving it inside a building and setting it up for display can be challenging.

"The current museums cannot hold it," Waul said. "It's too big to go through doors."

Waul said he got the idea for building the ball on April 10, 2004, the day he saw a Ripley's television show that showed another large rubber-band ball being dropped into the desert from a helicopter.

"It was the best thing on TV," he said. "It was something out a cartoon, like Wile E. Coyote."

The five years that Waul spent making the rubber ball included injuries. At 400 pounds, it rolled over his hand and sprained it. Rubber bands that snapped off broke three of his sunglasses and "almost put out my eye," he said.

It's unclear whether the ball would bounce if dropped from great heights. Meyer said pushing the other ball from the helicopter had a lackluster result.

"It didn't bounce. That's what was supposed to happen, but it cratered," Meyer said. "That's part of my inspiration -- that we needed one to replace the one we lost."

Waul is a graduate of Plantation High who works nights at a Gap clothing store. With the ball gone from his home, Waul said he'll focus on achieving another world record: setting himself on fire.

"I'm working on being the Human Torch," he said. "I'm going to stunt school for that."