Wingman Day

I've was busy at work this week. The normal work stuff was going on, but I was also planning one of the activities for our Wingman Day, which is like our team building day. I was part of the planning committee for this day's events; it's one of the perks of being one of the newer people in the office.

A friend of mine that I work with, Wes, and I were tasked with creating an event for the Wingman Day. They wanted something outside, that promoted health and wellness. They mentioned a GPS scavenger hunt or race. We decided to do a GPS Amazing Race event. We began identifying locations and course routes about 3-4 weeks ago. The Wingman Day was going to be held at one of the lodges on base which is bordered by 2 lakes and a wooded campground area, so we had a lot of places to choose from. Also, nearby there are some horse training areas and stables which provided us with plenty of locations.

After a lot of planning, thinking, and decision making, we finalized our course and put it to the test earlier this week using the rest of the planning committee for a dry run. After the test run, we made some tweaks and everything was ready to go for Wingman Day this past Friday. We had told people earlier this month that the course would be about 1.5 miles of walking plus activities, so we didn't expect everyone in the office to participate. Despite the long course, we had a fairly good turnout for our event with 12 people total out of about 50 people in our group. The other people were playing Name That Tune or Family Feud after eating a very large lunch inside the lodge.

Overall I think everything went really well. Some of the challenges involved riding a bike to collect clues in order to solve a brain teaser, others involved using the nature trail information boards to answer questions or keeping your balance while walking on 2 wooden planks carrying jugs of water over and around obstancles. The end of the game came down to 2 teams having to play a game of cornhole (the bean bag toss game) and had to make 3 shots. Team 1 was way ahead until the plank walking challenge. They fell off and had to restart and Team 2 quickly caught up. Team 2 took a quick lead in cornhole, making 2 shots (had to make 3 total). Team 1 rallied and sank 2 shots a few minutes after that to make 3 total and ended up winning the race by about 2 minutes over Team 2. Team 3 was about 4 minutes behind Team 2.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the course and said they want it to be an annual tradition. That's fine with me as long as I don't have to plan it. The logisitics and planning of everything was a lot of work. Ensuring that all the instructions, clues, materials, equipment, and people were in the right place and had the right details was a lot of work. It was fun coming up with ideas and testing them to see if they would work as you expected and thinking through all of the potential scenarios was fun. Wording the instructions properly was also interesting and challenging since there were subtle tricks or ideas that we wanted to leave open to interpretation whereas other situations we had to be explicit in order to prevent a controversy over interpreted rules. The rewards of seeing everyone having a good time and navigating the course you designed was a lot of fun, but I would like to participate in the challenge next year if someone decides to make a year 2 challenge rather than plan another one. It was a lot of work and I'm glad it's over.

Despite the success of the challenge, by far the biggest hit of the Wingman Day was the cake Christi made. She was nice enough to make a cake for the event. I took some pictures of the cake and they are posted below. The logo is the official seal of my office, which is the Warner Robins ALC Engineering Directorate. I had been telling people Christi is a really good cook and does great work baking cakes and other things. I now have about 10 people requesting birthday cakes and more wanting to see pictures of her work. It tasted even better than it looked, which means it was delicious. Her and her mom made the layers and she decorated the cake. All hand made, of course.

Cake top with EN logo