Corporate Challenge.

"I'm a Corporate Whore."
"And how."

Err ... wait ... well ... wait ... yeah.

The 2007 Corporate Challenge officially kicked off on Friday May 25th, coincidentally my brother's birthday and the opening day for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Coca-Cola didn't enter, my bosses stated that it was the beginning of our busiest season, and they couldn't let that many guys off work and this and that and every other excuse.

That's probably for the best, I'm not sure I would get WCB coverage when I wipe out on the Terwillegar mountain bike trail. So despite not being a part of a team, I nonetheless went to the opening ceremonies that were held right across from Northlands, just off of 112th Ave. All because I ended up getting volunteered to help the ATCO I-tek team with their opening ceremonies rap song.

I can't rap. But that's okay because Stuart rapped. I biked. Except I was expecting an actual stage to bike across and figured I'd just zip across the stage and then bunny hop right off. Imagine my surprise when the "stage" was just grass. Great. But there was food, I saw SNC-Lavalin there and was quite tempted to bug them, and on top of it, I was made an honorary I-tek member.

But only for the duration of the challenge.

I did all of that before work on Friday, and then decided to heed the call to volunteer at WEM on the Saturday for the Unknown Challenge. Problem was, it fucking started at 8:30AM, and when you work until 5:30AM ... well ... Denny's coffee isn't too bad. I wasn't the only one to heed the call, Andrea and Chloe were there, and Crystal who had asked for our help. I hadn't seen any of them since last year. ... wait ... was anyone else at Akkiko? No, just Andrea. Okay, so I lied. Get over it.

And last year I was bald. Now I'm not. Threw Chloe for a small loop, and Crystal. So we all signed up (not at once, Andrea was there at 7 or 7:30 apparently), I had my name misread about a dozen times, and I remembered that I should have signed in Hiragana instead of the scribbles I once pretended to call "english", 'cause holy man, it throws people for a loop. So remember when I was made an honorary member of the I-tek team? Well, they gave me a shirt.

So did the Volunteer people. My coke shirt was dirty, so I changed into the I-tek shirt they gave me, and when I did that, that team went all "wait, you're volunteering, but you're wearing an I-tek shirt ... won't they think you're cheating?". But, with another shirt, I changed ... and as soon as I changed I realized I did so in front of the rest of the volunteers. Man, good thing I'm not too ashamed of my torso. Both scars have started fading.

Chloe and I were sent to Challenge number 3, the Murder Mystery room, in which a one way ticket to chaos and back (quick, name the song lyric I just butchered!) was held. Chloe is quite good at being an evil line person, while I switched constantly between registering new teams, taking the list of names to Chloe and riling the teams up.

"EPCOR huh? Hoo boy, you should have heard the smack-talk I-tek was throwing down about you guys."
"ATCO Pipelines huh? Man, EPCOR was talking trash about you guys, saying you should be like I-tek and just hide"
"ATCO Gas? Pipelines said something about your mothers while they were here. Pipelines that is, not your mothers."
"ATCO Electric? Well, Gas says you smell, TransAlta called, they want the rights back for the light-bug, and SNC told me they were going to buy you out like AltaLink."

Surprisingly only two teams got all pissed about the order they were put in, and another team failed to grasp the concept that when 177 teams are roaming around the mall, a 20-minute wait to get into the room could last forever. Hats off to UMA for letting the girly company with an extremely long name that didn't even fit on our registration sheets (and their name ended with Council) go first after they were whining like babies just to shut them up. I've never seen a team so proud of being whiners before.

After the events ended, we cleaned up and left, wandering around the mall, wondering what to do. I made it to the other side when Stuart told me they were all meeting where I had originally started for lunch. Fuck. Along the way I'm pretty sure I made things awkward, but I hadn't had caffeine in me for several hours, and what I did have left and took my energy with it. That was a fun drive home ... NOT.

So it turns out that I-tek placed 6th or 7th or something ... they didn't get any medals. Hah, I guess they chose the wrong lyrics for their rap song. Thankfully I'm busy next Saturday shooting a moving tree named Goertz with paintballs, but the week after that I'll probably go down to Terwillegar to see Stuart wipe out.

Man, what a supportive friend I am.

...

Hey, if I wipe out, he's got to as well.