Basically it went down like this: Oakley ran a contest to find its 50 biggest fans across the globe. The several VIP's from the corporate team voted on who they thought should go, after much deliberation and some 600 + applications they got it narrowed down to the 50. Those 50 headed down to sunny CA for the weekend, to take in private tours of the factory, professorial grade RC car racing, paintball and shopping in both the Lobby Store and the Irvine Spectrum O-Store.
My week went like this:
Day 1: Flew in and met some very cool Oakley Marketing employees, Jo Anne, Cale and Fonz. I helped finish packing up some of the goodie bags for the winners then got handed a set of keys for this:
Aptly named the Dog Catcher. Once I got checked in to the hotel it was off to LAX (about an hours drive one way) to pick up two of the winners that were from Hawaii. They were very nice folks and we quickly became friends. Once back at the hotel I got to meet a couple more of the winners over a drink.
Day two was a free day for the winners as they were coming in but I spent the whole day (from 9am to 9pm) picking people up from the airport, lets just say I got to know the highways of CA pretty well! The day ended hanging out with the winners, down in the lobby of the hotel till around 1am.
Day Three: The first half of day three was spent with me just getting to chill with the winners, I tagged along with them for the presentations (getting to see the ANSI Z87.1 test live) and then for the tours as well. The second half of the day it was back to work! The winners got to compete in a RC car race and I spent the afternoon flipping over the cars and running them up the hill to switch them out with one with a fresh batteries. The night ended once again with hanging out in the lobby of the Hotel making new friends.
Getting ready to head up the hill to HQ
Lunch on the Helipad
Day Four way paint ball day, man was that a blast! I never would have thought paint ball would bee that popular in CA but we went to the huge place that must have and 15 different fields with different scenarios and the place was packed. We played for about 8am till 1pm, and let me tell you that combined with the up and down the hill flipping RC cars my legs were SORE!! That night we hung out a Dave and Busters were there were some pretty cool photos taken.
That is a lot of Time Tanks (aka Minuet Machines) which is also a lot of $$!!
New Friends!!
Me and Jo Anne, the chief architect for the weekend!
After D&B some of the winners wanted to go check out the Irvine/Spectrum O-Store so I headed over with them. It had been a slow day for the Store so the store manager, had just let her extra people go home early then bam 50 Oakley fanatics hit the store. Luckily the manager and I have know each other for quite sometime so I just took a set of keys and went to work, just like I was back home!
That night some of the contestants wanted to head up to HQ and take some night photos so Jo Anne and I loaded up the trucks and took them up. I even managed to sneak in to a few shots! =)
The O-Review crew, Jo Anne and Myself!
All and all it was a great weekend that I will remember fondly for years to come. I think the plan is to do more of these in the future and hopefully I will be invented back to work them once again.
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