On sunday I hosted (on behalf of my social club) a Go Karting event at TBC Indoor Racing. There were 85 participants and 12 teams. Chicky, Chris, Toshiki and Brian were on a team called "Kart" (yes...the creativity oozes out of them). The other teams had great names (such as Road Ragers, Dragon Driving School, etc). The skill levels ranged from "new" drivers to those that brought their own race helmets. The age range was vast too. My youngest drivers were 14 and oldest were 50+. One team (the Power Rangers) consisted of 16 years old who were celebrating one of the driver's birthday (their mom was mooching off the club's event). Good thing she didn't have cake for him as I'm sure the other drivers would have raised an eyebrow to that.
There was a lot of organizing and time put into this event but I was REALLY happy with the results. I've received a lot of positive feedback and the club's image has gone up (which is part of the goal of this event - advertising for the Club). Things that went well and added icing to my cake:
- the pizza arrived on time (as I had multiple conversations with Panago last week about the delivery time and date - as Panago doesn't officially open till 11am but I needed 30 pizzas to be eaten by 11:15am). I was a very demanding customer and didn't take any of their crap. My conversation with them even stirred comments from coworkers about my assertive/aggressive mannerism. Lol...just part of being a dictator!
- All the participants arrived on time! I was actually flabbergasted to see that the majority of them were there before 11am (as the facility was not official open till then). I had spoken to the manager about letting "early" people in first. I turned out to be "late" (though I was technically 15 mins early)! This really struck a sentimental chord in my type A personality. :-)
- no one melted in the boardroom as it was small and getting warmer and warmer by the minute - thus making attention spans shorter and my ability to convey the necessary information harder
- Brian came to my rescue as there were no other Social Club executive members to help me out with the set up, food, drinks, etc. Brian is an executive member and made an awesome pizza box cutter.
- everyone coordinated they own driver changes without mishaps, collisions or arguments
- no one got seriously hurt. The only injury was from Pete's daughter who took a hard hit to her kart and then said her neck felt funny. She soon regressed to not being able to turn her head. I pulled her off the course and had her watch for the rest of the race from the stands as even the spectators on the floor were not safe from the karts!
- No one got black flagged and asked to leave. Yah! But many drivers were given lectures from the staff about aggressive behaviour. Some teams were out to win at all costs.
- Chicky's team came in second - which I didn't doubt at all. I figured they were going to be first but then I met the drivers of team "Drift Kings" and they turned out to be the guys from my old location (all professional drivers). Pete is roundy-bout driver, Jeff is a drag-race boy and the other 2 guys are motorcyle fanatics
- I didn't lose my voice from all the "talking" (more like screaming) that I did throughout the day. I'm really happy that there are people in the world that can whistle really loudy to get the attention of 85 people.
I took pictures from the event and have posted them here. I didn't post everything as most of the pictures are dim (due to a lack of an external flash). While shooting pictures I thought about how wonderful it would be to have an SLR. Especially when it came to taking action shots. I missed many spectacular crashes because my camera was trying to "focus" on the target.
No comments:
Post a Comment