Great Golf

Last week the social committee at our office put together an event that was about as much fun as you can have while being at work. It was a 9 hole putt putt golf tournament, and almost every department got together and designed their own hole for the course. I agreed to design the hole for my department of us computer nerds, which I thought would be pretty easy since we have a whole graveyard full of super old printers, fax machines, scanners and other random equipment in a storage room on our floor that I planned to use. So on Wednesday, the day before the tournament, I spent about 1.5 hours pulling random junk out of storage, wheeling it to our hallway and putting it together into something that resembled a golfable hole. The guys in my department thought I was a little strange at first, but I was feeling inspired after having watched OK Go's recent video the night before (for about the 4th time). Once my fellow nerds saw the masterpiece I was creating, they got in on the act and we all started working together. It was a great team-building effort.

On Thursday, our office slowed it's productivity for about another 1.5 hours and broke into teams to play the course. It was so much fun and there were so many creative holes around the building! Check out a few of my favorites.

Baby Mangino at Memorial Stadium

A mini KUEA with likenesses of our administration

Several other campus buildings

The water hazard with a ramp that was a nearly impossible hole

While these were all pretty awesome, I must say that I thought the most fun hole to play was our own fabulous creation in the IS department. Check out the video of my coworker Scott testing it out the day before the tourney.



Do you like it? Let me just walk you through each obstacle since I know you all care so much.

First, you teed off at the mouse pad and ramped up some old cardboard packaging.

I didn't get a good picture of the old typewriter (which was so old I didn't even know it was a typewriter) but there was a piece of metal up the keyboard that you could also choose to ramp over if you really wanted to catch some air.

If you didn't go over the second ramp, you had to go under one of those computer stands. Note the Caddyshack gopher watching over this obstacle, who just happened to be sitting in my boss's office. Unfortunately he didn't dance and play music anymore.

An old CPU that you could choose to bank your ball off of, unless of course you bank it off my door to the right as Scott did in the video. I should have actually taken a picture of my door after the tourney, since there was a nice big golf ball sized dent in the wood. Oh, and the Santa pinata has been an icon at our office for longer than I've been there (11.5 years). His name is Chucky and he's generally used to scare people around the holidays.

Next you had to pass through a wall of binders.

A couple of old fax machines made for a perfect tunnel, but most of the time it was easier going around them.

The final ramp up to the hole was a huge wrist pad, and the hole itself was an old data tape full of old backups from an old database. My coworker Gene figured out how to rig up the "Yahoo-oo!" button at the bottom, which everyone thought was a nice touch.

It was seriously such a blast, and to top it off I tied for 3rd in the whole tourney! Hooray for ME, Billy! The next morning we had another mini-tournament with just this one hole in our department, and Gene tied the hole record (which was 3 strokes) and won a Judge Smails golf hat from our boss. What fun! I'm thankful to have such fun coworkers, a great boss and a laid back office!