Work and Whirlyball

Tonight I headed over to play Whirlyball with some folks at work, as part of a holiday celebration. Given the large size of Sears, there’s a general lunch thing that happens for the downtown folks… but smaller teams tend to go and do their own thing separately.

The celebration involved a lot of folks from the Core team, and I was invited along through one of the projects I’m currently working on. I haven’t had the chance to work with a lot of other folks beyond my small area, so I looked at this event as an opportunity to meet more folks I didn’t normally get to see.

The Chicago location has changed, and is no longer on Fullterton. Instead, it’s on Webster kind of near the auto emissions facility. As you can imagine, it’s an enormous building… and as we walked towards where we thought the entrance would be… we found this rather confusing sign.

Everyone, getting instructions. The guy kept saying “I suggest that…” a few times, and we all were trying to get him to clarify whether they were hard set rules, or just recommendations. Mostly, he told us, people just ignore things in the heat of the moment.

Hard to believe that I first played Whirlyball some ten years ago. Man, that makes me feel old.

Sadly, this new location had just opened up about a week ago. And it seemed like they were struggling with bugs, as a lot of the carts weren’t working well (my friend Chad felt it had to do with the bumper cars, not making enough contact with the metallic strips).

A lot of the cars would end up stalling, and wouldn’t move again unless someone else bumped them. Eventually, one of the employees came out and had to hop around from car to car, pushing people until they moved again. Kind of killed the momentum of the game a bit.

We only were there an hour which, as always, goes by super fast when playing. Still though, a fun visit back to a very silly Chicago event.

Though I didn’t know folks beyond my small team, I’m glad I went and got to talk to others. Met some cool folks, and enjoyed a (brief) game. The one drawback is that it wasn’t super conducive to chatting and being able to know others – so that’s something to look forward to on the next outing.

Related:
WhirlyBall, 2005

WhirlyBall Action: In the Driver’s Seat
TJ’s Whirlyball Invitational
Whirlyball Extravaganza