What a fantastic weekend. It was such a treat to be in the company of 49 other people that share the same passion and the people that fuel it.

To echo what Phil said, it sure sucks being back at the daily grind.

Great pictures Rich.

Ditto Eddy/Phil. After a couple hours sleep, I'm pulling a 14-hour day across three jobs. Talk about hitting reality.

I'm still in shock.

The sheer awesomeness of everyone, especially the O-Review members, cannot be measured.

It was so great to walk into a room and be treated like a brother by people whom I have never met.

From start to finish, it was epic.

Thank you everyone for being so kind inviting.

Lessons learned:

The Dr. is so goddamn funny it hurts.
Ohio isnt that far, see you soon brothers!
The walk to In and Out Burger is NOT a block away.
Fear The Pink Team
Co-Pilots on a shopping spree can affect the stock value of Oakley (LUX)
DANN oozes quiet coolness

More to come....

The Dr. is so damn everything it hurts.

I also learned that Ruby Clear makes you go crazy after 3 days of solid use. Not so much proved, but Rick said so, and that's good enough for me.

Haha! Thanks guys. I try to make shit fun, and it was a pretty simple job given all the work Oakley put it to ensuring we had the time of our lives! It was great to meet everyone at the event and I am glad that I now have a two-week Spring Break, because I don't think I could mentally handle being back at the daily grind like some of you guys. I just got through showing my wife all the "booty" and she was stoked! I am hoping to get a Flikr account going today or tomorrow at some point, because I took quite a whack of photos this weekend. Just a great weekend, and it will live on in infamy for years!

infamy infamy you all have it infamy
I can't wait to see the pics

Yes propwash, the IN and Out burger is definitely not a freaking block away! Who said that anyways? Remind me to smack him next time! lol...
In fact, remind me to smack Rick next time too...just for fun! ;) 'Cause that's how we Tampa Bay lightening roll...BIATCH!

Day +1 - Monday, March 23
14:24 HST

Being anywhere with Yukio is where I always rather be, but sharing 5 days with him and some of our greatest friends for our biggest joint passion was priceless. Thinking back to these last few days, they now seem so far away - but I think we're very fortunate to have had the honor of being able to share, laugh and smile together as we're looking through the photos.

Yukio captured most of what we were both feeling and experiencing while we were there in his diary entries. But I think my experience was a little different being the only female Co-Pilot, just by a smidge. The two biggest things was the face time with the employees and one of my take aways. On day 1 at HQ, female employees sought me out at both lunch at the RC race to meet "the girl" and when all the guys received a pair of Scars on tour, I received a prototype of the women's Voltage Bag - 1 of 1 is what I was told. I'm still wrapping my head around that. Otherwise I was one of the boys and I loved every second of it - yes even in paint ball as I got my ass lit up! But I can admit I had a few VERY girly moments. First was when we ran across the dead duck in the paintball field and I screamed like Rick, and second when I hadn't had the chance to say bye to Nik in person - only on the phone, I had to give the phone to Yukio because I was crying too hard.

It's weird being home now. Back to being normal, or more like being a freak and no longer part of a family. Back to work tomorrow, and driving around in my Honda Fit - no Brandon to drive us anywhere! It's really resonating now on the one thing that I last mentioned to Joanne - it's the people that made the event, the brand may have brought us together, but it's the friends, old and new, that sky rocketed an already mind-blowing experience to the next level and it is those friends that I will miss the most. Thank gawd for the O-Review that we're all still connected.

~D

I miss everyone already-I must say that I didn't know what to expect...I was both anxious and slightly nervous with excitement.
As it turns out I quickly realized that this event would stay with me for ever-it was one of those occasions that brought us all a bit closer-I was able to put names with faces from the oreview-and while I didn't meet everyone, I still felt a sense of family.

I had the experience of a lifetime, and I think we should descend on HQ again for an anniversary get together...

Anyway, more thoughts to come.

great to meet all of you guys behind the screen names. i don't have much time to chat due to my wife and my 1 week old baby in the hotel room.....and meeting the guy behind the zeros (my passion), time tank, racing jackets,jawbone, etc. ....having his autograph, chat w him, pic w him. completed the event for me. for all of us who was there, its a great honor to share with our fellow o-review brothers our awesome experience.best time ever i wish it would not end. thanks to all.





oh and if everyone wonder where those rodman zeros are?its with one of the r&d employee's, safe in his house who worked there for more than 10 yrs and our tour guide(gold icon) w dann,phil,ira,nike,nick g,etc., his in-charge of movie endorsement like black hawk down, etc. ,zeros were stored in a pelican case and everytime rodman breaks it, he fixes it. thats why if you notice that rodman sometines tilts his head in an angle to hide the fixed part. this is just a teaser......

Peter Yee is up there with Jonathan Ive (Apple) and Henrik Fisker (Aston Martin, Fisker) in my book.

So I saw some of the prizes and such under the "Latest Purchases" thread from the trivia session and I was curious to know what other trivia questions where there? Anything hard or were they too easy for our fellow OR experts?

There were a few easy ones, and I missed out on Jamin Jannard's diamond tank because I didn't get my god damn hand up fast enough...yes, he threw our a diamond time tank. I must give dann some kudos, he answered two really hard questions (although prob easy for him I'm sure). I'm suprised no one beat me to my Jupiter question, but I gladly took the watch! ;)

OB-
I agree Peter Rocks and he is a hell of a guy too!!!

A few I would argue.

1) The origin of 1242. Someone said there is no origin, but they didn't accept that. Instead the official answer was the session of brainwashing in the Zero 0.3 commercial. I dunno, I'll take Jim's explanation, just sayin'

2) The name of the first M Frame stem. Phil said Hammer, while they wanted hammerfang. Fangs didn't appear until the Gen 2 version, so technically the first stem was just the hammer. We had a discussion about this with Jim on the forum and he conceded. Again, nit-picking.

A few of the questions were out there like 'who were first married in HQ', what wild animal roamed the hall, and name the last three addresses of Oakley. The last I should have known, but couldn't pull the exact lines out of my head.

It'd be funny if Colin Baden shows up on the OR and reads JJ's answers to the first two items.

That's part of the reason I'd feel funny debating them. With Colin, Scott and Peter there and all.

Yeah, the Q&A was sort of funny in that we certainly weren't slaying each question. I would say at least half the questions went through either a few wrong answers or tense silence before anyone spoke up. Of course, the general rule of once you won you were to keep mum a bit as to not win again might have played a part as well.

yeah, I was very happy to sit silent after the olympic blade...like that nice mellow calm after sex....Ahhhh.....

Wow that is one of the best threads that Ive read.
Wish I could have been there.

This thread will be in the Best off for sure.

Thanks for everyone who shared their experience with the rest of us.

Dawn: the Voltage Bag is a very nice one, did you get a special color or something too ?

I believe she stole that bag from my welcome bag. Bitch. And my high heels!

Don't be a hater...that's Eric's job.

The bag was in black like the actual release, the only real difference I can tell between what was put out vs what I received is the logo on the bag - I'll post a picture once we get to that stage of the photography. Might be debatable if it's a prototype (I was a little overly excited by the gesture at the time I don't think I was completely paying attention), but I believe Becky. But it's got a sales tag on it and has one of the "how to wash me" tags on the inside. But the SKU ends with X. I haven't ever seen that on a SKU before, but I know very little about SKUs...anyone?

~D

As my first actual post here, I first want to give my apologies if I missed anyone or any particular monumentous event in my posts. A lot of the time I was posting several hours after the fact, and as Dawn can attest, my memory prowess is less than impressive.

Second, I'm glad we were all able to post up in here, sharing the Co-Pilot event through individual eyes. Phil, don't feel so bad. I feel bad that I would duck out for a while to update this section and miss out on various conversations. But I came up with a decent idea (for once) and couldn't let it go. =P

So many things I missed posting, but a lot of it seems to have been covered by others. Although I suppose at some point I should go into details about how they were planning on marrying us at HQ. =)


~Yukio