I'm thankful for the Bonnie Rogers Rule

Every year, the Utah Historical Society director sponsors a paper plane contest the day before Thanksgiving at the Rio Grande Depot (where I work).

He makes a big deal out of it, spends a ton of money on the prizes (and repeatedly tells us how much he spends on them) and sends out an email with detailed rules and guidelines about paper weight, size, extraneous objects on the plane, etc. The ironic thing is, each year, everyone breaks the rules. And we all expect it. It's actually a contest to see who can cheat the best.

The prize? a box of Cummings chocolates.

The categories? duration, distance and artistic quality (that is a new category since the "arts folks" moved in -- that's us).

Bonnie Rogers, who no longer works here, was infamous for dropping a piece of toilet paper or confetti and always winning in duration, and then she won artistic quality because it was like a piece of performance art. So because of Bonnie Rogers, she has a rule named after her that prevents anyone from winning in more than one category.

Above is a picture of the men (I think they're all architects who work for State History) discussing their designs. The man with the big tube won for distance because he basically blew a small plane out of the tube and it flew clear across the gallery onto the north mezzanine. He's holding his box of chocolates. I think his name is Tim.

Here is a contender. Cute, but not a winner:

Here's Jim being boring and not participating:

My plane didn't stay up very long or go very far.

If we were a rule abiding bunch it would have been disqualified because it exceeded all size and weight limitations. Fletcher (coworker) actually built it for me. He doesn't participate either (lame). But look!



Because all the people that had the best "artistic" planes won in the other two categories, I got the third prize by default. If you like chocolates and you know where I live, you know where to find them. I refuse to eat them all.

This lady won for worst performance. You can't really see much.




Here's my performance. Again, you can't see much. Mostly just my form and how I throw like a girl.