Work, work, work, work, work, work!
He see me do me

Ok, as I look back on the past week, my job/life is pretty cool. I always say this after a tough blitz, but until I get on island, I don’t remember.

It’s tough sometimes to get some scuba diving in while on resort for work, our days are literally planned out from 9am to 9pm. With about 30 mins for a shower before a nice dinner. yeah yeah, “ohhh what a rough life for you, have to be on a beautiful resort for ‘work’ and you’re whining about a shower”. But seriously. We’re on this magnificent island and confined to a conference room for 8-9 hours presenting territory reports.

The only glimpse of the resort is during breakfast, lunch & bathroom breaks. I luckily got approved to go on resort 2 days early so I could attempt a dive. After a Thursday night Caribbean Event in Baton Rouge I trekked the hour back to NOLA in attempt to “nap” and throw the last minute items into my suitcase before my 3:30 wake up call.

I started to get that bad tonsil swelling feeling at my event Thursday night so I was combining every home remedy I could find on google to make it go away; gargle with salt water, cough drops with honey lemon and echinacea, throat coat tea with honey, green tea with honey, ibuprophen, zinc tablets… It helped a little but my right tonsil was still inflamed when I woke up. I took more ibuprophen & zinc and jumped in a lyft to the airport.

I LOVE having status on American Airlines now. Even though whoever made my reservation in the corporate office forgot the last number of my passport so I had to check in at the desk, I had a complimentary checked back (weighing in at 48 lbs), and TSA precheck that got me to my gate comfortably. I also was able to get ALL window seats AND they were the extra space ones. I sat down half feeling like death on the first flight and settling in next to me is a woman with a 4 month old….. omg. I might die. I think the baby actually did better than me that whole flight, not a peep while I rocked back & forth trying to relieve the pressure in my back & head while getting the fever sweats. Seriously, I was soaked by the time we landed in Miami. The Miami to Barbados flight is 3 hours, I was able to grab a snack so I was feeling a little better, and they were showing the new Star Wars movie. I dozed on and off but that’s when the chills set in, I shivered through the whole last half of the flight.

Finally arriving in Barbados I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to try to sweat out the rest of the sickness on the beach or just go straight to sleep. My room wasn’t ready yet so I had to grab  some food at the beach side restaurant. I couldn’t eat, much less keep my eyes open or get rid of the lightheadedness.  I finally got into my swim up lagoon suite building room (3rd floor) around 3:30pm and promptly fell asleep on the king size mahogany bed that was all my own.

I woke up around 7:30pm, thought about finding dinner but was still too exhausted, so I changed into pajamas, downed some nyquil and was soothed right back to bed by the sound of the late night drumming entertainment.

Saturday I took my time before heading to the beach, still feeling woozy I kept substantially drugged & kept some breakfast down. Checking by the Aqua center, they didn’t have anyone signed up for an afternoon dive and were surprised when I told them I had no problem going diving just by myself (well, me & the dive master). I grabbed some Sun Bum sunscreen, aloe & chapstick before returning to the beach…. dozing off and on until 1pm when I went to meet the bus that would take us downtown to St. Lawrence Gap for our diving adventure.

Luckily we’d added some last minute divers so there were 4 of us headed out to Carlisle Bay and a bunch of shallow ship wrecks. One was an old pirate ship that the crew sunk & went AWOL, another was a drug cartel ship that the police sank years ago. Our dive master was really great & had some fun with my GoPro.

I had some minor adjustments to make underwater, weights & regulator stuff, but we finally got it all figured out and it was one of my favorite dives to date.

Luckily my wetsuit still fit, I was very surprised, it’s been 5 years since I last had it on…. and when I tried it on 3 weeks ago at home it was SUPER snug. Very sausage like.

Back to the resort, a shower & off to the sushi restaurant for dinner. The team was coming in Sunday afternoon so this was the last bit of silence for me.

Again I kept with the drugs, zinc and tea. I lathered up with sunscreen and found the perfect beach chair for Sunday Funday. While yes I did reapply multiple times, I still ended up very pink by 2pm. Oh well, first ‘base burn’ of the season. What I love about this beach resort is that the staff brings you this little blue flag. when you’re thirsty, you put the flag up, they run out, take your order and bring your refreshment right back to you. Feeling quite spoiled to say the least.

I was keeping track of the time so I could greet the team when they arrived, I saw the plane fly over and about 2pm started up towards the lobby. They got all checked in, we had lunch on the beach and then decided to reconvene at the pub for the Heat game before dinner. Fun fact about Barbados (and Grenada) its ALWAYS lobster season!

We waited a while for all the food to come because we were a larger group (rather than a 2top or 4top) and by the time it came out I was past the point of hangry and just wanted to go to bed.

Our morning was starting bright and early at 8:15 with team breakfast, then a resort tour. We always talk about our Tranquility Soaking Tubs for two when at our events…. nobody really understands how big they are until they see them for themselves…. we decided to give our agents a hand.

See, legit can fit 2 people in there.

After the resort tour we picked up our laptops and into the conference room we funneled. We got through 4 territory presentations from 10-6pm, had 30 mins to shower, change and get to the bar for cocktails before Bombay Club for dinner. Now, I’m not a spicy food person. I know, that makes it tough to live in New Orleans but I’m getting better. I tried EVERY. SINGLE. FOOD. that was placed in front of me at this Indian restaurant. It’s an awesome experience. It actually turned into our favorite “family” meal of the week because it’s so interactive. None of us ordered our own food, they brought out the “chef’s menu” and let us taste a little of everything. AH-Mazing.

We all called it an early night because we were told if we could get through the last 2 presentations by 1pm Island Routes would take us on a tour of Barbados. We rushed through those things like our tails were on fire. Cleaned up our stuff, changed into comfy clothes and loaded into the bus that would drive us all the way around the island of Barbados for the next 5 hours.

Our driver was incredible. He took us to all the hotspots he’d normally take a group, but also some off-the-beaten-path places too.

We saw:

• The street Rihanna grew up on
• the Parliament building
• The oldest tree in Barbados at 1,000 years old
• A fabulous beach
• The highly expensive Green Monkey Golf Course at Sandy Lane (seriously, its $4,000 for 18 holes)
• Rhianna’s current $10M apartment at One Sandy Lane, apparently one of the European soccer owners built the mansion for his daughter who hated it, so it was converted into apartments. (google image)
• The Oldest Church in Barbados

Our bus driver needed a little nap at this point, so he dropped us off at the Fisherman’s Pub for a Banks beer on the water. We actually ended up overpaying for our beers here in the bar… but the people are so wonderful here that the woman who took our money came over to the table to explain how we overpaid & give us half of the money back. Currently the currency exchange rate is 2:1 Barbados dollars to the USD.

This was about the halfway point of our tour, we were headed to the Atlantic side now to see:

• The hill that looks like you’ll fall off the face of the earth
• We hunted for Mona Monkeys
• Experienced a scientific phenomenon that is a Magnetic Hill

• Visited the oldest & only still functioning sugar mill in the Western Hemisphere
• Found the surfers on the Atlantic Coast

This is an incredible island. That’s all I can say about it. We made the complete loop of the island and headed back to the hotel for our Butch’s Chophouse steak dinner.

The next afternoon we were headed to the Corporate office in Miami. But you know me, I never do anything straightforward and an old co-worker from the Flying Squirrels reached out to me asking if I wanted to go to the Miami Heat game with him after we landed. Duh.

So I deplane, get through customs & hit baggage claim where one of my teammates offered to take my luggage to the hotel for me so I could get to the game.

We spent the next 2 days in the corporate office in Miami talking with each of the different departments. Our Chairman happened to be stateside as well so he found some time to chat with us too! Very cool.

My flight left Miami at 7:10pm Friday and I finally arrived back home (via Charlotte) about 2am EST. I took Saturday to adjust back to Central time, it doesn’t hurt that it’s an Indiana Jones movie marathon either 🙂

Mom & Dad head into town the end of the week and then I have 3 May workshops till I take a group to Jamaica. Rolling right into Q2!