The most daunting task!!

For me, the most daunting task as a big vacation comes up is…..wanna guess?

Nope not getting everything organized!
Nope not packing!
Not even waiting for the faithful day to come.

Ok, ok…the task I am referring to is, drum roll please….staying focused at work!!

It has been two long years since we were on island!! Many things have changed there that we have missed. The airport we remember is gone and now replaced with a 21st century airport. There is good and bad to that for us. I loved getting off of the plane and being greeted by a blast of tropical air and the smell of the tarmac followed by the nice stroll to immigration station before getting out into the crazy crowd in front of the terminal to find our rental car friends. I am sure some of that will still be there but SXM has joined the modern world with an acceptable airport. The Cupecoy area I am sure is incredibly over built by now. Last time we were there we enjoyed the beach at Cupecoy with just the ugly wall of Shore Pointe behind us, now I have seen pix of the area and am completely saddened by the building that has occurred at this once pristine beach. Ok, I have digressed just a bit here.

Yes, it has been 2 years almost to the day since we have been on island. I booked our trip 14 months ago and got airline tickets when there was a fantastic sale in October. I have had a countdown on my whiteboard at work since I booked. Now I am down to just a few days and my mind wanders to comfortable beach chairs with my beautiful wife of 25 years by my side as we soak up the sun and recover from a long and very cold Kansas City winter. In fact as I write this the temp today will be a high of 45 with rain.

Every day I have a couple of friends that come by my cube and ask me how long I have left before I log off my computer, walk out the office doors and don’t look back for two weeks. Today I shot them the number 12!!!! I am so close to single digit that I am beginning to believe that if I sit still for just a few seconds, I can taste that first ice cold Carib as sweat from the bottle rolls down and kisses my hand while the smell of the sea air fills my nose with pure pleasure, causing an auditory exhale that drains bits of stress out of my body with each and every breath cycle.

Thankfully, I have a big presentation that I am preparing for that occurs the first working day back…well not back. I will be traveling to KC only to get on a plane the next day for Las Vegas and will be hosting a large group of customers….gee there is a trifle bit of reality at reentry!! The presentation is all that keeps me in any way focused on work and away from visualizing the fish we will see while scuba diving in my imagination as I sit at my computer waiting for days, hours and minutes to slowly fall from the calendar until that faithful day that we head for the airport.