Aruba Club 1: From Cold to Warm

Setup

We slept 4 days at home, following 7 in Utah. Now we’re off to Aruba, through almost no doing of our own. Every year, work sends the company on a Club Trip, assuming we hit our goals. We hit our goals. So we’re off to Aruba. Last year it was Bermuda but we couldn’t make it. This year, we’re in!

Mind you, I’m not complaining. 4 days/3 nights away, on the company dime. Effectively 4 days of forced vacation right after a week-long ski trip. No work, no kids, no real costs. Sounds good to me.

As for expectations, they are very few & far between. Wednesday & Friday we have work dinners. Otherwise, everything is optional. We land on Wednesday at 2:30 and leave Saturday at 6:00. That’s about 75 hours of time and we’re expected to attend work functions for 4 of them.

Free & easy!

The Plan

Wake up at 5, get Uber to airport, fly to Aruba, figure shit out from there, then casual dinner with the company.

The Flight

WiFi doesn’t work when we’re not in the continental US, because math? Because technology? Because I don’t know. It is what it is. So I am left to my own devices, which is a combination of reading, playing games, and watching the flight map.

The flight is 4 hours, or just under it to be exact. We’ a’re ahead of schedule which means we sit at our gate in Newark for 30 minutes before we take off. But we have nowhere to be so no big deal.

Aruba

Aruba is a new country for me. Given how much I travel, I haven’o’t actually been to that many different countries.

US, Canada, Mexico, Jamaica, Caymen Islands?, Taiwan, Italy, England, France, Netherlands, Belgium, and now Aruba.

So 12 in total. Not terrible but not really a lot, all told. It is a meaningless metric but it’s a conversation starter at the very least.

And so, Aruba. What about it? The first thing you notice is that it’s not Utah. Instead of snow and skis, you see palm trees and alcoholics. No joke, some of the people I work with were standing in the pickup area of the airport drinking. I’m sure the locals think we’re all self-indulgent slobs. Mostly because we are.

We take the bus to the hotel then get the room and drop our stuff, then head to the cabana for a snack and to talk to a few people. We head back up to the room so D can work and I can relax and not do much.

I generally plan to have no plans for the next few days.

Dinner

One of the required events is Wednesday dinner. The other is the Friday farewell dinner. Other than those 2, 2-hour events, we’re free to do as we please.

Technically it’s a welcome reception, held on the beach of the hotel. It’s really just a casual mixer in sand, with a lot of food.

The food is good, I would say some very good and some ok. It’s nice to hang out and talk to some of the people in a non-work setting. I told D that I want to maximize not talking about work as much as possible this trip.

People fall early. Chris & Devin took a redeye from Colorado, and the Minnesota guys were up at like 3am. We follow suit shortly after and are in the room by 9:00, which is 8:00 at home.

Aruba is on Atlantic Standard Time which effectively is what we’ll be on as of Saturday morning.