Don't Step On The Sea Urchin

A few weeks ago, my wife and I were blessed with the opportunity to go on some company-related leisure travel. We were both grateful for the company-sponsored respite given the personal and professional busyness of the past year, and while we love our kids, we looked forward to taking a step back and spending some one-of-one time in a sort of extended date night.

We were sent to Nevis, and while I knew vaguely about Nevis and it Carribean location, my most indelible memory of Nevis was of a prominent port in Sid Meier's Pirates!, the iconic video game and predecessor of the more famous Sid Meier's Civilization. Back in my freshman year of college, my roommate would hop on my Mac Classic and it seemed that Nevis, Antigua, Montserrat were always common ports of call which our band of pirates would either befriend of raid mercilessly. In the game, the English town of Nevis is depicted "as a prosperous place, brimming with wealth and plentiful food", which I guess is sort of the way it is now, if you're willing to isolate the description to just to the resort.

These trips, having now been to a couple, are clearly a blessing and I count myself fortunate to be have had the opportunity to be selected and go. In some ways, however, echo to a small degree a senior colleague of mine who has also been fortunate enough to attend many of these when he notes that these trips are not fully vacations. When I asked him how his company-awarded trip to the Cove Atlantis in Bahamas went, he answered me along the lines of, "It was okay, I guess. You know, this really isn't vacation to me. Vacation is when you're with your kids and you take a week off and it's just you're family and you're doing whatever you want. There's a handful of cocktail receptions that are mandatory, and I feel like I have to be 'on' since you're surrounded by colleagues."

There's some truth to this. In any sort of work-related function, no matter how luxurious - whether it's a company dinner where you're spouse is invited or a full blown junket - there's a looming shadow of I-really-hope-I-(or-my-wife)-doesn't-say-or-do-anything-that-rubs-the-CEO-or-other-colleagues-the-wrong-way which ranges from needing to be reasonably sociable and gregarious even if you're dead tired and rather just stay in your room and have room service, to making a point to remember fellow award winners and spouse and partner names, to feeling restricted from walking au naturel around the resort. Okay, scratch the last one.

But let's be fair, it's certainly not work. Being "forced" to drink cocktails at an open bar overlooking the Caribbean and mingle with nice and interesting people is hardly too much to ask. Nor could anyone complain about sitting in an awards dinner being fed filet mignon and lobster tail where you and everyone else gets recognized and paraded up to take a photograph holding a plaque with a Senior Leader while the other award winners and spouses applaud. Bottom line was I considered this a God-provided gift, and we were very grateful.

As guests, we had the option of one "activity" for each of the three full days we were going to be there, and we ended up choosing the spa (in deference to my wife's exhaustion being a stay-at-home mom for three young kids), the Source rainforest hike and a kayaking and snorkeling outing, which is where I ended up not just landing in the resort nurse's office, but being a mini-celebrity amongst my fellow award winners.

You see, I failed to realize that when snorkeling, you are highly discouraged from venturing too close to rocks along the shore, and you should absolutely not try to scale them. I did, and stepped squarely on top of a sea urchin with my right food. The sea urchin, while apparently pretty (I didn't see it, I just felt its spines piercing my foot) didn't take too kindly to being stepped on, and I paid the price with ten or so spines breaking into my skin, leaving my foot swollen with ten white circles with the remnants of blackened spines embedded in my flesh. Efforts to remove the spines were unsuccessful, and the determination was made that they were superficial enough to leave them in and let the human body do its thing.

It hurt like heck and I was walking with a limp for the remainder of my vacation. On the plus side, I didn't die of infection, and at least for a while I'll get to carry a piece (or pieces) of my trip with me in my foot. How's that for a souvenir?