Vernon, BC "retreat"

Investment bankers like to do retreats, or "boondoggles" whenever they can be fit in. I've been doing a month of 90 hour weeks, so fitting them in isn't too easy. Our group had a weekend in Vernon at an MD's place booked well in advance, and damn if we weren't going to try to make it. We needed a little team building and guys weekend in times of change. And a short mental checkout, aided by the perfect mental checkout formula sold 24 cold cans at a time, actually was quite nice.

For most this meant a lot of blackberry time, shuffling some flights later, and coming home early. I drove, and decided to make haste of it since my gas costs were covered... ahhh... love the open highways. I left at 6:45pm on last Thursday evening and made it to Vernon by midnight. Awesome fun, except for a little wet road incident - I can't even blame being sleepy or driving fast, just one of those once every 5 year boo boos that luckily didn't have any consequences.

From midnight arrival, it was gambling and drinking till 4am, which is where "retreat" seems to leave the vernacular, and boondoggle enters. In my view, retreats are rejuvenating. Boondoggles are a flagrant display of excess and foolishness, which are valuable things to do every now and then too. After Troy (aka Tron) won $600 at poker the first night, he set the tone for the weekend by saying "Thanks guys for subsidising my irresponsible lifestyle. I hope you enjoy watching me piss this away foolishly this weekend." Indeed, Tron sets a high bar when it comes to partying: some people fit Bryan Adams' "18 till I die" lyrics to a "t" I'm not one of them, but I know at least one...

The remainder of the weekend consisted of beer, golf, wakeboarding, cliff jumping, swimming, hot tubbing, steak dinners, 3' of flames from an open bbq bacon fire at 3am, and more beer. Basically anything expensive and low skilled, or possible to do at a low skill level. Every time I was in the water, the peanut gallery kept yelling "take off your shirt". Even if I haven't been riding much, at least I look like I do. Wakeboarding had me sore for 3 days after... and I couldn't even make it over the wake. Last time I was out two years ago I could, but I think this was longer rope, worse fitness, and fancier boat that made the wake bigger (and wider). Fun though.

I think I came home more tired than when I left, but it was fun... if not the normal kind of Bakke weekend.