Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Italy Travelog #17
Chia, Sardinia - Tuesday, 27 May 2025, 4:30pm

Our flight from Rome to Cagliari this morning was uneventful. And mercifully short, at 1h15m. That's because we were cramped into average-minus economy seats— not that Aeroitalia even has roomier seats, except in the exit rows— and there was no wifi. Sigh. Yet another budget European carrier. At least so far they've only joked about having to pay €5 to use the toilet.

BTW, if you're wondering how to pronounce "Cagliari", it is not Cag-lee-ARR-ee. That's kind of an Anglo pronunciation. In Italian the g is basically silent when paired with an l. Thus the locals all say CAL-yah-ray. It sounds a lot like they're saying Calgary— the city in Alberta, Canada. But fortunately the weather here is better. It's sunny and around 80° today.



It was a long ride in a van from the airport down to our hotel. We're not in Cagliari/Calgary but in the small town of Chia, on the southern tip of the island of Sardinia. Parts of the drive were through fairly rural areas. The roads in this spread-out resort hotel are mostly dirt roads.

Once on the property, we checked in and stowed our luggage. Our room wasn't ready yet. We rode in a golf cart over to a hotel restaurant near the beach. There we met several colleagues and joined them for lunch. And to put our food on my sales VP's tab. 😅 Not that the company isn't paying for it anyway; this is Club.



We drew out lunch waiting for a text from the front desk that our room would be ready. Actually pretty much all of my colleagues were waiting for the same. Around 4pm I gave up because I felt like I was about to fall asleep and rode a golf cart back to the front. Our room was ready; they just hadn't texted us. 😒

The room is large, reasonably comfortable, but also kind of bland. The one interesting feature it does have is a large, private patio (see above). We're on the first floor, though, which kind of means no view.



I lifted my camera up over my head to look over the bushes around our patio. Yeah, we can kinda see the ocean from here. But this is not what I think of when I think "beach resort". I feel like my company either got rooked on picking this location... or cheaped out. I'm already reconsidering my choice to stay an extra day here at my own expense. It's not worth the nightly rate for this. 😔

Italy. We are going to Italy!

I made brief mention last week about planning a trip to Italy and getting side-tracked planning our Thanksgiving holiday with family instead. Well, ultimately we got both trips planned last week. We're going to Italy at the end of May.

Italy!

Better yet, this trip is mostly free because it's my company's President's Club. "Club", as it's often referred to in sales, is part of the incentive/reward system in sales organizations. Top performers are nominated to Club each year and go on a trip, together, somewhere fun for a few days. Typically it's a beach resort. I won a club trip for the third year in a row at our annual sales kickoff in February.

Over the past several years this company's club trip has always been somewhere in Mexico or the Caribbean. While I hate to be the sort who looks a gift horse in the mouth, part of me each time has lamented, "Againnn?" I've been to those locales many times, and they're easy enough to get to from the US they don't feel that special. I've even suggested gently to our execs, "How about next year in Greece? Or Italy?"

Well, I don't know if they were listening to me or made the decision completely on their own, but this year it's in Italy. And that's awesome, because I've never been to Italy.

Italy!

Club this year is on the island of Sardinia. We'll have 3 nights at a nice hotel there. Hawk and I have chosen to extend it, at our own cost, for an extra night— as it seems such a shame to travel 7,000 miles away and stay just three nights. Oh, and we're also adding a pre-stay in Rome. Rome! We'll fly to Rome, stay there for 3 nights (at our own expense, but we've picked a really nice hotel— and gotten it on points!), then fly a short hop to Sardinia, stay there a total of 4 nights, then fly home.

Italy!

Wednesday night at SKO was the award dinner. We dressed up— well, some of us did; I dressed to the nines in a jacket and black bow tie, complete with cuff links and pocket square— and sat for a nice dinner— well, maybe someone's dinner was nice; my steak was tough, and I left more than half of it uneaten on my plate— in the hotel ballroom. Ahead of dinner we mingled for drinks as a magician worked the room to entertain us. The magician, Nick Ivory, worked for us at our trade show booth at AWS re:Invent in December. When he saw me roll up in my tuxedo he recognized me right away.

The sales awards ceremony was good night for me. I was called up on stage for three awards: Deal of the Year (Americas), New Logo Deal of the Year, and SE of the Year (Americas). I was named to President's Club. Again. Now for the 3rd year in a row!

That "Deal of the Year (Americas)", BTW? The company's biggest contract ever. We re-signed a customer for $11 million over 3 years, a significant upside from what they were spending with us previously. The New Logo Deal was a lot smaller in size but was recognized because of the great work I help lead in putting together a business case. We found a return on investment of 7-to-1 for them, powered largely by a new feature in our product that no one else had thought to do the math on yet. Now that business case is an example we lead with in talking to other prospective new clients.

Los Cabos Travelog #18
Viceroy hotel, San Jose del Cabo - Wed, 8 May 2024, 10pm

This evening was the awards dinner for Club. Everyone here for Club, and all our +1s, assembled on the beach for dinner and cocktails. Like last year, the head of our sales organization went one-by-one through all of us employees present and shared a little personalized story about why he liked having us on the team. Perhaps because it all was so similar to last year, I just wasn't feeling it. I opted to leave 30 minutes early— well after the executive speeches but before the free drinks stopped. I went back to our room— our room with a beautiful living-room deck, now lit with evening lights— and vegged.

Los Cabos Travelog #13
Viceroy San Jose del Cabo - Mon, 6 May 2024, 11pm

This evening our company held a welcome soirée for Club. It was in the "bird nest" just outside our room. (Though actually it looks more like a squirrel nest or maybe a beaver den.)

Yes, this was a welcome reception even though Hawk and I have already been in the area for two days. We pre-extended our trip, paying for the extra two nights on our own. Today's the official arrival day and is why we switched hotels and checked in to the Viceroy.

At the soirée we ate and drank until around 9. Hawk went back to our room after that while I went upstairs to the bar on the roof to drink some more with colleagues. There are some people in the group who drink like fish. I'm trying to respect my own limits and not get sick or get so sloshed I do something stupid. (One colleague already dived into a 4' deep pool and got a bloody forehead from hitting the bottom. 😨) Even so, I drank more than I really wanted to tonight. ...But not so much that I'll be sick. I think. 😰

Club gifts were slightly less generous this year than last. Recall last year in addition to a bag of towels and flip-flops and suntan lotion and crap like that we got a nice USB speaker and... oh, did I mention?... $800 cash. This year there's no valuable item like a USB speaker. I did consider bringing mine from last year to use in the room but decided not to as I imagined we might get another one this year. 😂 Alas, no. And instead of $800 cash we have an allowance to spend up to $800 on food and file an expense report for reimbursement.

An $800 expense limit is not the same as $800 cash. $800 cash is $800 in your pocket, literally. Last time we took the $800 cash meant for 3 days of food and drink and stretched it to cover not only all our meals for 5 days but also the costs of a rental car for two days to tour the island on our own and other incidentals.

An expense limit means up to $800. And we've got to eat $800 of food and drink— or at least order it and throw it away 🤣— to get the full amount. But we don't have expensive tastes. And we're allergic to paying ridiculous resort prices even for basic food. That bougie $133 lunch? We only did that because we knew we were eating on other people's money. And even with OPM we couldn't stand to do it more than once. It's just not our character to spend money wastefully even when it's not ours.

Los Cabos Travelog #1
SFO United Club lounge - Sat, 4 May 2024, 7:15am

We got up early this morning to head to the airport. Not quite zero-dark-thirty, more like five-dark-thirty. ...Which, with sunrise getting earlier as we head toward summer, wasn't even fully dark. The sky was already starting to lighten at 5:30. Technically sunrise occurred minutes before we climbed into a car at 6:10 for the ride to SFO but it was hard to tell because today it's cloudy. And cold. And it started raining on the drive. No more early summer weather here. What a great time to leave!

This morning we're flying to San Jose del Cabo, Mexico. It's the first leg of a multi-stop beach and desert resort trip.

Things are looking good right now. The weather's shitty (for May) here this weekend but much warmer in Cabo. The highs there will be reliably in the mid 80s the next several days. Our flight's looking to be on time, I'm enjoying a bit of free food and drink in the United Club lounge (yay, elite status!), and maybe I'll catch up a bit on sleep on the 3 hour flight.

One thing I remember well from last year is how April and May seemed to go by in a blur. ...Okay, that reads like a self contradiction. What I mean is that I had so much fun travel in April and May last year that everything else, especially working, seems like a blur. Hey, it's kind a nice thing to think back on a time and wonder, "Wow, what did I even do at work during those two months?" 😂

Last year April and May were bookended by trip and filled through the middle, too. Just writing this summary makes me feel a bit dizzy:

• We kicked off April with a 3-day weekend at a resort in Phoenix
• A week later we did a weekend stay-cation through San Francisco and hiked several falls in Marin County
• Later in April we did a 10-day trip to Louisiana and Mississippi and back to Phoenix— to a different resort 😂
• We were home for only 19 hours before an overnight bender to Seattle to spend 15 minutes testifying as witnesses in a criminal trial
• We went to Cayman Islands for my company's President's Club trip
• Then I had a business trip to Las Vegas. ...Okay, that was technically work, but also part of the blur.....
• In late May we took a 3-day weekend trip to San Antonio.

This year looks like April and May could be another blur. ...Not quite yet, though. I mean, it's it's already the 5th and I haven't been more than about 5 miles from home this month. But soon. Starting tomorrow!

• Saturday we leave for 16 days in New Zealand. (Actually it's only 14 days in NZ; one day each way is spent on travel)
• In May we're going to President's Club again. Yes, I won again this year. This year it's in Los Cabos, Mexico.
• We're adding a 3-day weekend at a resort in Phoenix onto the end of the Cabo trip
• We might visit Alaska at the end of May.
• Who knows, maybe we'll squeeze a weekend getaway somewhere in between the above!

Day 2 of our sales kickoff (SKO) summit in Las Vegas went well. The program continued to be well run with an appropriate amount of content and enough (today occasionally just enough) flare to the presentations to keep people engaged. But the best news came at the evening's awards dinner. I won President's Club. Again.

"Again" is because I won "club" last year, too. This year I was named as SE of the Year for North America.

This caps another year in which I've often been unsure how well my contributions are recognized and appreciated. I'm pleased with the win.

Grand Cayman Travelog #15
GCM Airport - Thu, 18 May 2023, 11am

Here's where we shift gears on our trip to Grand Cayman. The president's club portion of the trip is over today. Most attendees are heading home. A few of us are staying on, though. On our own dimes. Because that means no more pre-organized trips like swimming with stingrays and the bat cave with an underground lake we enjoyed the past few days, we're shifting gears back to our norm of self-guided touring. We've rented a car.

We piled on a 10am shuttle bus to the airport with several of my colleagues. They were all carrying full luggage. Hawk and I had one small bag between us. (I was carrying my computer in case something went wrong with the rental arrangement that required replanning.)

The shuttle driver kindly offered to take us to the rental car offices after dropping everyone else at the airport. He warned that it was far away and hard to walk to from the airport. It was... across the street. And not some monster, 10-lane street with speeding cars and trucks but a little two-lane. With a crosswalk. I guess Grand Cayman gets a lot of tourists who are happy to traipse around big resorts hotels but throw a fit if asked to cross a street somewhere.



I mentioned above having brought my computer in case I needed to replan if something went wrong. Well, something did go wrong. The rental agency's computers were down. The one person working there was able to find my reservation on a printed list, though it took her four attempts flipping through the sheaf of papers. My reservation was the second one listed, on the first page. 🙄 But I guess she appreciated my patience, and/or my decision to buy all the optional insurance, because she upgraded me at least 2 car classes. We've got a Kia Cadenza for the next few days. It's a full-size car and it's way bigger than we need.

One weird thing I've noticed right away about this car is that the driver's seat is on the left, like a car sold in America— or Canada, Germany, France, et. al. But driving in the Cayman Islands is done on the left side of the road— like in the U.K. It's nice that sitting in this car is familiar; I won't have the problem of opening the wrong door to enter! But that doesn't help with driving, as I'm sitting on the opposite side of my vehicle from most other drivers on the road.

Grand Cayman Travelog #5
At the Westin, Grand Cayman - Mon, 15 May 2023, 10pm

It's been a pretty good first day here on Grand Cayman. Though we didn't finish lunch until sometime after 2 we made good use of the rest of the day, striking a fine balance between relaxing and enjoying things.



First up we headed outdoors. The skies were cloudy, threatening rain, but the air was plenty warm so we figured we'd enjoy it as long as we could. We walked past the hotel's pool and hot tubs, planning to come back to them later. Our first order of business was the beach.



We got a great pair of lounge chairs on the beach. The hotel has a team of "beach ambassadors" to manage assignment of chairs. I figure that's to solve the problem that exists at many resorts of people rushing out early in the morning to reserve a chair by throwing a folded towel on it, then leaving it there all day long while they do other things. We also placed our towels on our chairs to do other things— but other things for us was to get in the water right in front of our chairs!

The ocean here at 7 Mile Beach is walk-in warm. It's not bathtub warm, the kind that requires no acclimation, but acclimation was fast and easy. The water's also calm and very clear. As I was wading in 5' deep water I could see straight down to the white sand at my feet.

As we waded in the ocean we met up with a pair of colleages who were doing the same. The four of us talked "shop" and travel for a whle, until it was almost time to get out and dry off. We went back up to our chairs to sit for a bit. Alas the cloudy skies with humid warmth weren't enjoyable for just sitting around to soak up the sun, so we picked and moved to one of the hot tubs.

After a good soak in the hot tub we went up to our room to recharge for the evening event. We got to the room around 4:30pm, showered and changed, and then relaxed until just before 6pm. At 6 we went downstairs for a reception dinner.

The evening soirée was nice. The food was at least decent, and the drinks (and the food) were free. Our group was a bit on the small side. I don't think we had more than around 25 people there— and that includes employees who made club plus all our +1s. It felt like at best two-thirds of the people who should be here. Of course, at least two people are still MIA from weather related flight cancellations last night. But more than that, a number of club winners weren't able to make this trip because the date was only announced 5 weeks ago. For example, one of my colleagues already had a two-week trip to Italy booked.

Those of us who are here had a fine time, though. After the caterers shut down the bar in the reception room, the head of our department urged us all to move over to the hotel's beach bar. After that shut down we all moved inside to the lobby bar. 😂 Well, we didn't all move at each step. There was some attrition each time. The hour felt later than it was. For example, the beach bar closed at 9. To a lot of us it already felt like 10 or 11.

I had one more drink with the team indoors then called it a night. It's only 10pm now but this seems like a good time to wind it down. Hawk and I have plans to get up early tomorrow for breakfast then visit the beach again before we leave for a snorkeling trip just after noon!