El Salvador, May 2, 2008

Friday was my last day of work. Actually, it was only a half day – I was leaving at noon to carpool to San Francisco International to catch the red-eye to San Salvador, El Salvador. Two weeks of surf to remember what not working feels like.

There was too much unfinished business to actually leave work. (What kind of sick statement is that?!?)

I had one more major meeting to attend – to deal with, among other things, my supervisor situation.

This was what I did NOT say during that meeting…

“Since I have been ordered to not distribute any sort of written document, unless it goes through my supervisor first – and I have been told to never disagree with my supervisor in front of anyone else… I propose that I go back to my office and try to finish up work so I can leave for vacation on time. I also propose to leave this cardboard cutout of myself here instead. Notice the articulating “speech bubble”. It says, “Yes, I agree!”. The string to operate this I will leave with my supervisor.”

Instead, over the last two days – others have begun to support my position.

The majority of members of that committee had my back. I did not have to say a thing. Others brought up the issues that affected them. My supervisor was asked if he was going to support the system plan that I had written up (that represented the original direction before he got here anyways). His response was the quietest, most mealy-mouthed “yes” that I had ever heard him speak.

I had won a battle, but who knows where the war will go next…

Doesn´t matter – time to leave for vacation!

Just a few loose ends to tie up and I´m leaving at noon!

Except the data system had crashed in a new and unexpected way the day before. All of my time was dedicated towards training someone else to operate it – and trouble shoot the new processes.

It was not looking good.

Friday, 11:30am, the problem was found. I had to scramble to change some programming, write the procedure, and walk the new operator through the process step-by-step.

Friday, Noon. Stop by the office of the co-worker I was carpooling to San Francisco with. I open the door, say “Fifteen more minutes!”, and head back to my office.

Friday, 12:15pm. I finish each of the steps with my co-worker. We had written down a couple things to fix for Monday´s run – but everything had run successfully piecemeal. All I had to do now was run it as a batch process successfully and…

The power went out. For the entire institution.

I smiled.

I turned and left, telling everyone to have a good weekend. I told no one in particular, “I have friends in high places”, as I gathered my pack and board and left to meet my ride.

In their office, the joke was that I arranged the power outage so I could leave as planned. I did not deny it – nothing wrong with leaving them guessing.

No problems getting to the airport. The guy at the TACA counter said to me, “I´m not sure why so many go to Costa Rica to surf, El Salvador has much better waves.

Another good omen.

After that, nothing bothered me. The screaming kid? Earplugs. Freezing cold plane? Fleece and beanie (although I was cold, and I hardly slept – I asked for a blanket too late after they had run out).

The new south swell, peaking Friday afternoon through Saturday morning – is supposed to be double-overhead on the biggest sets. Someone from Roca Sunzal will be at the airport to pick me up at the airport – and with any (more) luck I´ll be in the water by 10am.

Solid surf, and sickness)