First, some history. I've never been on an actual honest-to-goodness teambuild in my nearly 8 years with this company, despite the fact that teambuilds are touted as one of the important parts of our much-celebrated team based culture. The last pseudo teambuild I went on was nearly two years ago, and although we got to do some fun stuff, it was primarily an excuse for my crazy ex-boss to get royally fucked up. And then the all-day work session the following day was basically cancelled because she was too hungover to deal. So, yeah...
Enough of that. On to the present:
Thursday morning, my team headed west to the Bluebonnet Cafe--"a Marble Falls tradition since 1929"--for breakfast. Mmm...diner food. Then we continued our journey northward to Burnet and then west to the resort on Lake Buchanan where we were staying. We lucked out. It was raining like a mofo when we left Austin, but the further west and north we went, the clearer the skies became.
The drive from Burnet to the resort was surreal. It was SO green and so filled with wildflowers and hills and curves and just flat-out gorgeousness, I had to catch my breath several times as the vistas revealed themselves to us.
When we got to the resort's parking lot and out of our cars, we heard a plaintive and very nearby, "Mooooooooooooooooo." We all walked toward a trailer in the parking lot, and lo and behold, in addition to the Sea Doo in the trailer, there was a little brown calf, crying for her mama. She came right over to the side of the trailer so we could scratch her head. When we mentioned this to the front desk gal, she said that the owners had had this vacation booked for a while, so when this calf's mother died and the calf needed to be bottle fed 4 times a day, they just decided to bring her with them on vacation rather than cancel. (I love Texas for shit like this.)
We all got checked in to our rooms, and then headed to the boat rental place. On our way out, we saw the calf's owner walking Star (that was its name) on a leash.
We had a bit of a snafu with the boat--the somewhat sketchy place we'd rented from had two boats for us to choose from, both of them broken. It would've been nice if they'd called us or something, but like I said, this place was pretty sketchy, so I'm not too surprised. [Lesson learned: You get what you pay for. They were the least expensive boat rental place in the area, and the guy who took my reservation over the phone sounded like Jessco from "The Dancin' Outlaw."] They did, however, put down their cigarettes long enough to help us call around and find another boat we could rent--a bit more expensive, but hey, at least it was running.
We got to Boat Place #2 and unloaded all of our crap--water noodles, coolers, beach towels, backpacks, bags of snacks, etc. Finally, we were on the water. Wow, it was gorgeous and we literally had the entire lake to ourselves--we only saw two other boats the entire time we were out. We would stop the boat and then jump out and swim or just float. The water was perfect. The wind picked up and so did the current. The boat floated away from us pretty quickly when we were out swimming, but luckily there was always someone on board who could bring the boat back 'round. Or you could just hang on to the back of the boat like these three.
At about 5:15 we started heading back to the rental place, but the wind had REALLY picked up, and as we headed into the waves, the flat bottom of the pontoon boat would hit the waves and BOOM we'd get pummeled with gallons of cold lake water. Everything on board was getting soaked. So we stopped and shoved all of the electronics and valuables into an extra trash bag I'd brought with us in an attempt to keep a few things dry. I'm telling you, it was crazy. I felt like there were stagehands standing off stage right and stage left throwing enormous buckets of water on us on cue. It was pretty funny, but after about 20 minutes, it started to get fucking old. Thankfully, the water smoothed out as we got closer to shore, and the water pummeling ceased.
We headed back to the resort and everybody showered and got ready for dinner. We all convened by the pool for a couple of beers and some wine. We probably shouldn't have done that because by the time we got to the onsite restaurant, they'd pretty much closed the kitchen down. Luckily, they offered to cook us something, but they limited our choices to a pasta primavera type thing and prime rib. It was weird, but the food was fine. And the view and sunset were spectacular.
View from the restaurant.
After dinner, everyone came to my room for our teambuilding exercise. It was intense and lasted a long, long time, but I think it was a good exercise. In other words, I think it built our team which was the whole point of this adventure.
Next morning, we met in our meeting room, and tackled the big agenda I'd written. We rocked on through everything and ended up actually wrapping up a couple of hours ahead of schedule.
A few things:
The place we went was awesome. The rooms were great. The grounds were spectacular. The staff was SO nice and accomodating. I DEFINITELY want to go back there with Mr. Wonderful. It's very rustic but really romantic.
Lovely Lake Buchanan.
The front porch of my little "cottage." Yes, those are two rocking chairs.
The interior of my cottage.
The view from my porch.
Both Jaye and I killed scorpions in our rooms. Not too surprising given the landscape and the time of year, but still...
We saw an eagle on the way to the second boat rental place. It was really fucking cool.
1 comment:
No tarantulas? I once fled Lake Buchanan in the middle of the night because the streets were FILLED with tarantulas. Straight out of Kingdom of the Spiders, and I will never forget it.
Lane
Post a Comment