Bermuda, my favorite island for both business and to be on
in general, is steadily growing as we paint the island red. In May, we ran around the island, literally,
blazing it in Milwaukee red during the Bermuda Day Half Marathon Derby. Since the success of the Bermuda Race Weekend
10k that I ran with one of my customers in January, we’ve been planning the
Bermuda Day half marathon rugby team sponsorship. Working together with 2 of my 3 accounts in
Bermuda, Milwaukee Tool had the privilege of sponsoring the Bermuda Teacher’s
Rugby Team as over 50 runners on the team participated in the half marathon,
wearing shirts that said Milwaukee Tool.
The island is only 20 square miles, so to have 50 runners in Milwaukee
shirts run from one end of the island to the other for 13.1 miles was awesome
PR for Milwaukee!
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| Here is the back of the shirts! My customers got along swimmingly (not always the case!). |
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| One of the three pace groups...the Teacher's Rugby Club runners try to stick together and foster camaraderie. |
The purchasing manager
from Gorham’s Home Center and the general manager from Baptiste Ltd. are both
on the Bermuda Teacher’s Rugby Team (they’re not all teachers), and we all
worked nicely together to plan this event out, from the making of the shirts to
the making of the Red Gatorade for the Milwaukee Hydration Station. Yep, we had our own hydration station! Right in town at a prime location, around
mile marker #11, we had a Milwaukee tent set up with
volunteers from the stores to man it, handing out RED (not blue or yellow!)
Gatorade and blasting motivational music out of the Milwaukee Contractor
Radio. Shout-out to Melissa of Baptiste
and Chris of Gorham’s for getting up before 6 a.m. to man the hydration station
while Henry, Bill, myself, and about 50 others blazed the island in
red—literally!!!
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| The Milwaukee Hydration Station at Mile 11. |
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| Post-race at the hydration station, cleaning up and prepping for the afternoon parade. Thanks Melissa and Chris! |
Since Milwaukee
sponsored the jerseys, the $18,000 that the Teacher’s Rugby Club raised was all
able to go toward purchasing a Braille machine for an autistic child as well as
donate the leftover funds to the Bermuda Heart Association. The race itself was grueling in hilly and
humid (94% humidity) Bermuda, but I felt like almost everyone who lives there
was out cheering. For me personally, I
wanted to run a good time, but it was more important to enjoy the race and the
atmosphere. I ended up running a time I
was happy with, and I felt like I could smile and appreciate the people and the
BEAUTIFUL scenery (running along the shore viewing the ocean) the entire
race.
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| Almost finished! |
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| Awesome teamwork, no joke. Everyone pushed everyone else through the finish. |
After the race was the annual
Bermuda Day Parade. We had to wait a few
rainy hours in between, but we did what I would call tailgate…we had our
hydration station tent set up on the sidewalk, marking our spot. We had stocked up the night before on food
and drinks, the Milwaukee radio, sunscreen, and a whole possee of Rugby
runners, hardware store workers, families, and Milwaukee fans in general. The parade is where I saw a side of Bermuda I
hadn’t seen before! One can sort of
group Bermuda in another category separate from other Caribbean islands. In fact, they don’t like to say they’re ‘in
the Caribbean’ because they really aren’t.
They’re north in the Atlantic, 600 miles off the coast of North
Carolina. BUT, they love their Calypso
and Soca music just as much as Barbados does!
Apparently since I’ve only been there during fall, winter, and spring, I
haven’t experienced a Bermuda summer where the island becomes more ‘tropical-y’
and feels more like a Caribbean atmosphere.
I look back at sitting on the sidewalk to watch the parade and remember
how happy I was! It sounds cheesy, but
there is SUCH a mix of culture and I LOVE IT!
Bermuda is a British territory, so there’s Scottish influence, Irish
influence, English influence. Bermuda
also has a big Portuguese population, mostly from the the Azores (islands
off the coast of Portugal). Then, as I
said, being an island close to the Caribbean, it has an Afro-Caribbean
influence with the Reggae/Calypso feel.
Finally, Bermuda has its own style of dance and music, so there were
floats with Gombeys dancers. To me it
looks similar to a native/Caribbean dance, but it’s distinct so don’t be
confused. With Gombeys, Reggae,
Portugese folk music, Reggae, and Caribbean Calypso, it made for quite a
diverse national parade.
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| Gombeys dancers! I can still hear the drums and the whistles... |
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| Jack, me, and the Bermuda flag. Jack is my customer's son who LOVES the Gombeys. |
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| Photo bomber! My Gorham's customer, Henry, with his adorable children. |
That night,
before going to my hotel to pack for my early flight the next morning, I went
to my friend/customer’s mom’s house, where we had an authentic (and not very
healthy but oh well) Portuguese meal: chourico and feijao assado. Portuguese is similar to Spanish, and I took
2 classes of Portuguese my last year in college, so since Melissa’s mom speaks
more Port than English, I was able to practice my few words I know and speak
some “Portuรฑol” (mix of Portugues and Espaรฑol...same concept as Spanglish).
During the month of June I was not on any islands –
unbelievable! But instead I was been in
Central America, speaking mucho Espaรฑol and embracing my inner ‘Latina de
Corazรณn.’ Last week I was in Panama for
a week of intense training. I
confidently say I speak fluent Spanish, but WHEW when you’re in training where
you’re learning detailed specs on power tools and accessories, and then part of
the training is to have you get up on the spot and present on any given
Milwaukee Tool product in detail, it is quite humbling. That sort of thing is hard for me to do in
English! Nonetheless it was really good
training, and since I went through it in Spanish, going through it in island
English shouldn’t be difficult.
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| One section of training: impact wrenches, our motor technology, and Milwaukee/DeWalt go head-to-head! |
We
didn’t get to see much of Panama City, but we did get out of the hotel one
night to go downtown and rent a turf soccer field and play 7 on 7 (I’m on an
international Milwaukee team with 13 guys).
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| A bit blurry, but that's my Milwaukee Tool International Team! A few guys from Panama, a couple from Mexico, and the rest of us live in Miami (I am one of 4 'Gringos' on the team...the rest are Latinos). Que cultural! |
We drove by the Panama Canal a few times. On my next trip I hope to take the canal
tour. There is a ton of business
investment in Panama right now with the expansion of the canal, new
construction, etc. The canal itself is
about 50 miles long, and it can take anywhere from 8-14 hours to go
through. From our hotel you could see
the Pacific entrance to it, with boats big and small lined up all day, waiting
their turn to cross to the Atlantic.
The last 2 weeks of June I was in Central America again, this time in Guatemala. I helped Roberto, my Mexican co-worker whose territory is Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Belize, set up new
displays in his stores, and we went to some really good meetings at the main
sugar refineries (a big industry in Guate), who use a ton of tools and are slowing moving to more
Milwaukee…poco a poco. As you know, I always encounter interesting people on my
islands, in airports, on planes, etc., and my trip to Guatemala was no
different. I got to the Miami airport on
Wednesday morning June 20th, we boarded the plane (I got my free upgrade to Business
Class since I fly so much…thank you Milwaukee), and then they told us our
scheduled pilots were over the limit of consecutive hours they could fly, so we
had to wait until a flight from Cuba landed in order to take those pilots. It ended up being a 4 hour delay, hanging out
with a New York man who made the time pass quickly. I honestly still don’t know if he was
intoxicated, high, or simply just tired.
He was extremely chill and relaxed, at first impression. He owns a textile business that has a plant
in Guatemala, and proceeded to tell me about his homes in Connecticut, New
York, and Guatemala, and how his life revolves around his job and how he was
flying to Guatemala to clean up a bunch of messes that were happening with his
plant and employees. He was on the phone
numerous times having conversations that went as follows:
"You guys had better get your [stuff] together or it's gonna be a miserable 3 weeks with me. And what's up with the Aeropostale hang tags? We don't have another minute. Move the MCL. Move the Marmox. Get it moved, it has to ship by 6:30. Do you understand when I'm saying? Or it's a 50% deduction. Get it moved."
And, "Jorge. I'm not doing so good Jorge. What's going on with my Marmox fabric? You told me it was dyed. Now Julio's telling me we're missing 3 of the 6 colors. What's going on?!?"
Finally, I’ll end this post by telling you what my initial reason for going to Guatemala was. A few
months ago I started looking into doing a service trip. I wanted to do something different this year,
go somewhere using the COUNTLESS frequent flyer miles I have, and disconnect from
my job. I thought about going to Europe
to backpack around for a couple weeks, but I didn’t know anyone who wanted to
go. I started looking into a mission/service trip. I
signed up with a non-profit, Christian organization called Living Water
International (www.water.cc) to go to a
jungle town of Guatemala for a week to build a water well, teach the women and
children proper hygiene, and simply put—love on those in need, meeting both a
physical and a spiritual need. My eyes were opened in a big way, I was humbled more than ever before, and the trip rocked my world. I'm very VERY excited to write about my trip and share photos with you all, so look for that in the next couple weeks for my next blog post! Love you all and thanks for reading...until next time!
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| There's the water well! Can't wait to write about my experience for my next post!! |
