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It’s funny the number of people who now ask me if they can come with us to Costa Rica. They congratulate me and make it sound like it’s going to be fun, sand, and cervesa all the time.

News flash, folks — we ain’t working on a beach. We’re not even close. This is where our office is/will be. Note the extreme lack of nearby sand and water.

It’s the Metro Free Trade Zone Business Park, a mere 5 minutes from the airport. The nearest (decent) beach is 5 hours away over very bad roads (and drivers that would scare the pants of 99% of North American drivers). Yes, we’re closer than Calgary.

But not that close.

I’ve been at Critical Mass for 8 years, 1 month, and 5 days. That’s a long time to be a one place. I never thought I’d be here that long. Two years, max, and I’d move on. (Heck, I was originally supposed to go with Chris to teach English in Japan. A part of me still regrets not having done that.) But my time has come. It’s time to leave.

Well, kind of leave, anyway.

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Moving within a city is a snap. It’s a lot of work, yes, but logistically it’s not a big deal. You disconnect some services, sign them up at a new location, move your phone numbers, arrange your mail, and then move your crap from one place to another.

Even within a country it’s not too bad. Similar logistics, but the distances are longer and you usually have to give up the phone numbers you had.

Moving between countries? Even harder. Never done that one before, and I’m about to find out how bad it can be.

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One of the hard parts about leaving any group is passing your legacy off to someone else. It doesn’t matter if it’s a short-term thing (e.g. vacation) or a long-term thing (e.g. leaving the company). It still has to happen — unless you’re a total jerk and want to leave people hanging, that is. It’s just how you carry it out.

I’m on my second round of brain transfer in two months. The first time was when I was getting ready to go on vacation. I had to pass off my daily tasks to someone else so they’d get done. But you can’t easily toss one person’s work onto just one other person. Especially when you know there’s a lot to be done. A month ago, I used four people.

This time, it’s just one. My replacement.

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The contract is signed. It’s as official as it gets until my feet stand on Costa Rican soil. Most everything was already 99% assured, but until my name appeared on a legal document, there were still a whack of questions. This puts those questions to bed.

It wasn’t easy signing that contract. Not because it wasn’t a good offer, though. It’s because it’s not about me. Even though it was.

Let me explain…

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Finally, after many, many weeks of discussion (and far more email than I’d care to think about), it’s semi-official. (Hey, it’s better than “still in the works”.) The fact that I’m moving to Costa Rica has not changed since the last time I wrote about this. It’s just been a matter of with whom I could discuss the matter.

A few people have known beyond the Executive: Allard, Mark, Marcie, Jason (who’s going down as well), and Tamara (she’s an old friend, and I told her the night before her wedding), but I couldn’t really tell anyone else. Especially the person Allard and I tagged to replace me. (I doubt I’ll be able to publicly post this until after the client has been informed that I’m no longer working on the account.) I have to sign my new contract first.

Boy, isn’t life fun?

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I was recently out in the United Kingdom on vacation. If you know my travel habits, you know I rarely stay in one place for long — I like to move around. (Yes, this often fuels or is fueled by my mild obsession with trains.) It means that I often pay close attention to public transit, and how it operates.

While we were in York, a thought suddenly hit me. I’m sure I’d seen this elsewhere, but it hadn’t really registered. The buses weren’t run by York Transit, or Transit Yorkshire, or anything directly related to the city/region government. The buses were privatized through FirstGroup PLC.

And suddenly I thought: Why couldn’t Calgary do the same?

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