Early tomorrow morning I’m stepping away from computers and phones for a week on a retreat with several great people from around Tacoma.

I’m going on the American Leadership Forum’s “wilderness experience” out near Mt. Adams.

Since … oh maybe 1998 I can only think of a handful of times I’ve been without email or a phone for that amount of time.

I’m looking forward to it actually.

Professionally speaking, since working at the Grand, it’s been rare to have a vacation that I’ve been able to completely check out of work for. Even our best vacations had a certain amount of work we did via phone or email. We even billed a couple hours of work from Thailand while on our honeymoon.

Part of that is just the nature of both self-employment and non-profit management. And part of it is that by taking some work with us, Mary and I have been able to travel much more than we otherwise could (such as the 3 weeks we spent working from St. Louis while staying with Mary’s parents in 2008).

But this time, I’m not taking any work with me. I’m bringing my iPhone for the alarm clock and camera features and nothing else (no cell or data reception there anyway).

Tonight I wrapped up as much as I could, sent some late night emails tonight (including this blog post) and shut it all down.

So I’m off! See everyone in a week.