My Dad invited me to go ice climbing a few weeks ago, and without really thinking about it, I said I would go. I had no idea what ice climbing was, what equipment is used, how far away the place would be, or what adventure awaited.

Let me tell you about my ice climbing observations. It is rock climbing and dodgeball and exhausting all at the same time. You have spikes on ski boot like shoes, two ice axes and a daunting cliff of ice you are told just to go climb. Yesterday, I thought it was the hardest sport I had ever tried. I made it half way (sometimes not that far) up the route before I was so exhausted and afraid that I asked to be let down. Although I was recovering from a knee and shin injury that I sustained as I saw an ice ax that was dropped, coming fast straight toward my head, I panicked and dodged, but a huge waist high rock impeded my quick escape and took me out, I tumbled, fell and flipped over the offending boulder painfully landing on my back. A couple people came over to help me up and I told them I would just like to lay in the cold snow for a few minutes. The oncoming ice ax stopped and stuck in the snow 10 ft in front of where I was standing, so there was no need for me to even move. Also, 60 and 70 year old men scaled the mountains with ease, and I just sat at the bottom discouraged and dodging large ice chunks.

That was yesterday.

Today was different. I made it to the top 3 times, had them take a lot of pictures. A stark contrast from yesterday.

I am amazed at how much a little confidence influences performance. I guess that is why we need to start small and get little victories under our belts. Especially when we have big goals

If at first you don’t succeed, try starting small and remember “baby steps”. By the way, Liam learned to crawl last week, and it is awesome to see how on Wednesday he couldn’t crawl and then on Thursday he could and a week later he is moving all over. It is cool to learn from your own children- they don’t seem to get discouraged, they fall and then try, try again.

Also- any of the cool looking climbers pictured here- not me.

So in no particular order (chronological or importance) here we go:

Life Events

Liam was Born
Gave Liam a name and a blessing
Bought an iPad
Went to the Masters
Ran a Marathon in Dublin, Ireland
Spoke at a Funeral
17th place in Suncrest Half Marathon

Fun

Went to Disneyworld with the family
Ran the Epic Relay Race with awesome team in beautiful Jackson Hole
Full Week of Scout Camp- created and played Spotlights and Ninjas
Drove the Mustangs at Miller Sports Park
Played Promontory Point
Played Glenwild
Played Salt Lake Country Club
Played Valhalla Golf course
Walked the San Antonio Boardwalk with my wife and family
Went to the Nickelcade to help my wife induce labor
Won 3 point contest by some miracle
Asked and went to Prom with Michelle

Random

Learned the game Dominion
Thought that it would be genius to invent Tattoos that disappear after 3 years
Started mbahack.org which I haven’t maintained
Started Parental Ponderings blog
1st experiment with crowdsourcing
Bought an iPhone 4S- quickly fell in and out of love with Siri-
Started early rise routine for one month
Ended Early rise routine
Bumper Sticker Call Campaign idea
Caught a fly out of the air
Memorized Proclamation to the Word: The Family

Travel

Grand Teton NP
Glacier National Park
Zion National Park
Idea to do an International Marathon entered into my thoughts and never left
9/11 Memorial in NYC
Walked through Occupy Wall Street demonstrations
Visited Stonehenge
Visited Salisbury Cathedral
Toured the Roman Baths in Bath England
Visited Blenheim Castle
Went to Preston, England Temple
Visited York
Visited London Temple
Saw the London Bridge
Toured Tower of London
Visited Churchill Museum in London
Drove the Ring of Kerry
Visited Killarney National Park in Ireland
Toured Trinity College- saw the Book of Kells
Miracle of the returning of our passports
Fulfilled lifelong dream of going to Four Corners

Movies Watched

Knight and Day
Bobby Fischer at Sundance
Unstoppable
Social Network
Source Code
Killers
X-Men First Class
Season 4 of 24
How to train your dragon
True Grit
Regretfully watched “Limitless”
Regretfully watched “Green Hornet”
Harry Potter- Last one
Pay it Forward
Sherlock Holmes (1st one)
Made it through Fiddler on the Roof for the 1st time
2nd Sherlock Holmes

Books Listened to or Read

Listened to “Lone Survivor”
Read “Seal Target Geranimo”
Listened to “The Hunger Games”
Listened to “The Last Lecture”
Listened to “How to Master Your Time” by Brian Tracy
Listened to “Million Dollar Habits” by Brian Tracy

We started driving and it is a little different, but my strategy, I thought, was solid- closely follow the car in front of you. It didn’t help that we didn’t know where we were going. It needs to be noted that mine and Michelle’s and my navigating philosophies are polar opposites.  My strategy of getting somewhere is to jump in and drive and if we get lost to ask people or guess, but figure it out on the way there. Michelle’s strategy is to not start the car and go until you know where you are going.

Well, we were on our way. The first roundabout. I looked left and was following the car in front of me, missed the fact that a huge bus was barreling toward us- I quickly exited the roundabout and entered a different car rental place, where you can’t back up or else your tires will be popped. I was quite embarrassed, I then had to explain to the car rental people that I wasn’t returning the car, I was just lost.

Driving was a lot more difficult than I thought. More concentration required, narrower roads, unfamiliar area and signs and bad location GPS on the phone.

Michelle finally convinced me were lost and I stopped and added internet to the phone and asked a guy where to go. We were off..

After a few hours of driving we finally arrived in Bath, we found our rental place, which was an adventure in and of itself. Liam needed more baby food so we walked to the store, and found that the stroller wheel had been damaged on the flight, but was still functional. Liam didn’t mind. Next Day we were on to Stonehenge, which by the way is in the middle of nowhere.

I found it quite interesting. Definitely worth seeing. It wasn’t as tall as I had imagined or pictured. My journal for that day says  – “Stonehenge, it’s cool just because everybody thinks it is cool. Happy we went. Once in a lifetime thing- like, you don’t go back twice.”

Liam really seemed to enjoy Stonehenge. See the intrigue below.

After Stonehenge we went to find some dinner in Salisbury. We saw a huge cathedral and decided to go see.

It had an interesting modern art display that I really liked.

Also, while in that city I got a much needed haircut and talked to the hair cutter about our trip. She was bewildered why anybody would spend money to come see her city. It made me realize that we don’t really appreciate all that is close to us.

A day or two before we left for our England/Ireland trip I started to get a little nervous. All the regular concerns; can I fit 3 weeks worth of stuff in a carry-on, are work tasks going to be ok, do we have our plans and addresses and proper communications when we get there, and on and on and on. And then you add on the element of taking a 9 month old across continent and on overnight flights, packing baby food, diapers, stroller, cot for him to sleep in. Everybody around you looks at you like you are crazy, and not knowing what is going to happen you start to feel like you may be crazy too.

Here are a few highlights of our first international adventure with little Liam.

Mike Linton is no Ken Jennings

On the plane flight over there we played the delta trivia. I of course put my name as KenJen because Ken Jennings is the best trivia master ever. Half way through the flight, after I lose a round to others on the plane, a mother and a son come back to where were sitting and they introduce themselves as the others playing the trivia game and they just wanted to say “”hi”. I congratulated them for beating us. Well, I thought that was odd, but then I remembered what my screen name was- KenJen. They thought that they had just beaten Ken Jennings the trivia master and I saw the disappointment on the kids face when he finally made his way back to our seat 22e and found little old me and not Ken Jennings. That gave us a good laugh.

So some highlights from New York.

Saw the 9/11 Memorial

Then we observed the “Occupy Wall Street” protests, which I found quite intriguing, interesting and full of irony.

Found ourselves feeding and changing Liam anywhere and everywhere- this time in some random church cemetery (Michelle just informed me it was one of the oldest churches in NYC). And I was still taking pictures of everything. 

After our day tour of NYC, we made it back to the airport to catch our flight. We were a little nervous about the red-eye flight and having a baby that could cry all night, making it both uncomfortable for parents and passengers a like. We got three seats to ourselves for our overnight flight to Iceland. We discovered Liam loves drinking out of a water bottle, he is not too good at it, but he likes it. Well, he ended up doing really well on the whole flight

Liam slept like a little angel. All our worries for the 14ish hours of flying across continent were put to rest as Liam slept like he was in his crib. He cried for about 7 minutes on the overnight flight over to Iceland, but his mother pacified him and mostly the loud sounds of the airplane and the fact that everybody has earphones in helped it not be as stressful as we thought.

Us Standing in Center of Paris

Notre Dame

I later talked to the people that are sleeping on the ground just outside of Notre Dame, they were a couple from Russia who walked the streets of Paris all night.

Me and Michelle in Notre Dame

Bridge in Paris in the Morning

Impossible Payphones

We decided not to pay the international fees for our cell phones so we found some pay phones to use. It had been so long since we used a pay phone and especially trying to figure out the international codes, that it took a few tries and a few different pay phones to finally get through.When we finally connected I asked for directions because we forgot to write them down before we left. I repeated exactly what I heard, where to stop and where to transfer, and Michelle wrote down what I was saying. The guy said Jean Pierre would meet us there in 1.5 hours, but then after I asked him to repeat the instructions 3 times, he said “If this is your first time in France, then it will probably take you 3 hours, lets plan on that”- that is what I heard. We took our instructions and compared them against the map and where it could take us and to our utter discouragement, none of the names of the directions that we had written down corresponded to the subway maps. At this time we learned that we have different philosophies on how to get some where without clear instructions (my philosophy- get going and figure it out where you are to go as you try and get there. Michelle’s philosophy- find out where you need to go first and THEN go).  We weren’t confident that over the phone another phone call would get us better instructions, so we decided to just go off of what the guy said, and so we bought subway tickets and got going. Lesson learned- get specific instructions and directions prior to take-off.

We had the address, but no internet, so we remembered from our research of apartments that it was maybe was close to the Louvre and the “Arts de Metiers” stop. So we navigated there and luckily it was close enough for us to find a subway map that had our street on it so we found our apartment and waited for Jean Pierre.

It was a small alley way and here is the flag outside our apartment. We weren’t comforted by it.

1/2 hour later he showed up, gave us the key and showed us the apartment. It was really small, but was a great deal for the price.

Hand Washing Clothes (Washer/Dryer Broke)

Narrow Hallway into apartment

We sat staring at this for 1/2 hour

The beginning of our trip luckily wasn’t a foreshadowing of our navigation skills the whole trip. I’m embarrassed to say that we asked to get dropped off at the International location. Unfortunately, it was only for international “arrivals” – not “departures”. So after waiting for  30 minutes in a deserted part of the airport we asked directions and were pointed in the right direction. First lesson learned- when you’re lost, ask directions.Also, leave earlier than necessary in case things go bad.

We left the SLC Airport on Wednesday the 21st and took a direct 14 hourish flight to Paris. And the adventure began.

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