I just have a couple pictures to share. I’ll tell you what, the rooms at the Ritz sure beat the hell out of the rooms I stay in when I travel to conferences! Gigantic beds, big bathtubs, marble counter tops, full closets, and what a view.

When we weren’t eating, drinking, hiking, and socializing I worked with a small group of five people to study, analyze, and solve a practice consulting scenario. David, Judy, Sauraub, Yi and Elizabeth were all bright, funny, and capable. If consulting means working with only top-notch people… I’m in. Here’s the group on a mountain during a hiking trip (minus Yi who decided to go white water rafting instead).

Hopefully this trip was a preview of what being a consultant is like because if it is… I like it!

The gear involved in ice climbing is fantastic. Serious mountaineering boots with a dozen three inch spikes attached to each foot make for a menacing pair of shoes. The crampons give terrific grip while trekking over the ice, and allow you to walk right up verticle faces when needed!

Then you have the “hammers:” long sharp picks that hack into the ice giving you a hand-hold wherever you need it. Combine this with a length of good rope and all the climbing harnesses common to rock-climbing and you’ve got an ice-cold vertical adventure.

We trekked about a half mile onto the glacier before we started making our way up sheer ice walls. Our guide would free-climb the faces and set up safety rigging before we made our way up. The first climb was a real challenge, but once I got an understanding of the technique, and the rhythm: pick, hook, toe-toe-toe. pick, hook, toe-toe-toe… climbing up verticle ice and slight overhangs became a smooth, and exhilarating process.

All said and done… I want more. However, the way things are going there won’t be any glaciers in Atlanta any time soon!

Fun Fact: If you converted all the ice in the Matanuska glacier into margaritas, it would be enough for everyone on the planet to drink a 32oz. margarita every day for the next 20 years!

Even though we spent a week on Pacific time, I realize that I need to spend a lot more to see even a fraction of what there is to do out there! I might try to spend a month out that way this summer. I left some of my heart in San Francisco, I was inspired and entranced by the beautiful landscape, and Seattle is nothing but great!

First off, whenever I step out of an airport and start walking around a city I marvel at how quickly life moves. When I ate an apple for breakfast this morning I was nearly 900 miles away from where I sat down to eat lunch. The world is certainly very small.

Something that always strikes me about New York in particular, though, is how it is a wonder just to wander. Some other big cities (Paris comes to mind) have a similar quality. It dawned on me, though why its so fascinating just to look at things. New York is an organic thing. Just as you can look in awe at the bark on a tree (or at least I can), I can see nature’s beauty in the big apple. This is not a city that was planned in the way that a suburban neighborhood is. This city grew up on its own, adapted to its little island, to the throngs of people living here. It says something powerful about the human animal that we can build and thrive in hives like this!

After following rules and trails for an entire day, we saw something that looked a little bit more exciting! We noticed that if we hopped the hand-rails we could scramble out onto a huge rock slab that looked straight over into the gorge… an 800 foot drop! Wow! what a thrill, we could fall to our death if we weren’t careful. We had to climb over rocks like real men! We had found some adventure! Little did we know, we found more than we wanted.

The climb back to the manufactured trail was without incident, and our little expedition was without injury or death (or even a close call!). However, as we were walking back down the paved trail we saw a ranger puffing hard as he ran towards us.

“Which one of y’all was out on that ledge?” He asked.

This may have been a good time to lie. But we told the truth, and he sat us down to wait for his manager. When the manager arrived, Ryan, Jimmi, and Me all got tickets for … $116! At least the rangers seemed like cool guys, they were fun to talk to and not disrespectful like some officer-types can be. They even suggested some places where it was “legal” to go do stupid stuff that might be fun.

In the end… did we learn our lesson? YES! Don’t go to over-regulated parks. There’s lots more fun to be had on other trails where the only rule is “leave only footprints, kill only time, take only pictures.”

We heard that a few times as we were making our way! This is a really cool way to spend a Saturday. Look out for more caving posts as the year goes on. If only there were cool caves that weren’t 200 miles away.

The paper was the continuation (and improvement) of a project I started long, long, ago in 2005. In fact, you can check here for some info about it. This paper was so good that it was worth a free trip for both of us to present it at the RESNA conference.
Of course, I didn’t spend too much time inside, dressed up, talking about papers. I spent most of the trip visiting with my dad and his new wife. We relaxed in the back yard, checked out the pash shopping and dining of Phoenix, and hid from the 115 degree heat!
One day we drove North to a cool town called Sedona which has lots of great hiking and rock formations. Here’s me at the end of ‘Long Canyon.’ It was a nice little 10 mile hike, and where I’m standing in this picture is one of the several “Power Vortices” in Sedona. (I certainly felt more powerful than usual!)

Pack Light

This is always a must in my opinion. Its no fun to walk around with big bags. Even if you’re going to put them down right when you arrive, who wants to deal with all that stuff!? Some tips if you’re packing *really* light (I think Jimi and I had packs that were about 30 pounds).

1. Get a super-absorbent shammy-style towel. In the words of Douglas Adams, “You’ve got to know where your towel is.” And that’s true, a personal towel will come in handy time and time again. But regular bath towels are far too big. Instead, get one of these (I found mine in the automotive section of WalMart).
2. Bring a multi-tool pocket knife. This allows you to mend, destroy, create, and do a lot of things with just one little tool. I actually forgot to bring one, but as destiny would have it, we *found* one after about 28 hours in Europe. It proved priceless for lots of little things. (CAREFUL, don’t try to bring this on a plane)
3. Pack T-Shirts. Sure, they’re not quite as trendy, but its better to have those little guys than lots of annoying shirts with collars and buttons. After a few days you don’t give a damn how you look.

Plan Some
Know generally what’s in the area. Try Wikitravel or just the regular internet. I also like Lonely Planet and Lets Go guides. (Although I would suggest taking select pages or photocopies rather than entire books because they’re huge and scream TOURIST!)

If you’ve got friends where you’re going, know people who have been before you, or are friendly with strangers… Ask other people what to do. It is a lot easier than reading those stupid tourist books, and you usually get quality suggestions. I’d suggest spending a lot of time on this. If it hadn’t been for a friend’s suggestion in Paris, we would have never visited Toulon!

I try to have a sketchy plan for the next 24 hours at all times. It’s good to have this to keep a little focused. However, be prepared to be flexible.
Don’t plan too much
Because I see life as a hilarious adventure, its hard for me to see anything that happens as misfortune. If you plan everything out to the second, it removes a lot of the adventure, and potentially eliminates the hilarity of things going very well or very badly.

If you allow chance to play a big role in your travels, you let in a lot of room for luck. Luck is what really makes the best stories. “We followed a tight schedule and saw all of the sites” is kinof boring. “We really had no idea what we were doing and next thing you know, we were eating crepes wearing a giant chicken suit” is a lot more entertaining. Also, if you are letting luck play a role in your travels, planning to far in advance can mean losing money on non-refundable reservations and things. Plus, if you have to sleep on the street one night… Hilarious adventure, right?

I’ll save the long soliloquy on how much you learn about your self, your soul, life in general, and the human condition for another post… But I think I learned about all that stuff too. Of course, its hard to nail down when exactly that happens.

Read on for some stories from the trip.

Derby Reflections and Atlanta Ejections – 5/6/07

I got back from the Derby at 4am this morning. Although it was fun, and I’m glad I did it, I have no interest in ever going back… ever. It turns out (from the infield at least) the Kentucky Derby is like a big redneck fair but with gambling. Of course, that’s not all bad, I made $20 bettin’ on the ponies.

After a power nap I was up-and-at-em this morning running final errands for my Europe Trip. Immediately after pressing “publish” on this post, I’m going to go get lunch, and then I’m out of the country! Hopefully I’ll post little updates whenever I get to an internet cafes along the way.

See you tomorrow morning in Paris.

Ich Ein Berlinner – 5/9/07

The European Vacation is off to a great start. We arrived in Paris with luck and excitement. After a day playing around in the city of lights we jumped on a night train to Berlin. We slept like babies for the whole 10 hour ride.

In Berlin, we spent yesterday doing a walking tour of the city and then a pub crawl with a group called New Berlin. That was loads of fun, but today we’re sight-seeing on our own.

We have had some incredibly lucky stories and close calls… so far we’ve been blessed on this trip and we’re hoping that our luck holds out! Ok, off to see more of Berlin

Picturehausen ein Deutchland – 5/10/07

We found a computer with an SD card reader! But, more importantly… we found Elton John (the German Version) see below. Elton is in the hat, his brother Hans is wearing the brown coat. They liked this picture so much that they offered us free beer if we printed it for them!

We’ve also been getting a good chuckle from the local signage. “Loeser Projekt” was a store with incompetent people, and…

The guy working at “Schmuck” was a you-know-what.

Enough playing on das computershauzen. Time to go play with the monkeys at the Zoo.

Farewell Paris – 5/13/07

This morning we’re silently packing up trying not to wake our host, Remi. In about an hour, we’ll be on a train bound for Avignon. We’ll get lunch in this pretty (but small) town, and then continue to Marseilles. In Marseilles, we actually have a *real* hotel room! We plan to sleep a lot tonight. That’s as far as our plans go. Au revoir!

Bella Italia – 5/16/07

This morning Jimi and I arrived in Pisa. We woke up after a restful tolerable sleep on the train. In Pisa, we ran around for a couple of hours, ate some pizza, and took some pictures with the tower (what a bunch of tourists!). Then we hopped on another train to La Spezia. Here we are about to leave to visit a small group of towns called Cinque Terra. We’ve heard amazing things about this area… lots of hiking, great views, we can’t wait.

After this we’ll stop over in Milan for a day or so, then its on to Munich.

Ciao

Back to the USA – 5/21/2007

Today I woke up in Martin’s place at 12:30 am Atlanta time. Here 10:30 pm finds me writing a short post before going to bed. I made it! I’m back!

The flight back was very fine (I watched a lot of movies). It’s nice to be back home after such a long trip, but the trip was completely awesome!

Thanks to everyone who housed us and came out to meet us. It really means a lot to me to have such great friends all over the world! You are all the best!

In the next few days I’m going to make some more posts about the trip. A summary, some more pictures, and some “do’s” and “do not’s” of traveling in Europe.

Good Night, USA