This is the speech to accompany the powerpoint presentation made at St. Joseph's College - NY for their Global Study Abroad Conference. Underlines mostly correlate to slide changes, but not perfectly.

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Introduction
Like many of you, I grew up on Long Island, here in Suffolk County.
My life, and more specifically my travel, has been full of adventures and challenges,
sometimes simultaneously, and there’s no doubt that these experiences have changed &
ultimately shaped my life for the better, not least of all because they led directly to me
meeting my wife and moving abroad to live in an environment where English isn’t the 1st
language. But that’s a whole other adventure.
And it’s with this in mind that I was asked to come here today to share some of these
adventures with you with the hopes that it inspires you to get out and embrace
unconventional travel and seek your own adventures. If your travel is anything like mine,
you’ll learn some invaluable lessons along the way as well.
But before I go any further, I think it’s important to acknowledge and thank my parents, and
especially my mother who is here today, for their direct and indirect support of my travel. I I
would be incredibly remiss if I didn’t recognize that my parents are deeply responsible for
my opportunities to travel, especially as a child and young adult, and as I got older, they
were always there for me in times of need, and encouraged me to go on the adventures I am
excited to share with you today.
I think it’s important to also make it clear that while they absolutely enabled many of my
formative and impactful adventures, there is nothing that I’ve done that’s particularly out of

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reach for anyone in or out of this room, especially with the way some of my trips went, as
you’ll soon find out.
Travel as a Child
When I was a kid, my parents brought me to far-off, exotic places such as the Poconos in
Pennsylvania, Mystic, Connecticut, and the magical land of New York City.
As a child these places were truly as exotic as the trips we took to Florida and the Caribbean. I
remember being as enamored with experiencing palm trees in winter on a trip to Florida as I
was with swimming in a heated outdoor pool in the snow, obviously also in winter, on a trip
near the Catskills. Every experience at this age was impactful and taught me invaluable
lessons that impacted all future travel.
I learned that there were many amazing adventures throughout my childhood that took place
in the New York City metro area, and what I’ve come to realize is that if I had had these
experiences in far-away places, I don’t think I would’ve gained anything extra, as I wasn’t yet
able to process what it takes to travel abroad. Although I didn’t fully connect the dots until
much later in life, these childhood experiences were critically important in my development as
a person, as they fostered a curiosity and passion for discovery, and a sense of wonderment.
Young Adult Travel Intro
I know most of you are between the ages of 18 & 20. Now that you’re in college you’re
experiencing new degrees of freedom and responsibility, which is awesome, exciting, and
sometimes a bit scary and confusing, at least it was for me. If I speak from personal

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experience, which is the point of this presentation, I know that in that period in my life, I rarely
listened to anybody offering me wise advice. Some people would say I’m still like that today,
but regardless, I don’t want to presume that any of you will follow my advice now. That being
said, I’ve got some advice that you may not want to hear, but I want you to take seriously.
Just like Jon Snow, you know nothing, yet, and that’s OK. The rest of us didn’t know anything
either at that age, and some of us still don’t now. My point is this is not about intelligence,
which is absolutely important, but something arguably more important: experience. That’s
life; you’ll gain experience.
My advice to you is not to pretend you know more than you do. It’s inauthentic, and people
that really do know can see through it, which could set you back in unexpected ways and force
you to compensate just to get back to where you started. I learned these lessons from my
travel, not from my everyday life, which in a way is unfortunate, but I’m nonetheless thankful
for learning it eventually.
Sometimes it took embarrassing and/or difficult situations to learn these lessons, but
embarrassment can be a great, albeit painful teacher. I’ve had my fair share of embarrassing
moments in my life and have come to appreciate how they’ve helped me grow. I’m going to
share a few with you so that you can hopefully avoid making some of the mistakes I made, but
making mistakes is part of being a young adult. They’re to be expected, so if you do make
them, don’t be so hard on yourself. Life goes on.

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Young Adult Travel
Like my childhood, a lot of my teenage travel was to tropical places, such as Florida and the
Caribbean, but also included trips around the East Coast and into Canada for hockey camps
and tournaments.
It’s actually the early Canadian experiences I think about more often than not. The tropical
places were way more beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but you can’t compare Jamaica or
Puerto Rico to Fort Erie or Guelph, Ontario, no offense to Southern Ontario.
Of the stories I can share from these trips, one that stands out is going to breakfast in my hotel
in Fort Erie and getting indignant when the waitress didn’t know what American cheese was.
How was I supposed to have an omelet if I couldn’t get the world’s best cheese-like product? I
made it known that she - and all of Canada – were ridiculous for not knowing what American
cheese was since we were literally 10 minutes from the border. I think I also got Canadian
bacon with my breakfast, which would’ve been icing on the cake, if the cake was layered with
processed pork.
I have other cringe-worthy memories that perfectly illustrate the brilliance of a traveling
teenager, like when I was in the Canadian capital, Ottawa, for Canada Day. I was there with
my local hockey team for a tournament, and on Canada Day, just like Independence Day, the
country parties, especially in the nation’s capital. Picture a bunch of 16-year-old Long Island
hockey boys singing the Star-Spangled Banner on a packed city bus heading into town.

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Obviously, we made a lot of friends on that bus full of Canadians. They may have a reputation
for being polite, but I know we were booed loudly.
Why do I share these 2 stories? Because I don’t think they’re unusual for a kid that has very
little practical life experience, and who thinks he comes from the most important place on
earth, to think that being rude to strangers in public is a funny trait, as opposed to just being
an un-funny and rude. There are other lessons here about how citizens of other countries
view themselves, view their neighbors, and more specifically how they view the US and
Americans. There are stereotypes for each culture – it’s best to present a positive American
one, in my opinion.
UK Tour
My family took a tour around the UK right around my 18th
birthday. It was my first real trip
overseas, and generally speaking was an absolutely amazing experience. The only memory
that I personally shake my head at is when I drank with my parents for the first time, since 18
is the legal drinking age in the UK.
I feel this is a good time to acknowledge that a lot of countries around the world have a
drinking culture, which I think is generally problematic. In some countries, alcoholism is
ignored or excused, while in others it runs rampant. I’ve never been much of a drinker, even
when I was younger, but what I have come to understand is that there are lots of cultures that
embrace alcohol as part of their culture and incorporate the alcohol into their customs.
Generally speaking, I think this is something that’s unique and interesting, but can also get out

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of control quite easily. It’s sometimes hard to understand where the line is when there are
drinks that are considered cultural, like Scotch in Scotland, but for me on this trip, I’ll simply
say that I proved I was not yet mature enough to drink responsibly.
The next alcohol-related story comes a few years later, and I’ll tell you right now, it’s all about
me not getting drunk.
Anyway, that UK trip is more important to me because of the pretext of why we went in the
first place. Long story short, my mother, who is here today, was really into some tea from a
company in York, a city in northern England. When she looked to buy the tea and ship it to
New York, the shipping costs were exorbitant, and not worth it. So, what did she do? She
booked a family vacation that allowed us to visit said tea shop.
I absolutely adore this trip and this story because there are some important lessons that I try
to apply to my travel and even to my life. I love that there is nothing not worth traveling for.
If you have a hobby or an interest or even just a whim, travel for it. Might it be ridiculous?
Hopefully! Will you have fun? Almost definitely! Will it be memorable regardless?
Absolutely! I’ve certainly applied that lesson to my life with some of my interests, such as
music – which I’ll tell you about next, hockey – which is a major part of this presentation, Star
Trek – which I won’t mention at all other than now so that I don’t lose half of you, and
wouldn’t you know it, tea, just like my mother and this trip. I too love tea, and have even
worked in the tea industry at multiple points in my life. I’ve been able to incorporate tea into
a lot of my travel, whether it was the purpose of the trip or not.

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LIYO
My next real trips abroad during young adulthood were both related to playing percussion
with the Long Island Youth Orchestra in the summer between graduating high school and
starting college, so 2002, and the following summer after my freshman year of college, 2003.
The first trip in July 2002 started in Maine, and continued to Nova Scotia & Newfoundland,
then we flew across to England, which I had just been to a few months earlier, followed by
Norway, Sweden & Denmark. The following July began in Alaska and came down the Alaskan
coast into British Columbia, specifically Vancouver & Victoria, before re-entering the US &
visiting Seattle, Hawaii and San Francisco.
Being a recent high school graduate, I proved my new-found freedom and responsibility at this
age by getting my first travel tattoo while in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada – not exactly the
epicenter of skin art – and especially not in 2002. Once again, Canada was the country of un-
wise decisions for me. Keep in mind, this is how people looked in 2002. It was a dark time in
human history.
To be clear, while I don’t think it was the most responsible decision I could make, mostly
because I asked random strangers where I could find a tattoo parlor, and when I got there I
picked something out of a book, I truly don’t regret it. I can’t, since I’ve gotten a majority of
my tattoos on my travels. I never share pictures of my tattoos, but the story requires it, in my
opinion, especially because I’m sure some of you have noticed the one on my arm here, and
might’ve been curious about any others. The take-away I hope to leave you with is not that I

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feel super cool showing off my tattoos, because I don’t, I feel ridiculous, it’s that these have
become intertwined with the stories of my travel experiences, and in many ways they’ve
enhanced the adventure.
These two summer orchestra trips are more significant in my life than just a tattoo, though.
Combined, they brought me to some of the most beautiful places on earth. Not just the
obvious ones like Alaska and Hawaii, but also Norway, which stands out for its incredible fjords
and green countryside. It was also the first time I visited a country with a different first
language – sort of – and the first time I got to see geologic features dramatically different from
what we have on Long Island and along the East Coast. The fjords of Norway & the mountains
of Alaska were breath-taking for me, whereas Oahu was less exciting, comparatively, because
we’re certainly no stranger to beaches here and I had already gained a familiarity with the
tropics, as you saw earlier. I was a little jaded by tropical beaches, which is unfortunate in
certain aspects, but something I’ll discuss again in a little while.
In case you were confused by the “sort of” from before, it’s not because the level of English in
the Scandinavian countries is high - which it is - but because I had visited Montreal and Quebec
City twice in high school, and French is the official language of the province - not English -
even though it’s in Canada. Quebec also considers itself a nation within a nation, which is too
complicated to explain right now. There are stories from those 2 trips to Quebec, but not
enough time to share. All you should know is that Canada brought out a lot of stupidity in me,
so much so, that I now live in Quebec City.

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Getting back on track to the orchestra tours, I gained a lot of insights in how to travel quickly,
efficiently, yet still have an element of controlled chaos to add some excitement. I came to
really love and appreciate trips that hit multiple destinations and required strategic planning
and time-maximization. That’s a skill that definitely took development, and clearly wasn’t
honed yet, since when I made that return to England on that first tour, just a few months after
that family vacation, I went back to the department store Harrod’s instead of visiting the truly
incredible Tower of London or British Museum – and proceeded to buy nothing, in case you
were wondering. Thankfully I’ve been back to London a bunch and made it to both eventually.
Also, I made it back to York, and bought about $200 worth of tea from the same shop we
visited just a few months earlier. Clearly that lesson hit home before the time-maximization
lesson did. Those lessons would come a few years later.
Transition into Semi-Adult Travel
The most significant catalyst in my transition from young adulthood to semi-adulthood was
here at St. Joe’s in the Spring of 2006. I was walking the halls of this building when I passed by
a flyer advertising internship positions at the New York Islanders, my favorite team growing
up. Being the reasonable person that I am, I ripped the flyer off the wall to ensure that I had a
greater probability of getting the position. 5 months later I was interning with the corporate
partnerships team. As my internship was coming to an end, I was approached by Angela
Ruggiero, director of the Islanders Children’s Foundation – and more importantly, one of the
most decorated American hockey players of all time, who has since been inducted into the

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Hockey Hall of Fame. Anyway, I was approached by Angela to assist her with the Project Hope
initiative that was established by the Islanders’ then owner, Charles Wang. Of course, I
jumped at the opportunity, and just a few weeks after my internship had ended, I found
myself on a 13-hour flight to Shanghai. I was clearly not in Kansas anymore. [video]
It was here in China, specifically in the cities of Harbin, Qiqihar, Jiamisu, and Beijing, that I
experienced the first real culture shock of my life. All of my travel experiences before this trip
were special, memorable and taught me certain important lessons, as you saw, but nothing
compared to this.
Sure, the donkeys walking in the street caught my attention, but that wasn’t it. Sure, the
seafood and shellfish delicacies that were still moving on my plate were not appetizing, to say
the least, especially considering my food fussiness. It wasn’t even the random calls to my
hotel room asking if I wanted a massage, as generous an offer as that was. It was way more
basic, way more obvious, and yet something we totally take for granted in this part of the
world: toilets.
I will never forget the feeling of walking into restrooms like these while visiting some local
schools around Heilongjiang. Little did I know at that point in my life that this would prepare
me for the decade to come.
But in early 2007, this was not something I was emotionally equipped for, and quite honestly,
not something I was sure I could physically do either. There were a number of questions I
wasn’t willing to ask regarding how I was supposed to accomplish the tasks at hand. This was a

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level of vulnerability and embarrassment I had to overcome without warning or training,
unlike when I first learned how to use a western toilet when I was a toddler.
Dorothy’s journey through Oz had nothing on this. At least she had guides.
In fairness, so did I. We had a translator and handlers with us at all times. We even had police
escorts through the cities and were welcomed like heroes. It was all quite surreal and, in some
ways, difficult for my relatively inexperienced brain to process. I went from zero to 100 way
too fast.
But my trip to China was formative in more substantial ways. This was my first international
work trip, and it was such a unique one, running coaching clinics on behalf of a professional
hockey team while trying to build and improve an international charitable program.
But as I said, I was still relatively young and unsure of how to conduct myself in an
international business setting and didn’t realize that this is something that requires research,
training and experience. Ultimately, I look back at my time in China as mostly embarrassing
yet full of invaluable lessons learned the hard way. I was blunt and brash. I showed and
expressed a lot of frustration at the challenges we faced on our trip. Most of my frustrations
were relating to the rigorous schedule that had me on the ice for at least 4 hours a day – which
is exhausting – and were sandwiched between official meetings and meals that required me to
drink more alcohol than I was comfortable drinking.
My nickname on this trip became “no gan-bei” because I would consistently refuse to partake
in the local custom of going around the table, making a toast, and then pounding a glass of

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what I came to think of as fire water. I’m going to assume that most of you are not aficionados
of Chinese alcohol, and so let me explain this to you quickly. Pi jeo is beer, bai jeo is hell.
What I mean is it’s like moonshine-strength sake with the harshness of a cheap whiskey,
served in what looks like a light fluid bottle and is probably what lighter fluid actually tastes
like. I think it’s safe to interpret what I’m saying as I don’t like bai jeo, but I was mostly
annoyed because I was expected to drink a half-bottle’s worth, then get back on the ice to
coach, before heading to bed late, waking up early, travelling to the next city and do it again. I
still get riled up just thinking about that. So what’d I do? I refused. I tried to explain. I tried
to make excuses. Nobody was going to pour it down my throat, but I can tell you there was a
lot of pressure, and when I get pressured, I get more stubborn, which was not received well.
That was one of many mistakes I learned about after the fact. I often think about a quote
attributed to Lao Tzu: “He who knows does not speak, he who speaks does not know.” I spoke
a lot on this trip and don’t think it served me well. I should’ve listened more and spoken less.
unfortunately, I didn’t realize that until I got back home.
Oh, did I mention I was still a student here at St. Joe’s at this time? Well I was, and quite
coincidentally, one of my classes here that semester was international business, and one of
our assignments was to research the culture of an assigned country. I got South Korea, a
proudly distinct culture from China, even though they’re neighbors, but with certain
similarities that I was able to extrapolate and apply to my recent experiences in China.

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One important take-away from this assignment that resonated most with me was that while
yes, each society and culture has its customs and norms, obviously, if I want to achieve my
goals, whatever they may be, it’s contingent upon me to research those customs and norms
and make a concerted effort to adapt. I couldn’t expect everyone to adapt to me.
From that point on, I vowed that I would never-again visit a foreign land as ignorant as I was in
China. I would do as much research as I could in advance of arrival, and try to be more open-
minded, more understanding, more sensitive, and more flexible.
I was able to apply that lesson just 2 years later when I was trying to figure out what to do with
my life once my time with the Islanders came to an end. Out of nowhere I received a random
email from the aforementioned Angela Ruggiero – who was also no longer with the Islanders,
as she had another Olympic medal to win. The email put the Himalayan region of Ladakh on
my radar. Ladakh is currently the un-named region in the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir. I
say currently because they’re in the process of becoming their own territory while the
Kashmiri conflict continues.
The email itself was about a mutual contact who was having conversations with a school in
this community, which was less interesting to me than the place itself. I had never heard of
Ladakh before, and so I obviously did more research and was instantly captivated by this
remote, Himalayan, Tibetan Buddhist region in a Muslim state, in a Hindu country, that just so

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happens also plays hockey and needed coaches. I knew I had to go and so I started a
fundraising campaign and began collecting hockey equipment to donate to a local school.
Just 5 weeks after learning about Ladakh for the first time, I was about to disembark from my
3rd consecutive flight within 36-hours, literally zig-zagging through mountains during the
landing. I arrived in Ladakh out of breath from both the scenery and the altitude, exhausted
from jetlag, and once I dropped my bags off, ignored the advice of literally everyone there and
jumped on the ice to play hockey in this magnificent location. I stopped once the massive
altitude headache hit me, and then slept for nearly 24 hours.
I tried to put my whole self into Indian mode in advance of this trip. I started going to more
Indian restaurants, I went to bed listening to Tibetan Buddhist meditation music, but most
importantly, I read guidebooks on India and watched Slumdog Millionaire in the theater twice
before heading out, which actually helped a lot! I landed as prepared as I could be, but India
has a way of reminding you that you know nothing, just like Jon Snow, and changing your view
on how the world works. There are things you see and experience that are sometimes
impossible to explain, and so you’re left with the duality of a confusing, yet completely
comprehensible explanation: “because India”.
This trip obviously changed my life more than anything that had come before. I remember
feeling in 2009 that everything in my life had led to this pivotal moment, and it was clear that
nothing would be the same again. That trip was supposed to be a month and a half long, but
ended up being 5-months long instead. The reason why is I ended up becoming the head

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coach of India’s national ice hockey team, which required multiple unplanned changes to my
itinerary, such as a trip to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, to participate in
the International Ice Hockey Federation’s Challenge Cup of Asia, a low-level tournament for
developmental programs across the continent.
The tournament may not have gone well – we lost every game that year - but I was thrilled to
visit my 2nd Middle Eastern country and broaden my understanding of the region, as I’d visited
Israel the year before, experienced some incredible landscapes, and met some interesting
people that showed the richness & complexity of the region. I also got another travel tattoo
there.
Abu Dhabi was also a pretty cool and interesting place to celebrate my 25th
birthday, even
though I was solo. I returned to India after the 2 weeks in Abu Dhabi and spent the next
month and a half travelling around the country. It’s on that return to India that I started to
think more heavily about turning what started as an individual volunteer trip into a charitable
non-profit organization with a mission to help via hockey.
This month and a half period was amongst the most exciting of my life. I took incredibly long
train rides all around India – from Delhi to Mumbai, where I got another travel tattoo, & then
from Mumbai to Chennai, way down south. Taking the train around India is the best way to
see the country, the beauty and the less beautiful, but making a reservation is no easy feat.
Just figuring out how to make a reservation, understanding the types of trains there are,

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determining the different classes, which class to reserve – all of these are complicated, and
combined require training and assistance.
From Chennai I went to the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. If you heard about the story of the
missionary who got killed by natives in the Indian Ocean last year, it was in the Nicobar Islands,
which tourists are forbidden to visit. I went to the Andamans and met 3 other guys on the
flight, so we decided to all travel together and go on some of the adventures around the
islands together, from renting bikes, which were upgraded to mopeds after I almost had a sun-
stroke, to going scuba diving and visiting an abandoned British jail and fort that was captured
by the Japanese during WW2. Unfortunately, I also stumbled across a colony of elephants that
were chained up for tourism purposes, something I’m still immensely sad about. After leaving
the islands, I made new friends with another couple, and we decided to travel to Calcutta and
Darjeeling together, but not before I got my first severe case of Delhi belly, which sounds way
cuter than it is.
By the time I had circled back to Delhi, I had come up with The Hockey Foundation name and
set off immediately to establish the organization and buy the domain hockeyfoundation.org,
which was available, amazingly. Once again, I felt like the stars were aligning just for me.
When it was time to finally leave India 3 & a half months after arriving, and 2 full months after
I was originally scheduled to leave, instead of returning home, I was able to arrange for a 45-
day layover in Europe with my airline. The pretense was to represent India at the IIHF World
Hockey Congress in Switzerland, but my actual objective was to fulfill a dream and backpack

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around Europe. For that month and a half, I traveled around the continent by train, relying on
the Couch Surfing website to find a place to sleep. Keep in mind, this was before Airbnb, so I
stayed in people’s homes for free because they were cool and liked to meet travelers and
didn’t care about money. I miss those days.
My trip began in Munich, Germany. I wanted to kiss the group upon exiting the airport.
Imagine spending over 3 months in one of the world’s most famously polluted countries and
then arriving in what is one of the cleanest. It felt like I had landed in heaven and heaven had
delicious beer and bratwurst. I then hit the Swiss cities of Zurich, Bern (where the conference
was), then to Lyon, Nice & Marseille in France, before arriving in Genoa in Northwestern Italy.
It’s in Genoa that my trip came to a crossroad. I had been messaging people on the site
throughout my trip and was waiting for responses from people either to the south, such as
Florence, Pisa & Rome, or from the east, specifically Venice. The first response came from
someone in Pisa, and so I boarded the next train south. Pisa allowed me to see Florence, the
walled-in city of Lucca, stay in a centuries old home strait out of Under the Tuscan Sun, and
eventually Rome, the first city on this trip that required a hostel stay. From Rome I took a
ferry to Barcelona that was about to celebrate their European soccer championship, and then
re-entered France to spend a few days in Bordeaux while they celebrated their French soccer
league championship. From Bordeaux I made it to Paris, and it was in Paris that I pulled off a
feat I still get goosebumps thinking about.

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This trip began at the end of April of 2009, and as I was arriving in Paris on June 1st,
I realized
that June 6th was coming up, and that I was pretty close to Normandy. 2009 was the 65th
Anniversary of D-Day, and so the heads of state of the US, Canada, the UK & France were all
going to be in attendance to commemorate this event with surviving veterans.
I had to be there. It was too special. Too important. Too coincidental.
I tried to walk into the American Embassy in Paris to find out how to go but needed an
appointment I didn’t have. I received the phone number from the security guard but couldn’t
find a phone for nearly 45 minutes. When I finally got to one, someone at the Embassy told
me to go to the website, which seems obvious in retrospect, but wasn’t for some reason. I
visited the site, emailed the address listed, and received an automatic response saying that all
invites had been given already & I was too late.
Nope. Not acceptable. I wrote a short but emotional email explaining why they needed to
make an exception for me and less than 24-hours later, I received another email with the
formal invitation to the ceremony and literally ran along the Seine crying with joy. A few days
later I was in Normandy for this special event, which remains one of my fondest memories of
life to date.
The trip finished with stops in Amsterdam, Berlin & Prague before I finally returned home to
resume normal life – whatever that is. In total, I visited 29 cities across 6 countries, and
throughout this journey I was meeting up and hanging out with other travelers, making friends
along the way, going on adventures together before parting ways & vowing to keep in touch

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over the years. Many of us did & we reconnect whenever we’re passing through someone’s
home town, which I absolutely love.
But normal life was not in my cards. Remember, earlier that year I set about founding The
Hockey Foundation, which I obviously did. It was a long, arduous process, to establish the
organization, but once it was up and running, I was able to return to India via the organization,
and as Head Coach of Team India, 8 more times to date, and counting.
My first few trips back to India were each significant. In 2011 I returned with a videographer
and got to observe how his first trip affecting his life. It was a profound experience for him as
well, and when he returned home he went into a little funk because his life in the US was so
comfortable, while life in India is vibrant and intense and happening everywhere all around
you. For me, I got to experience what it’s like to return to such a remote and special region – a
place I couldn’t believe I reached the 1st
time – and set about coaching and donating
equipment on behalf of an organization, not an individual, which was an important shift.
The trip was full of highlights, such as driving 12-hours through the zig-zagging, single-lane
mountain roads without a railing to protect you, and then getting stranded for a week in a
more remote village within this remote region because a snowstorm buried that mountain
road completely.
The following year, Team India hosted the first international hockey tournament and won its
first game ever – on my birthday – which made it extra special.

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2013 began as a trip with high expectations, as we had a lot of equipment to donate and a
larger group of volunteers coming for the first time, including the person who would
eventually introduce me to my wife the following year in Montreal. But that trip stands out
because of all the ways I got hurt.
First up was getting bitten by a dog, which required 5 precautionary rabies shots, since the risk
of rabies is serious (100% mortality rate), breaking my nose while playing hockey in Thailand,
which I played through and let be for a few weeks, and finally, finishing the trifecta of fun, was
an infection that required a procedure to remove. Why was I in Thailand? That was where the
Challenge Cup of Asia was held that year.
Why do I share all of these seemingly terrible things with you? Because they’re a reality of
travel and the ultimately make great stories once the dust has settled. They are an important
part of this ridiculous adventure. It’s honestly hard not to smile when telling these things!
Achievements are not always glamorous. Struggle is inevitable.
The 2014, 15 & 16 trips to India have become a blur in my memory, which is a fascinating
experience in its own right. Being jaded by such a remote, exotic place is something that
should be appreciated, because few people can claim to be jaded about something like that. I
try to remember. Over those years we donated thousands and thousands of pieces of
equipment. We had more and more coaches each year, with more camps running in more
cities around India, including in the southern state of Kerala, but there were numerous
frustrations and challenges along the way. We were having a lot of trouble getting the support

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from some of the local clubs, and the national organization changed leadership, creating
conflict where there was previously partnership. These challenges forced me to take a hard
look at whether I had appropriately understood the region, the country, and the people. I had
to regularly ask myself whether or not I was applying the lessons I thought I had learned
previously about international cooperation, knowing full and well that international relations
can be complicated for many reasons, so it was unreasonable to expect things would go
smoothly each year. The mission of The Hockey Foundation, and my personal philosophy, is to
help via hockey. But what does it mean to help? These challenges exist every day with non-
profits around the country and around the world. Can helping also hurt? That’s certainly not
what we want, but sometimes it has been painful – not just on the psyche, but as you saw in
the pictures before, physically as well!
I remained behind the bench for Team India in 2014 & 2015, visiting Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan the
first year, via Kazakhstan. I had neve ever thought about visiting Kyrgyzstan or Kuwait in my
life, but hockey allowed me that opportunity, and I’m super grateful. Bishkek was a fascinating
city that is in the center of Asia and benefited from being the center of the Silk Road. They
had a diverse population with different Asian origins and delicious food. Similarly, Kuwait is in
a strategic position on the Persian (or Arabia) Gulf, which is part of why Iraq invaded in what
became the Persian Gulf War. This has left a noticeable scar, and as my 3rd
Middle Eastern
country, it was great to be able to compare it to the comparatively wealthier United Arab
Emirates and reinforce my limited understanding of the region and not assume that the entire

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Middle East is a homogeneous one, because it certainly is not. Life across the region varies
dramatically, and I’m thankful for the opportunity to get even a limited perspective. That was
also the last time I was behind the bench for Team India in the Challenge Cup of Asia, as I
decided to pass off the responsibilities to coaches I recruited via The Hockey Foundation. The
time was right to move on with my life.
But I wasn’t done with my adventures!
The final one I’ll share with you was less than 2 years ago. This picture is of a ceremonial puck
drop at a hockey game was taken at over 14,000 feet above sea-level in a part of Ladakh that’s
close to the Chinese border in Tibet. It’s a special picture because The Hockey Foundation set
the Guinness World Record for the Highest Altitude Hockey Game as part of our charitable
mission to change lives around the world via ice hockey. To date, we’ve now donated over
10,000 pieces of equipment (and books) around the world, and not just in India. We’ve
coached thousands of boys and girls of all ages, regardless of their backgrounds and situations,
and as part of this particular event, donated the boards in the background to a rink that was
under construction for over a decade, and was finally finished with this donation.
When I look at this picture, the first thought that comes to mind is the cliché, “what doesn’t
kill you makes you stronger” because I don’t really think about that image or the
accomplishment itself, quite honestly. What I actually think about is all of the hardships and
challenges I had to face leading up to and during this event and the stress of trying to manage
something that ultimately required the support of the Indian government and military. This is

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the image that resonates most with me. Now don’t get me wrong, there were so many
positives surrounding this event that I’m so incredibly proud of, but I personally feel that they
wouldn’t hold their own if they weren’t counter balanced by the negatives. It’s like yin & yang.
You can’t appreciate the dark without the light, or vice versa. There’s another cliché, but I
think it’s true!
I also think about my physical condition during this event. High altitude is one of those
concepts that’s hard to grasp, like the size of the galaxy. As we come to the end of this
presentation, and some of you may be a little tired, I want you all to take a deep breath with
me right now. [breathe] Now imagine playing a sport as physically demanding as hockey and
when you go to take a breath you find yourself receiving almost none, so you begin gasping for
air and get a panicked feeling like you’re suffocating. It’s a scary feeling at first, and then you
get used to it and acclimate. During this event, I had perfect storm of ailments: altitude
sickness, Delhi belly & jet lag, to name a few. I was severely sick in bed 5 days before one of
the biggest events of my life, being taken care of by the people with whom I had built
relationships and friendships with over many years, which is something that I will treasure
forever.
Of course, this makes me think of another cliché, which is actually not so much a cliché as it is
a Buddhist philosophy: “Life is suffering”, which is an English translation from the 4 Noble
Truths and something I’ve found quite helpful and motivated me to play the whole game for
the event, which was certified a Guinness World Record a few months later. Here's the

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certificate to affirm that. Even the Hockey Hall of Fame felt it was an accomplishment worth
keeping on display all last year.
I’ve shared some of my travels & adventures with you with the sincere hope that these stories
inspire you in some way. They haven’t always been smooth, and sometimes they may seem
unbelievable or too far out of reach. I’ve been lucky at times, I’ve been at the right place at
the right time, but I’ve always worked hard to create opportunities for myself and capitalize on
those chances when they presented themselves. I’ve come to develop an internal question
regarding big decisions, where I ask myself if I would regret doing something more or less than
I would regret not doing it, which is a deliberately biased way of reinforcing me to jump and do
it. I encourage you to choose the adventure. Travel and experience as much as you can.
Before you all leave, I want to take this opportunity to directly thank my mother for all of
her love, guidance and support over the years, and present her with my Guinness World
Record official certificate.