Although I am traveling as one person, I have not been alone.  There is no way the trip would have been as enjoyable without the help of dozens of friends new and old along the way.  On this (American) Thanksgiving, I’d like to take the opportunity to acknowledge and thank the people who have aided me in various ways.  I am indebted to you all.

Throughout this blog, I have almost always referred to people by their first names only, but I am breaking with that here because of the duplication of names.  Let me know if you’d like to have your name truncated.

Without further delay, and in no particular order, many thanks to:

Jon Davis, Stacy Spensley, Tyler Hicks-Wright, Angela Sylvester, David MacDonald, Todd Bechard, Ken Warren, Sean Leahy, Marcy Deering, Steve Cameron, Tom Keacher, Sue Keacher #1, Sue Keacher #2, Andrea Keacher, Anderson Spensley, Craig Robinson, Brennan Wall, John Shen, Scott Terek, Dave Johnson, Eli Hicks-Wright, Justin Durivage, Amanda Behm, Stuart Ford, Jared Farmer, Megan Farmer, Alex Halfpenny, Phil Scott, Doug in Maine, Dave in Maine, Bob Berube, Tom Mutak, Scott Molan, Simon Roberts, Whitney Carlson, Scot Fredo, Greg Selover, Dan Merrill, Andrew Vitalis, Anthony Maggio, Charley Walters, Chris Steller, Spencer in Las Vegas, Cosmin Munteanu, Greg Hicks, Travis Tomsu, Carolyn Sheehan, Tom Heely, Tyrone in Newfoundland, Brian McHugh, Nancy in Whitehorse, Art in Whitehorse, Sandy Morrison, Jim in Halifax, Felicia Yap, Leo Carter, Jamie Moore, Pete Lawrence, Dennis Leary, Sarah Aitchison, the grizzly bears in Denali NP, Matt Bahm, Kurt Stoodley, Craig Campbell, Alex in Toronto, Carol Bell-Smith, Erin Lannan, Kristen Yu, Wes Harrison, Mitch Cormier, Bill McGuire, Brian Kiefer, Vimal Patel, Steph Darwish, Mike Uzan, Adam Taylor, Valerie Hoknes, Terry Hoknes, Adrian Mizzi, Frankie Fuhrman, Phil Paschke, Sue Paschke, Masaru Oka, Adam Davis, Dave Kearsey,Chris Trilby, Katie Sieck, Greg Davis, Seamus O’Regan, Ted Lyman, Bridget Mayer, Barbara Beach, Joe in Alabama, Roy Nielsen, Trevor in Las Vegas, Bill in Connecticut, Amy in Alberta, Erin Bolton, Mike Doyle, Jon from the Wild, John Gross, Darren Wolfson, Troy Thompson, Glen Andresen, Aaron Sickman, Cory Effertz, Ryan Snyder, Catherine Snyder, Josh Rich, Karen Garcia, Blake Ingerslew, Jason Rodzik, Ted Wojtysiak, Todd O’Dell, Jerome Bergquist, Erik Martinson, Chris Vanderbeek, Kevin Kurtt…

…and everybody who has had conversations with me or played hockey with me along the way.

Where I've met friends is where I've been. To put this in perspective, each one of those little red things represents somewhere that I spent at least one night during the trip. (Click to enlarge)

If I forgot to list your name, I am very, very sorry, and I meant no offense.  I will try to keep this list updated as I discover omissions and complete the final month of the trip.

I’d also like to thank everybody who has offered assistance to me that I was not able to accept.

One last name-related tease.  I have a title for the book now, but you’ll have to wait until the final post of the trip to hear it. 🙂

The sun had set, and I had 100 miles to go.  Sam’s wipers were on high, but the rain was so intense that they did little to keep the world from looking like a million tiny dots.  My complete focus was on driving.  I knew from the numerous signs along the road that moose, thousands of them, lurked in the shadows.   I should have waited it out, but doing so would have made me miss the overnight ferry back to Nova Scotia.

Three days earlier, I had arrived on Newfoundland, the penultimate province in my trip.  I was giddy with excitement.  Newfoundland had a certain mystique in my mind that had only been intensified during my time in the other provinces.

Port aux Basques, NL at dusk, eh b'y?

All across Canada, people had told me about how wonderful everybody was in Newfoundland.  Sure, they might have teased the “Newfies” a bit, much as some Americans characterize certain people who live in Appalachia as “hillbillies,” but any such mockery seemed always to be followed by notes of admiration.  Newfoundlanders, they said, were some of the nicest people on the planet.  So went my experience.

While I did not have the legendary adventure of being invited into a home for a cup’a tea, many little encounters combined to give the flavor of the culture.  There was Gerard, a kind old man in his 70s who I found admiring Sam in the parking lot of a grocery store in Deer Lake.  Then there was Tom, a retired teacher with a red convertible in Gros Morne National Park who chatted me up about many things, including the virtues of high-yield American REITs.  And of course there was Pete, who chatted me up about photography for the better part of an hour in Corner Brook’s Brewed Awakening coffee shop.

It's a 5+ hour ferry ride between Port aux Basques, NL and North Sydney, NS. Plenty of time to engage in some self photography, eh b'y?

Was there hockey?  Well, there was certainly interest in hockey.  The local paper, the Western Star, wrote up a piece about my trip, and the local CBC station interviewed me at the rink in Corner Brook, where I would go on to play at the lunchtime skate.

People were as nice at the arena as everywhere else I went on the island.  Turn-out was a bit light, just five skaters and myself, but we made the most of the situation.

The arena itself was slightly annoying, in that they were the second arena on the trip (the first being in Montreal) to charge me, a goalie, for playing in a drop-in skate.

I felt a bit guilty about my irritation when one of the skaters, a man named Tyrone, came up to me after the skate, wished me luck, and told me that he had a son of his own.  He then pushed $20 into my hand, which I attempted to decline, but he insisted I take it.  “I know it gets expensive, being on the road,” he said.  I was touched by his generosity — for he did not seem to be a wealthy man — and I thanked him profusely.

A rainbow near the road near Stephenville, NL, eh b'y?

The only problem I ran into on Newfoundland was the dialect.  Most of the people on Newfoundland seemed to speak standard Canadian English without much of an accent, but a few of the guys sounded like they had just gotten off the boat from Ireland.

One man in particular tried to talk with me in the parking lot of a Tim Hortons while I was tending to the air in one of Sam’s tires.  It took considerable effort to figure out that his name was Russ and that he worked as a hunting guide.  I think he was trying to convince me to go on a moose hunting trip, but I’m not certain.

Small building seen near Rocky Harbor, NL. This was as far from Port aux Basques that I ventured. St. John's will have to wait for another trip, eh b'y?

Fall colors in Corner Brook, NL, eh b'y?

Waterfront view near Norris Point, NL. The hills in the background are part of Gros Morne National Park, eh b'y?

Back on the road, several hours slowly passed,  and still Sam and I were plodding along through the inky black. Unknown danger continued to lurk just beyond the white boundaries of the road.  It was a lonely pursuit, but then a large number of trucks began to appear going opposite my direction.  I looked at the clock; the 7:00 p.m. ferry from the mainland must have arrived not long before.

An orange sodium glow appeared on the horizon and gradually grew to surround me.  I pulled into the ferry dock.  Sam and I had made it safely.

As for the moose?  Well, there were supposed to be 150,000 of them there, but I saw exactly zero during my time on the island.

It’s a question that must be on the minds of goalies everywhere: do goaltending skills translate from sport to sport?  I decided to find out.

Fundamentally, goaltending in all sports is a matter of geometry and timing.  There are obvious differences in the projectiles, net dimensions, and game rules, but the basic idea remains the same: prevent the opposition from scoring by either catching or deflecting the shot.

My friend Tyler (of waterfall and grizzly bear fame) happened to be in New York for the week on business when I arrived in the City.  He had connections to the indoor soccer community from back when he lived there, so he thought that there might be a way to finagle me onto a field for at least a few minutes.

I arrived at Chelsea Piers in the evening.  I had played hockey at the Sky Rink earlier in the day; in my return, I was to experience the field house portion of the expansive complex.

On my walk over from my friend Travis’s apartment in the East 20s, I had stopped by Modell’s on Avenue of the Americas to pick up the only really specialized component in a soccer goalkeeper’s ensemble: gloves.  Fortunately, basic gloves can be had for under $20, so it was nothing like the bank-breaking experience of getting together my current set of hockey goalie kit.

Tyler was subbing for one of the teams playing that hour.  We reached an agreement with the team captain that if the score was decisive in the last few minutes of the game, they’d send me in.  It was not to be; the game was within one goal until an empty-netter was scored in the closing seconds.  I stayed on the sidelines.

Tyler, who actually is a soccer goalkeeper, makes a save on a shot by a celebrity (blue #12). Bonus points if you can identify the celeb.

We were left with a few minutes between the end of that game and the start of the following game.  It wasn’t much time, but it would be better than nothing.  I jogged to the goal and started taking shots.

Since we were on an indoor soccer field, there were immediate similarities to hockey: the field was the size of a rink and was bounded by boards.  There were differences beyond the obvious lack of ice: the goal was set into the back wall instead of being in front of it, the penalty area (where the goalkeeper is privileged) was far larger than the crease, and the net itself was much larger than a hockey net (though smaller than a field soccer goal).

Taking shots felt similar to hockey.  I had to think about angles, predict whether the shots would be high or low, and so on.

Although I wasn’t very aware of it in the moment, inspection of photos from the event shows that I executed the saves themselves in a hockey-esque manner.

Making a save. It kind of looks like I'm trying to butterfly. Note how my ankles are locked: it isn't possible or desirable to have much lateral flex in one's ankles while wearing skates, so my instinct apparently carried over to the turf. (Photo: Tyler)

When shots were low, I butterflied.  When shots were high, I moved into them as if to block with my chest (though in fact I used my hands).

The most notable carryover from hockey was in my feet.  In hockey skates, it isn’t possible or desirable to have one’s ankles bend laterally.  Shoes don’t have the same restrictions, but I think that instinct got the best of me: my ankles were locked in almost all of the photos I have of me playing that night.  It was as if I was trying to have my non-existent skate blades bite the ice.

Again, my trailing foot is not planted. I'm not sure what motivated me to move like this. If a similar shot were coming at me on the ice, I'd probably be using a butterfly slide, and for that my legs would be in entirely different orientations. (Photo: Tyler)

It was nice to have the object coming at me be so large.  A soccer ball appears as a circle about 8.5 inches in diameter.  Compare that to a puck, which, when properly shot, appears as a rectangle 1 inch by 3 inches.

I’m not sure how fast the balls were coming at me on the shots I faced, but they certainly seemed slower than the hockey shots I face on a regular basis.  I did notice the sound of the ball flying through the air more than I notice the sound of the puck doing the same.

So, how was it?  For the few minutes I was out there, it was fun.  Enough fun that I’d like to try it again — hopefully in an actual game.

People often ask me, “Where do you sleep at night? Do you sleep in your car?”  Really — those questions are almost always paired.  Is the rest of the world obsessed with the notion of sleeping in cars?

Anyhow, the answer is that I spread my nights among motels, tent camping, couch surfing, and yes, that one time I tried sleeping in a car.  But that doesn’t really tell you much.  The real challenge is finding places to stay.  So it was with Ottawa.

“Do you have a place to stay in Ottawa?” Steve asked as he opened the car door.

“Not yet,” I said.

I was giving Steve a ride back to his house in Toronto.  It was the night before my Canada AM interview, and we had just got done celebrating a win with Steve’s hockey team at one of his teammate’s restaurants.  Steve was the normal goalie for the Pylons, but he skated out to give me the net.

We pulled up to his house.  Steve hopped out and grabbed his bag from Sam’s back seat.  He paused and said, “I might have a spot for you in Ottawa.  Give me 30 minutes.  Watch for an email.”

I thanked him and said goodbye.  Even though Steve had come through with the Hockey Hall of Fame Resource Centre tour and the hockey game, I was somewhat skeptical that he could find me a place to stay in Ottawa on such short notice.  I would be there the next day.

Any doubts were quickly put to rest.

The next evening, 250 miles to the northeast of Toronto, I showed up in Ottawa at Steve’s aunt Carol’s house.  I had never met Carol before. Mind you, I had met Steve in person only a day earlier.  I knew nothing about Carol and had absolutely no idea what to expect.  Likewise, Carol knew almost nothing about me.

A maple-butter beavertail, minus a bite. Beavertails are often associated with Ottawa, ON. They are delicious and have nothing to do with finding lodging.

There was a great deal of uncertainty on both sides, so Carol heated up the kettle and we chatted over tea.

Carol was in her 60s, but had she not revealed that, I would have thought her not a day over 50.  She was fit, upbeat, and not in any way pretentious.  After talking with her for an hour, I felt as at ease with her as with one of my own aunts.

Her day job was as a profiler for a bank, which I understood to mean that she was involved with vetting deals that the bank might make.  Somehow, that also involved her in diplomatic circles, but that might have simply been a function of her location in Ottawa, Canada’s capital.

As we drank tea — full leaf, prepared in a proper teapot — I asked her how it was that she agreed to host me for the night.  She laughed and smiled, going into the story.

“Steve has always been one of my favorite nephews.  He sent me a text last night asking if one of our family members was in town, since that person often stays at my house when he’s visiting.  I replied back that no, he wasn’t going to behere for a few days.  Steve quickly responded, ‘Great,’ and then immediately called me.”  She took another sip of tea before continuing.

“On the phone, Steve told me that you needed a place to stay for the night in Ottawa, and he asked if I might be able to host you.  I could hear Steve’s girlfriend in the background protesting that he didn’t know you well enough to be making that kind of request.  Something about how the two of you had met for the first time only earlier that day, and how you could be a serial killer or crazy or something.  Nevertheless, Steve ignored her protestations and insisted that you were a good guy and that I would like you.”

I laughed.  “I had similar reservations, since I had no idea who you were or what you were like,” I said. “I just decided to trust Steve.  After all, we’d played hockey together that night, and besides, he’s also a goalie.”

We talked for a while longer, but eventually I had to retire to bed.  I had to be at the CTV Ottawa studios early the next morning.  Carol showed me to the guest bedroom in her house and bade me goodnight.

My head hit the pillow, and seemingly immediately my alarm clock announced the arrival of morning.  I departed before Carol woke.

I had never been interviewed on television before, and I was going to dive in to the deep end: a national show on a major network.  Fortunately, the setting was anything but adversarial.

A man … needs to be recognized. To be questioned, and listened to, and quoted just once. This is very important.

— Juror #9 from “Twelve Angry Men”

I’m not sure how Canada AM found out about the trip, but Kristen, a producer of the show, contacted me via email almost a month before the Puck Daddy story.  My best guess, based on an analysis of server logs, is that either reddit or StumbleUpon was the source.  Regardless, Kristen invited me to talk about my trip on Canada’s most-watched national morning show.

Initially, the interview was supposed to be live, but at the last minute it got bumped to being taped.  That was fine.  Less pressure.  My only concern was that it would never air if it didn’t turn out to be interesting.

I showed up at the main CTV studios in Toronto at about 8:30 a.m, about 20 minutes earlier than needed.  My interview was scheduled to taped at 9:10 a.m. — just after the conclusion of the live show — and I didn’t want to be late.  A young woman (a production assistant, maybe?) met me in the lobby and let me back to the makeup room.  As the world learned in the Nixon-Kennedy debate, even guys were makeup on TV.  Fine by me.  It’s no secret that I don’t have the best skin in the world, but HD cameras are brutal.

After the ladies in the makeup room cut a few years off my face, I went to the green room where Iron Chef Cat Cora’s entourage was watching her live cooking segment.  Or at least, it was nominally about cooking; most of her groupies were actually there to make sure that she pushed a particular line of cookware.

In time, the cooking was done, and with it, the show.  The green room cleared out, and a different PA came in with a wireless lavaliere mic, the better for me to be heard.  A few minutes after that, the first PA came back in and brought me to the Canada AM set.

“Bring your mug,” she told me, gesturing towards my cup full of water. “It will look better if you have one in front of you.”

“Ok.”  Trust the expert, I guess.

I took a seat, and Seamus O’Regan, one of the Canada AM hosts, sat down across from me.  We made small talk for a bit.  I was a bit surprised when he noticed that my brown sweater was an Icebreaker shirt.  “Great shirts,” he said, going on to mention how he had worn them when he went to Antarctica and was impressed by their ability to stay stink-free.  I nodded my agreement, hoping that it wasn’t a subtle message that my shirt was starting to smell; it had been weeks since it had last been washed, such was its anti-stink power.

On Canada AM (like Good Morning America, but in Canada) being interviewed by Seamus O'Regan in Toronto

A producer said, “Ten seconds,” the set went quiet, and the interview began.  Almost immediately a teleprompter problem caused it to stop, and after a quick reset, we began the second attempt.

The interview was about as low-pressure as interviews get, but I still managed to get off into the weeds a bit.  Oh well. Not too bad for my first time on TV.

After a few minutes, the interview wrapped up.  I thanked Seamus, he wished me best of luck on my travels.

I went back to the makeup room to clean off my face.  The PA gave me a different mug as a souvenir, and I went out the door and onto the road.

Me being interviewed on CTV Ottawa Morning Live by Kurt Stoodley in Ottawa

As luck would have it, I got a second chance with TV the next day in Ottawa.  Erin, a producer with CTV Ottawa Morning Live, tweeted me an invitation to appear on that show.  It turned out that CTV stations in certain markets made their own morning shows instead of playing the national Canada AM feed, and Ottawa was one such place.

They had found out about my journey from the Ottawa Citizen story, which was published before I actually made it to Ottawa.  They were unaware of Canada AM’s segment until I told them.

I was struck by how different the local approach was compared to the national program.  There was no makeup room, the lighting was much simpler, and the entire operation seemed more laid back.  That’s not meant to be pejorative — it was really easy to relax on the Morning Live set.

I parked outside the studio, walked in, found that the couch set for the morning show was right next to the door, and sat down on a nearby different couch to wait.  No green room this time.  There was an extensive spread of donuts, muffins, and coffee set out, and I was told to help myself, but I decided to hold off until after the interview lest I spilled on myself.  Speaking of which, I was wearing the same shirt as for the Canada AM interview.

Why did I go with my brown long-sleeved shirt instead of my black long-sleeved shirt?  I did some research ahead of time, and I learned that black isn’t a good color to wear on television.  Earth tones are best.  Brown is an earth tone.

After about 15 minutes, Kurt Stoodley, one of the morning hosts, came over and started talking to me about the trip.  It was a mock interview of sorts, in that he seemed to be testing lines of questioning and probing for interesting anecdotes.  After a little bit of this, we went up on the set and sat down. Less than a minute after that, the interview began. Live. (Posted on YouTube, too.)

Honestly, I find it excruciatingly painful to watch video of myself doing anything.  I’ve mentioned this before with regard to video of me playing hockey, and the same feeling seems to apply to interviews.  I have a very hard time seeing irrefutable proof that my execution in something is flawed.  Still, as with hockey, I know that my interviewing skills will not get better unless I face my errors head-on.

I think the Morning Live interview went much better than my Canada AM interview, mostly because I had the practice of the Canada AM interview behind me.  About four minutes after it started, the interview came to a close.

I grabbed a muffin and some coffee and got myself caffeinated enough to head upstairs to the studios of The Team 1200, a popular Ottawa sports talk radio station.  There, the “3 Guys on the Radio” J.R., Steve, and Jungle Jim talked with me for almost 10 minutes about my trip.  I know that because they posted the recording; in real life, it felt like only a couple of minutes.  Even though it was recorded for posterity, the broadcast itself happened live.

It was my first radio interview (ignoring a token book report back in grade school), and I think it went well.  I haven’t quite found my radio voice yet, but that’s something I can work on.

That left me wondering when the Canada AM interview would air.  It was taped on a Wednesday.  The interview didn’t air Thursday, and it didn’t air Friday.  Monday was a holiday (Canadian Thanksgiving), so the show was reruns.  I gave up hope and figured that somebody had decided the interview wasn’t worthy of broadcast.  Tuesday afternoon, I wrote a short email to Kristen, the Canada AM producer:

Hi Kristen,

Even though it’s looking like my interview is not going to air, I wanted to thank you for the opportunity. I enjoyed being at the studio and seeing how the show is done. If nothing else, I now have a souvenir mug. 🙂

Thanks!

Jeff

To my great surprise, she quickly responded (in part):

Your interview actually aired this morning in the 800 half hour – and it looked great!

Wow!  I had slept through it, but fortunately the CTV News site posted my segment.

So, will that be the last of my TV and radio appearances?  No.  I taped another radio interview a few days ago (not sure when it will air), and I’ve received some indications of interest from a TV station that’s still a bit distant on my path.

Eventually, the attention will die down, but that’s okay.  If I’m ever interviewed again on radio or TV for some reason, I’ll be that much more experienced.