Ted’s Blog

We have many people to thank for their help during this most unusual year in our lives.  Without this help, we couldn’t have pulled this off, let alone had such a great and successful year.

The original inspiration for this trip came from Dick and Patty Simon, who took their family around the world over a decade ago, and generously shared with us their experiences and perspectives.  Also, many, many others were happy to take time to provide us with advice and suggestions about places they’ve traveled.  The only way we can possibly repay such kindness is to do the same for anyone who approaches us.

Long-time family friend Kristie Jochmann, now living in Milwaukee, did so much to help us on our trip.  She managed all sorts of logistical things for us during our travels.  And she worked tirelessly to make our baseball efforts a big success — finding teams to meet, setting up the meetings, and making sure the hats and equipment we were donating made it to the recipients.  The challenges of working with customs officials throughout the world are enormous, and Kristie made everything happen flawlessly.

We could not have made this trip without the great assistance of Jacqui McCoy, Kate Bragg, Jayne Casey, and Maria Cella of Paul-McCoy Family Office Services.  Historically, they have handled all sorts of tax and financial issues for us, but went above and beyond during our year abroad.

Our travel planners, Samantha (Sam) McClure and Maggie Harshbarger of Small World Travel in Austin, Texas, took on the challenge of planning out this trip with very little lead time.  They worked tirelessly to put together our itinerary, and let us focus on our travels, instead of trying to pull together all sorts of complicated logistics from the road (generally from a third-world country).  While there were some bumps in the proverbial road during this trip, we really appreciate everything that SWT did for us.   This amazing experience would not have been possible without them.

We loved working on our blogs and website as we traveled.  We couldn’t have pulled that off without great technical help from David Cancel, Andy Payne, and Julia Holland.  Julia runs a small consulting firm in California (Blue Penguin Consulting) and really took care of so many things on the fly.  We’ll have a lasting cyber-memory of our trip, and couldn’t have possibly pulled all of this together without such great help.

All of our family members, especially our mothers, were so supportive during our travels.  Not seeing grandchildren for most of a year is not the easiest thing to be enthusiastic about, but they were so excited for us and our adventure, which made the trip a joy.  And special thanks to the Yandow’s for taking care of our fifth family member, our dog Scallop, who couldn’t make the trip with us, but had a great home in Needham for the past ten months!

Finally, we want to thank the many thousands of people we met along the way.  People everywhere were just incredibly kind and enthusiastic, and helped enrich our trip in so many ways.   It was a great privilege for us to learn so much about the lives of people throughout our great world, and we thank the people who shared so much with us.

And, now that we’re back, we will thank in advance everyone who will help us with re-entry to a normal life.  We suspect we won’t adjust all that readily to it, but our family and friends here mean so much to us, and we hope they’ll be tolerant of this wayward family returning to life in the U.S.

On a memorable Saturday night, August 16th, we were fortunate enough to be a part of the Boston Red Sox pre-game ceremonies at Fenway Park.  We had kept the Red Sox up to date on our around-the-world trip, particularly the baseball aspect.  And they had helped us initially with a set of overseas contacts that we pursued to find the right groups to meet with.

We were lucky in that the night before’s game was rained out.  Our game had one brief shower around the third inning, but otherwise had gorgeous weather.  We got there early, and were able to go down on the field to watch batting practice.  Gibson got Vernon Wells’ autograph, and we got great looks at many of the players, including David Ortiz.  And I for one was relieved to go to Fenway without the prospect of watching Manny Ramirez, and loved watching Jason Bay.

Before the game, they put a few of the photographs from our trip up on the scoreboard.  I’m not sure how many of the fans knew what the context was, but it was exciting for us to see some of the kids we had given hats and equipment to featured at Fenway Park.   I wish that the many kids we had met along the way could have been there to see their own photos in an American baseball park.

The highlight of the night for us was having Gibson throw out the first pitch.  They gave him the choice of throwing from in front of the mound, or throwing from the regulation location.  He opted to throw from where the pro baseball players pitch.  The first pitch took place just a couple of minutes before the start of the game, so the park was almost at capacity.  And with more than 30,000 people looking on, Gibson wound up and threw a strike from the same mound where many great pitchers over the year have stared down at batters.  He left the field beaming, and it was a great moment for all of us.

I got several e-mails during the game from friends who were at Fenway that night by coincidence and had watched the pre-game ceremony.  One came from Ross Garber, who was at the game with his son.  Ross lives in Austin, Texas, and I first met him when I invested in his company, Vignette, about ten years ago.  Vignette went on to be a big success, and Ross and I have stayed in good contact ever since.  He had tracked us on our trip, and it was great to have him at the game.  And they were sitting right on top of the Green Monster, and he was able to get this great picture of Gibson throwing out the first pitch.  Minutes later, Ross caught a home run hit by Alex Rios, so Ross had a great visit to Fenway.

The night at Fenway was a complete thrill for the four of us, and a great way to end the baseball phase of our trip around the world.  We thank the Red Sox organization for their enthusiasm for what we did, and we especially thank our contact, Adam Grossman, for his interest in our initiative, and his being kind enough to arrange for us to be part of August 16’s pre-game ceremonies.

Check out a video of Gibson’s first pitch or our Fenway Park picture album.