This is me riding the trails in Michigan!

      When I was 17 I was a typical high school student, who wasn’t motivated by much more than football and girls.  College was in the back of my mind, but it was pretty far back there and I had no idea how I was going to pay for it.  More than anything though, I felt a strong urge for adventure and my brother Nick was in the Army and it sounded like a lot of fun and adventure.  So I talked to a recruiter and next thing I knew I was swearing in to the U.S. Army.

      I joined the same Psychological Operations Unit that my brother belonged to and the summer between my Junior and Senior year of high school I started my one of my biggest adventures.  I went to Basic Combat Training at Fort Benning, Georgia and the training was tough, but I had a lot of fun and I found something that I enjoyed, and I was pretty good at.

      After Basic Training, I returned home to Norton, Ohio and started my Senior year of high school.  After graduation from Norton High School, I returned to training, this time at the John F. Kennedy School of Special Warfare, in Fort Bragg, NC.  The training I went though was difficult and mentally demanding, but it was great training.

      After completing Advanced Individual Training I returned home and I thought to myself “Awesome!  I’m done with everything, now I just have to go one weekend a month for the reserves and I’m set!”  I learned pretty quickly that my idea was pretty far from what would actually happen.

      Five months after returning from training I was deployed to Iraq.  We were attached to a Psyop Unit out of Maryland, and then reattached to the 1^ST Marine Division when we got to Iraq.  We were one of the first units to cross into Iraq and among all of the troops I met; I found that at the age of 19, I was always the youngest usually by at least a few years.

       People always ask me “what is Psychological Operations?”  So I will try to break it down for you.  Psychological Operations, AKA Psyop, AKA Psychological Warfare; Is a part of Special Operations and the most noticeable aspect of Psyop is like in the movies when you see people surrounding a building with loud speakers and say something along the lines of “Come out with your hands up, or we are kicking the door in and coming in anyway.”  That is the most exciting part of the job, but there is much more to it than just that.  Our main mission is to “win the hearts and minds of the people.”

      We would regularly meet with Iraqi key communicators in our operating area to identify problems, concerns, and needs.  By assisting people with their needs, we are able to establish good relations with them and they would in return, give us great intelligence on who and where the bad guys were and what they were up to.

       After returning from Iraq, I was promoted to the rank of Sergeant at the age of twenty which was a huge accomplishment for me.  I was also able to start college at the University of Akron and after completing almost a year of school, I was deployed again.  This time I went to Kosovo and although I was still in Psyop, this was a peace keeping mission so the work was a lot different than Iraq. 

      In Kosovo I was more involved with the media and I did TV and Radio Shows called the DJ Ski and T-Bone radio show.  T-Bone, was my buddy Sergeant Jeremiah Trench who worked with me on all of the broadcasts, which were geared toward Public Service Issues that we identified within the target audience.

      I had a lot of fun with the media and it is something that really interested me.  Unfortunately, I was medivaced from Kosovo for medical conditions that I encored in Iraq.  Long story short, I got really sick when I was in Iraq and I believe that if it weren’t for my team chief Staff Sergeant Tony Church giving me medical attention, I would have died.  Ever since that happened I’ve had bad stomach problems that eventually led to a medical discharge from the army after 5 years.  I still have problems with stomach pains, but I’ve been dealing with it for about 6 years and I won’t let something like that stop me from doing the things that I want to do.  I just suck it up and keep going because as soon as you let something control you, you are no longer you.

      After I was discharged from the Army I went back to school and graduated from the University of Akron with Cum Laude Honors in Mass Media Communication.  Now that I have graduated I feel like I need another great adventure.  I have been very fortunate to have had the opportunity to visit 10 countries and all but a handful of states in the U.S.  Including Hawaii. 

      I went to Hawaii by myself a couple of years ago during a summer break and lived on the cheep, out of my backpack, sleeping in random places, hitch hiking, cooking my own food.  It’s amazing how cheep you can get by when you live out of a backpack.  I was able to hop on some military flights that had open seats, which was a cheep way for me to travel because if there were open seats I could fly for free, but if there are no seats, you don’t go anywhere.  And you can wait in the terminal all day, only to be bumped from the flight 5 minutes before boarding.  I got stuck in Colorado for a bit and ended up taking a Grey Hound Bus, 37 hours, from Colorado to San Francisco, before hoping a flight to Hawaii. 

  On my trip, I stayed all over the place; camping out, hotels, with friends I met on my travels, but mostly hostels.  Hostels are amazing places to meet people from all over the world and they are super cheep.  In fact, at the hostels in Hawaii, I was almost always the only American staying there and it only cost me like 17 bucks a night.  Of coarse it’s no 5 star hotel, you get a bunk in a room with 6 to 8 other people, both guys and girls in the same room and you sharing the bathroom.  I was there for over two months and I almost stayed forever, but I knew I had to return to college, so I left Hawaii for a later point in my life.

      So I am getting itchy feet again and I think it’s the perfect time to make another great adventure.  Rick and I have been planning a trip for some time now.  It started off as a global adventure, we were going to trot all over the globe, but we decided to narrow the scope to South America first and to make it more exciting, we are doing it on some Enduro motorcycles.  It’s basically a big dirt bike that you can ride on the road and off road.  We are going to need some tough bikes because this is going to be a brutal trip.  12,000 miles of paved roads, dirt roads, and some times no roads, traversing through the United States, Central, and South America.  We will be going through deserts, mountains, jungles, beaches, and god only knows what else. 

      After some intense trip planning we decided that this is a big trip that hopefully people will be interested in and if we have a lot of people following what we are doing, then why not take that opportunity to do something good in the world.  We started looking for a good charity to support and what better cause than children that need help, that was the one!  It was actually the first and only organization that we considered.  So we put together a proposal and met with the Akron Children’s Hospital.  They loved the idea and it went from there.

      Rick and I have been working really hard on this project.  On average we put in about 12 hours a day and every day we make great strides in progress.  We were talking about everything the other day, and this is the first time that either one of us have really gotten involved in Philanthropy.  I’ve always heard that charity work is very rewarding, but I never really understood what that meant until we started this project.  I can say without a doubt that it is true!  I love what I am doing right now, and if you love what you do, you will never work a day in your life.

     We still have a lot of work left to do and not a lot of time to do it.  If you would like to volunteer to help, we would love to have you!  And I can tell you, you will love what we do!   Our goal is to raise at least $30,000 in proceeds for Akron Children’s Hospital, but with enough help and support I think we can triple the donation amount and be able to help the children and the families that need it the most!  If you are interest in volunteering or donating, please contact us at info@miles4miracles.org

 
Here is my Girlfriend Kayla.  We were at the park and her daughter Tierra wanted to take some pictures, which explains why it's slightly blurry, but I still like it!