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I've always been fascinated with adventurous endeavors like flying, sailing, racing, but they all seemed like out of reach goals that I may never get the chance to pursue. Growing up from modest means all these pursuits were secondary to making sure food would be on the table to feed four boys and a girl, me being the youngest sibling.
As children living in Detroit, Michigan me and my brother would go stand outside the gates and watch the Indy car races when they came to town. My mother past away from breast cancer when I was 17 and I went to live with my oldest in Las Vegas, NV. after finishing high school. I went to see an Air Force recruiter and told that I wanted to fly fighter jets. I would read books and magazine about the different fighter models and I memorized the specifications for each of them.
I would see the planes flying overhead and be able to identify them by there silhouette and engine sounds. I would fantasize about being in the cockpit flying with a squadron, fighting the "bad guys". I would borrow my brother's car and drive out to Nellis air force base and just watch the F-15s, F-16's, and A-10's takeoff and land all day. The air force recruiter laughed under breath at my request and told me that only college graduates with 20/20 vision get to fly those planes. Growing up in poverty with no money to my name and just trying to figure out the world was daunting enough of a task. Later on in life I learned that there were waivers available to work around those most stringent rules, but to a 19 year-old kid those words force me to give up on that dream entirely.
I later joined the US Army instead and pursued a career in electronics. I picked up sailing in around 2007 from a few co-worker friends who owned sail boats and I instantly fell in love again with the "impossible". Or the least the common consensus from people with with my background. Those pigeon holes that the world likes to put you in based on your race, religion, gender, etc. I was never one to follow the normal crowd. I actually took pride in being an outsider, that weird kid, that girls didn't swoon over, the nerd. Someone who did what hell he wanted too and wasn't interested in pleasing the crowds. Not that I didn't at times crave the attention, but you play the hand that you are dealt not hand you wish you had.
So I began sailing with friends on their boats whenever the opportunity presented itself. I even took my first son Isaiah along with sometimes. I've been sailing now for nearly 10 years. All my boys are growing up around boats. Its just eerie to look back on all those years and see the time passing by.
