Background: The Early Years

   One of my first memories is riding my bike. At the time I lived in the desert outside of Phoenix, AZ. My loves for that time were running outside, riding my bike outside, and climbing the rope ties to the only tree that we had. At the time I was so skinny that the school system wanted to know if my mother was feeding me and then they made sure I was eating my free lunch meals.
   Move on to North Carolina and years later my love of running and riding my bike continued, but due to the NC climates allergies began. In third grade I began my first rec. sport league playing baseball, which is still my favorite sport to this day. The next fall I began soccer which I always enjoyed and in the winter I started basketball. At my first basketball game i got very sick and had to go home after the first quarter. I was sick for several days until having to go see a specialist and at that time I was diagnosed with asthma and given both steroid and rescue inhalers. For nearly 20 years I have been given different cocktails of these drugs to help my breathing. I continued playing baseball and soccer until the end of elementary school due to family reasons that i won't get into here, but never played basketball again and still do not know how to play. Baseball was always fun for me because I did decent, although I could not catch well I could hit and run very very well. Every time I changed leagues I was a poor player but the next year would be one of the strongest on the team. Soccer was also fun for me although in fourth grade I was moved to goalkeeper. I always like to think it was because I was too aggressive but I probably wasn't a very good or confident ball handler. throughout this whole time I was average to tall height and weighed 60 pounds.
    Sometime between 5th and 6th grade my weight doubled from 60lbs to 120lbs. Apparently, I had a horizontal growth spurt that we later were given information that it may have been caused by the steroid inhalers (many articles like this one exist). I did not play any sports while in 6th grade and in 7th grade was signed up for football but only attended my first practice, again due to the family reasons stated earlier. During the uniform fittings and my first practice the coaches raved that they were glad to have me because of my size. How often do you get to here people want you around because you are fat? Middle school only got worse due to my size and asthma I stopped being active and played inside a lot losing the little athletic abilities I had. I cycle then began and because I of limited abilities I was always picked last in gym which did nothing to encourage me to be active, it just depressed me and drove me inside more often. The only positive thing going for this time was that I found skateboarding in 7th grade and although not very coordinated or very lanky like most skateboarders, I believe it gave me something to do outside again and led to me to some of the things I do now, but more in that later.