Dallas2013's Blog

NWP

dallas2013 — Mon, 11 May 2009 01:47:32 +0000

About halfway through the semester We had Brigadier General Ruben A. Cubero U.S Air Force (Ret). Gen. Cubero is a U.S Air Force Academy grad with the class of 1961 where he graduated with a bachelor of science. Upon graduation he went to flight school and then on to Vietnam as a instructor pilot and he then flew observation flights for intel. While he was in Vietnam he survived a training crash and then he came back to the academy as an instructor. He finally became the dean of faculty at the Air Force Academy and then retired in 1998 after thirty seven years of service to his country. Through out my life I have met only a handful of men who are as committed to excellence and who have such a high moral standard. As he spoke to us before he awarded us our falcon foundation scholarships he mentioned he history and then went on to challenge us that as we run the race of life not to run as an individual but as a team. The analogy that has struck with my personally is that you are running a race and your out in front and as your about to cross the finish line you glance over your shoulder and see you comrade in arms laying by the wayside you turn around and go back sacrificing your win for your comrade and finish the race together. You never let your buddy down and even if it means you lose the race you turn around and pick up your buddy and help them across the finish line.

Bio

dallas2013 — Mon, 11 May 2009 01:30:01 +0000

I was born on October 12, 1988 in my favorite city – Dallas, Texas. I am proud to be Texan and proud to be an American. The third born of seven children, I enjoy being the only boy. I am a junior and have been home educated throughout. In addition, live feed internet courses have further enriched my education during the past four years.
Olivia and Warren Maxwell have been my ice dancing coaches for five years and I look forward to many more. Their attention to detail and never allowing “good” to be enough pushes me out of my personal comfort zone to reach for my best.
Skating has not only developed me athletically, but has also forced me to be resourceful to finance the costly training. What started as a few lawns on weekends grew into a small business venture that now occupies most of my free time. This venture has taught me how to run a business. I have learned important lessons in business development, invoicing, tracking expenses, scheduling jobs, and putting the customer first. Without the faithful commitment of my father to drive me to jobs and to work alongside me these past five years, my desire to skate would not be a reality.
However without the sponsorship I would not be able to cover all the expenses associated with this sport.
Skating is a priority in my life; however, it is within the bounds of my life’s priorities: my family, my country, and my God. I acknowledge that any abilities I have, the finances, and my wonderful coaches and partner are all gifts from God. Therefore, I want everything I do in skating to bring praise and glory to God.
I want to pursue my skating career to the highest level possible. Realizing that ice dancing is a long term sport, I am committed to the training discipline necessary to achieve excellence and compete in the Grand Prix events and, hopefully, even the Olympics.

NWP

dallas2013 — Mon, 11 May 2009 01:20:36 +0000

After the morning wake up we all in one accord headed for the kitchen to figure out what we could grub together for breakfast. Since we were used to consuming upwards of five thousand calories each day it was some problem to find enough food for 4 grown men and one girl. After rummaging trough the kitchen this I ended up eating for breakfast: 8 pancakes of medium size, two large servings of hash browns and 4 scrambled eggs with 4 pieces of toast toped of with about 4 cups of coffee. To have a picture of the look on Mrs. Downing’s face when she came in to see us all sitting down for breakfast would be worth a fortune. She could not believe that we could put down that much but then she would never have believed us if we told her the amount that we worked out. For not only did we have our scheduled workout each afternoon but we were required to workout by ourselves at least 1 hour in addition to what we already logged during the official PT. This put us all up to at least 3 hours of PT each day and anyone who does that must increase the amount of food they intake or they will lose weight fast. Since I usually hate eating breakfast it was probably harder on me when I first got to NWP than most of the other guys but that only lasted for a couple of weeks before we all ate as much as we could get down no matter what time of day it was.

NWP

dallas2013 — Mon, 11 May 2009 01:20:17 +0000

As I landed on the air mattress josh coming out of a deep sleep went flying with a yell of shock into the air about 4 feet above the air mattress. Knowing that I should be ready to protect myself when he came back to earth I was on my guard. As the most astonished josh landed as I suspected he came after me. As we wrestled I ended up getting him in a head lock and kept the pressure on until he tapped. For those not familiar with wrestling tapping is not a sexual term but rather a term used for when the loser taps his had on the ground or his opponent twice. When this happens the fight is done. Since we had not wrestled before he was shocked to have been beaten by me since he outweighed me by over 20 pounds. Although I have never trained or wrestled in competition before I have a good sense of balance and have great flexibility to make up for my lack in weight. It ceased to amaze the guys when we would have matches that I could beat a guy who weighed a lot more than me. But after the first couple of weeks one of the guys got a carpet burn really bad above his right eye and when the D’s found out it was quits as far a wrestling went. Not that we really observed that rule but as far as the D’s know we did. Just thank god no one got hurt or it would have been hell for the rest of us.

NWP part 11

dallas2013 — Sun, 10 May 2009 20:50:36 +0000

As the saying goes the early bird gets the worm. Well as far as that applied to us it was the early bird gets the best laugh. Once I get into a schedule it is hard for me to break at the drop of a hat. That was the case for me when 6:30 rolled around that Saturday morning. I tried to get that varmint at the foot of the couch to quit it and tried to get more sleep but not with much success on either hand. I finally rolled over around 8 and seeing that the vermin was up on the other end of the couch I motioned that maybe some of the other should be up to enjoy the beautiful morning. Why I could not allow them to enjoy the sleep that I craved yet my stupid body would not let me get. So after a couple of min I successfully waked the others with the exception of Josh D. this was when the fun for this weekend really begin. Being that Josh has a great sense of humor that is except when he is going to bed or has just woken up I decided that he must be getting too much sleep due to the altitude drop and I should really help him regain that sense of altitude. Well as the rest of the group watched on in glee I jumped in the air and landed on the edge of the air mattress. As most would imagine he had the ride of his life that morning.

NWP Part 10

dallas2013 — Sun, 10 May 2009 20:41:18 +0000

After In-N-Out we headed over to see Dustin’s High School Football team play. Although it was very slow it was just fun to sit back and enjoy the cool evening breeze and relax knowing that I did not have anything due the next two days. After the game we headed to the beach and enjoyed walking in the surf and getting our feet in the sound for an hour or so and then we headed over to the ritzy part of town and looked at all the high end sports cars. With that done we headed back to Dustin’s place and proceeded to the pool. Just sitting around in the hot tub and letting the knots and bruises slowly relax as the hot salt water washed over us was great. We just sat there talking about our lives where we had been and where we wanted to go. I for one enjoyed the company since I come from a large family it was almost like being at home except it was 2000+ miles away. After about an hour or so of going between the hot tub and the cold pool we finally came it and started getting ready for bed. This being one of the first free times I had since getting to NWP I got a quick note in to my girl back home and then got off to bed. Just so I clear it up 6 kids sleeping on 3 couches and a blow up mattress can and will always incite some sort of word war as to where each sleeps. As for me I had some crazy kid trying to play footsie with me all night long on the L couch.

NWP Part 9

dallas2013 — Sun, 10 May 2009 20:15:27 +0000

Our first time off the mountain was just before the end of our first month at NWP. It not only was a totally unexpected treat for me but I got to spend it with some of the best kids in the world. We got off from school at 5 pm on a Friday afternoon and we did not have to be back until Sunday at 7pm. With a almost two hour drive to Downings home we packed into the van as quickly as we could and had nothing to say goodbye to and no reason to look back. Since we came from vastly different backgrounds one might think where did we find some common ground to build our friendships on. Well for us that common ground was NWP and country music. Being that all of us were from small towns driven by rock music we had a blast with the drive down the mountain. With Dustin up front controlling the music and the two josh’s in the middle that left me and the lone girl Amy in the back. When we drove up to Dustin’s place we were shocked to see that he lived in a very large house in Orange County. I would have expected that He lived in some ranch house in the middle of the country. We quickly became acquainted with Dustin’s family and then dropped our duffel bags down in the living room and headed out for our tour of LA. First off we went to In-N-Out for our first truly California fast food.

NWP Part 8

dallas2013 — Sun, 10 May 2009 00:45:34 +0000

Some of the most fun we had as far as a team building were Saturday mornings when Mr. Durbeck became the football coach he used to be. He would get on his wrap around sunglasses and walk around through the young men as we did his workouts. His favorite workout for us too do was “Downs” because he said we would not want to sit down after we were done and when we did we would not want to get up again. And boy was he right. We started out with sets of 20 of each exercise and worked down to 0 in incremental units of 1. As you might think this was a killer but we worked together to help each other through the hard parts and made the transition from a group of you boys to a team of brothers who would give up anything to ensure their fellow brothers made it through to the finish line. Weather it be downs or the log run where we would carry a rail road tie a mile on our shoulders or we were just studying for our chemistry test. It did not matter if we had to wake up 2 hours earlier than we usually did we would get up to help our brothers/sisters get through their day. Out of the 62 of us who finished the program I can say that 6 of these future leaders of our great nation are closer to me than brothers and I know that if one of us fell on the field of battle we would turn back and get their body no matter what the cost to our own lives. And that is not something you will ever find in a civilian college!

NWP part 7

dallas2013 — Sun, 10 May 2009 00:45:14 +0000

My first weeks at NWP were some of the hardest of my life so far. Most of this I’m sure are due to the extreme work load and the general lack of sleep. This was due to our school days officially starting at 7:30 am and ending at 11pm. Although this is a min of 16.5 hours it had no breaks and in truth most of us woke up between 5:00-5:30 am each morning and sometimes earlier just to stay on top of our studies. Although we only had 3 courses for the semester we had tremendous amounts of homework each day and then we had additional duties and physical training on top of our school workload. As the time went on and we became physically fit we became used to this strenuous schedule. During our time at NWP we memorized 1500+ vocabulary words, 4 semesters worth of English, 2 semesters worth of chemistry and 2 semesters of math. And this those are not High School semesters but with the same textbooks that many colleges use over the course of multiple semesters. On top of this we started a physical training program where we were running over 20 miles each week plus hundreds of pushups, sit ups and other exercises. As our body’s became physically fit the daily physical training had less effect on the daily study’s and we slowly adapted to our new world. With this physical fitness we became confident and ready to face whatever came our way.

NWP part 6

dallas2013 — Sat, 09 May 2009 20:32:30 +0000

This being Thursday we had nothing for the rest of the day except to get to know each and everyone a little better. It was my job to get to know a kid named Geeskie and then latter that evening let the rest of the class know what I had learned and introduce him to the class. Geeskie is around 5’7” and might tip the scales to 120. Although he lacks size he makes up for it with sheer determination. The amount of will power that is stuffed in to that body is crazy. He has lived in 8 different states due to his father being in the Air Force and has a younger sister. He currently lives in Colorado and will also be in the Class of 2013 with myself at the United States Air Force Academy. He as me has the life long dream of becoming a Fighter Pilot in the US Air Force. With this we became close friends and have too this day done whatever we could to help the other when they needed it. With the introductions done we all headed off to get some sleep and made it to bed at what would over the next 4 months become lights out at 11pm. Since Classes started the next day all of us were up bright and early at 6 am and ready for dorm inspections and at breakfast by 7:30 the next morning. The schedule that we would follow that Friday would become standard for our daily lives the next 4 months.