Today is my kid brother Matt’s birthday. He was born April 29, 1966.
Matt is an interesting guy. Of the three of us boys, he is by far the most athletic. My older brother Dave and I enjoyed sports, but Matt excelled at every sport he tried: Star pitcher in baseball, star striker in soccer, state champs in ice hockey. He has terrific hand-eye coordination and reflexes. Once when we were teenagers, I spotted the ball for him while he stood at the foul line and threw foul shots at the basketball hoop. I want to say he sank 100 free-throws in a row, but probably I’m remembering that wrong. It was a huge number of shots he sank, though, before he missed one.
I think his great hand-eye coordination is partially why he’s an airline pilot and captain now. He flies 747s between LA and Japan (and other places), and before that he was a military aviator, flying blackhawks like the guys in Blackhawk Down (he was an Army Ranger as well). All I know is, if I’m in a plane and it is going down, he’s the guy I want behind the controls. He’ll land the thing, if it can be landed, and stay calm the entire time.
He’s extremely disciplined about exercise and such, but I don’t think he was always that way. When we were younger kids, I saw him as a bit of a spoiled brat. I think a transformative time for both of us was when we decided to take a bike tour from our home in New York to our summer place in Nova Scotia. Matt was 14 at the time and I was 18. Of course, there were no helmets and just a little preparation… we didn’t really know what we were doing. We had a tent, sleeping bags and some tools and we set out on our crappy bikes in nearly 100-degree August heat. Of the two of us, he had the far crappier and heavier bike so I carried most of the stuff in my panniers and rack.
Suffice to say it was nearly two weeks for us to go 500-600 miles, including a few break-downs, wheel rebuilds and extended stays in Amherst MA and Peterborough NH. And we got lost in the Green Mountains of NH more than once, and got soaked in the rain. We started running low on money around Amherst and were reduced to eating a can of beef stew on a sterno stove on the sidewalk at one point… in the the rain. People gave us a wide berth like a couple of vagrants.
When we finally made it to our uncle’s place in Sanford, ME, Matt was ready to collapse. I had to keep lying to him about how much farther it was: “Only ten more miles to go, Matt, ten more miles” I said, even though I’d just made a wrong turn and it was actually 20 miles. Before I could stop him, he flagged someone by the side of the road and asked how far it was to Sanford. When he heard the truth, he just keeled over on the side of the road and lay there. I got my uncle to come pick us up.
I like that story because I think it was a turning point for him, a skinny 14 year-old kid on a crappy bike, riding 500 miles through rain and the mountains and all. It must’ve made him proud. I’m –still- proud of him for doing that! We’ve always talked about doing another bike tour. Maybe this year :)?
Of course I have lots of other ‘Matt Stories’ but that’s one of my favorites. Family members… feel free to add some in the comments if you like.
Happy Birthday Matt!
