WEBVTT

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(dinging)

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- Push the throttles up,

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and you just start
barrelling down this thing.

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But instead of the drag race
that ends at the quarter mile,

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you pull back and just
pull this whole thing,

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you know, off the runway.

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And the next, all you
see in the wind screen,

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is sky.

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And you just become a rocket ship.

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My grandparents used to always
say, when I was younger,

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"I want you to always act like I'm there."

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"If I was standing in the
room, would you do that?"

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And now it's, I guess it sunk in,

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but I always, you know,
kinda pictured that,

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you know, I wanna make myself proud,

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but I wanna make my dad proud too.

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- Watching Alex become a pilot

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is sort of getting to
see my dream come true

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in somebody else.

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And what better person
to see it come true in,

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then your own son.

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- When I was growing up, I
remember playing in the water,

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you know, sitting on the
dock with my grandpa, my dad,

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and they'd always point out planes to me,

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"oh, there's the Blue Angels or F18s."

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I remember I was, it was right
near one of my last flights,

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it was sunset, we took a southern route,

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and I knew, at some point, we were going

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to fly over Black Water Bay.

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Which is where my parents,
my grandparents lived.

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And the route that we took,

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I kinda veered a little further south

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cause I knew where I was,

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I looked down and I saw their house

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and it just kinda came full circle

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for me, being that kid looking up

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and now being that flight
student looking down.

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And I got choked up in the plane.

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From all that I've been through,

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to finally end up, you know,

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I've been to another country,

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I've been doing two other careers,

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and I end up, you know,

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2,000 feet above where I started.