My not-so-little little brother

Just got home from Bellevue. My parents and I spent the weekend down there watching my younger brother & his girlfriend compete at the Emerald Cup. It is the premier bodybuilding competition in the Pacific NW. It was his first show ever, and his girlfriend's second, and while neither of them won, they both did really well and had a lot of fun.

My brother has been wanting to do this for several years and has been working really hard towards this show over the past 12 months (kinda like me & b-school). He's about 6'3" and by Christmas he had bulked up to about 285 lbs, then in January he started dieting to lean down for this show. He weighed in this weekend around 240 and looked absolutely shredded. He's still got work ahead of him, and at 25 years old, he's just a baby in the sport...he's only just begun.

I'm so proud of him. He has come a long ways since his high school days. We used to be very different people (I'm the typical oldest child overachiever, he's the rebelious youngest child), but as time goes on we've become more alike. We may have different goals, but we have the same drive now. He has bad knees like me. When he was in school, attending classes & doing homework were simply a means to the end of participating in sports. When he blew out his knee, his days of football, basketball & soccer were pretty much done, so there was no point to school as far as he was concerned. He bummed around doing odd jobs & manual labor, but in the past couple of years he's found his home in the gym, and is now the general manager of a beautiful fitness club and is on track to be a district manager. Plus it's given him a great outlet & the contacts to pursue his bodybuilding dream. He's very ambitious and works hard toward his goals. It's an inspiration.

I'm off to the gym!

PS--My brother can kick your brother's ass ;)
PPS--Another funny/random run-in (small world part 2)--the guy who won last year's Emerald Cup Light Heavy & Overall Men's championship was there last night--it's a guy who was in my freshman biology class at WSU, I was in a study group with him. I remember him having to eat plain tuna & brown rice, nice to see he stuck with it and had some success.