I grew up playing soccer in Las Vegas. I was a goalie and had practice 3-4 times a week with a game on Saturdays and maybe even more on tournament weekends. I never expected my dad to make it, being busy with the restaurant, but he often pleasantly surprised me by showing up.

One cold night I had a game and a couple of minutes in, I saw him on the sidelines. Clearly, I’m excited. Literally less than 10 minutes later, the other team scores on an arguably offsides play. Bet you can guess who “voiced his opinions” the loudest from the sidelines. Needless to say, he gets ejected 10 minutes into the game… BUT as the amazing father he is, he watched from the car in the parking lot behind the goal.

Couple minutes later, I have a big save and instantly I hear a car horn and lights flashing! Knew exactly who it was, and I chuckled.

10 minutes later, they score…

Guess what I hear…

5 to 10 cars honking and flashing their lights…

I could only laugh.

Then they score again… car horns and lights fill the air.

I laughed less this time.

This is still my favorite story and summarizes our friendship pretty well. He was always there for me even if he wasn’t. He always has the best intentions even if things, let’s say, don’t go exactly as planned.

I always aimed to emulate his love for my family and food, but as a kid, I did nearly everything to not be him. We were the same, down to literally the same glasses, how we walked, our sense of humor, and honestly too much when you’re a teenager. My journey started on the soccer field, just like my dad, but I wanted to do anything but cook.

I was always fascinated by math and the sciences. I wanted to be a cardiovascular surgeon. Regretted that when taking organic chemistry. Decided I wanted to help athletes and be a physical therapist. Got bored doing the same thing every day, I have a short attention span… (rabbit!).

During college I got the opportunity to do some research on rat hearts looking at heart muscle tissue and realized, I like research but don’t love dead rats. I tried a few other research labs and ended up in a lab studying the effects of footwear on walking mechanics.

While my choice to play goalie in soccer was partly due to my aversion to running, my research career paradoxically began with a focus on running mechanics. This interest naturally evolved into exploring human movement in various real-world settings, leading me to investigate how pain impacts walking in individuals with knee osteoarthritis during everyday activities. This is where I am now…

After all these years, I wanted to be different from “Pissed off Christophe” but did I do it? We joke about how I got all the good attributes from my mom and the bad from my dad, but honestly…we know it’s true.

Obviously kidding, I couldn’t imagine the man I would’ve become without him, and I am pretty happy everyone says we are the same.