a musing julius…

in an interview on good morning america, president-elect barack obama discusses the issue of big 3 ceo’s flying corporate jets to washington. he says the CEOs were “a little tone deaf with what’s happening in america right now.”

really barack? really?

if i recall correctly, your boeing 757 described here is much larger and more luxurious than the fokker 70’s that the big 3 use to fly their ceo’s on business. in fact, the overhaul of your plane cost nearly $500,000, not to mention the leasing costs of such a plane.

see it’s about time right barack? you couldn’t afford to wait at airport security while on the campaign trail. during those two hours of security and sitting at the gate, you could be talking to people in ohio or pennsylvania. so why should CEO’s have to wait? do they not also have important business to conduct? why are you different? because you were running for president, it was okay?

their asking for a bailout is no different than you asking each and every american to donate to your campaign while you fly around the country in a private jet that rivals first class on all domestic airlines. i’ve flown first class, it doesn’t look anything like your plane. 

it’s all taxpayer money. but i guess because it was given to you freely means you can spend it however you want, right?

stop calling the kettle black.

poland is less than 300 kilometers from where i’m sitting right now, and its the land of my ancestors, and my entire family outside of my parents. i haven’t been there in 15 years. so being in germany, this is the perfect opportunity to take advantage of the close proximity and visit for a short period of time. so i bit the bullet, bought a $500 ticket from munich to poznan, and will be flying there tomorrow morning.

i haven’t seen my grandfather in about 7 years. maybe longer. i haven’t seen grandma in nearly a year. i haven’t seen my aunt and uncle in 15 years, and i haven’t seen my cousins in nearly 18 years. its been forever. so tomorrow, i’ll wake up nice and early, drive 2 hours to munich, jump onto a prop plane that has 18 seats total, and land in my dad’s hometown at lunch time, when my grandmother (who drives a mean stick shift btw) will pick me up to take me to a home she built almost 10 years ago, but i have yet to see in person.

allegedly poland has changed immensely since i’ve been there last, and i’m interested in seeing some of the changes (though it has been so long, i probably won’t notice.) this time around, i’ll have a camera, so i can document my adventures.

aspiring radass and i agreed that 2008 was going to be a year of travel adventures. here’s another to add to my list.

i had a ridiculous trip to dc this past weekend. between wandering old town alexandria, examining the torpedo factory (which sadly doesn’t make torpedoes anymore) and u street jazz, eastern market and meeting stephanie’s friends, the trip was a colossal success. and the packing was well worth it.

when i returned home to detroit and talked to stephanie, i heard one of her friends called me “an old soul.” never hearing the term, i asked stephanie what it meant, and she responded, “it’s someone who is wise in a way that’s comforting for others.”

this surprised me. for one, it was an extraordinary compliment from someone that knew me less than 2 hours. i’m 25 years old (almost) and never thought in my day that someone married with kids and a few years older could ever think i was wise in a way that comforted her. as i scour the internet for more definitions of old soul, i see words like sound, stable and experienced.  as you can imagine, i’m nearly dumbfounded. i don’t ever feel sound or stable. while knowledgable or intelligent, i can only think of a handful of areas where i would consider myself “experienced” and most of those have to do with computer stuff.

as i slowly come to the end of 25 years of being around on earth, i find it fascinating that someone felt i was comforting, or experienced or that i looked like i had my act together. as i mentioned to stephanie a number of times this weekend, i have a plan, and i want so desperately to live without one. i appreciate stephanie’s ebb and flow approach to life, and it challenges me consistently, just as i know my plan challenges her to make her own and be a bit more structured.

i guess we compliment each other in that way. for now, this old soul needs to actually figure out if he’s got any experience under his belt.

i’m packing for our nation’s capital today and leaving for the weekend. packing makes me realize how much i hate packing. it sucks. i don’t enjoy paring down the 5 articles of clothing i own to just 2. when i’m at home, at least i can choose between the 5…maybe mix and match. when i pack, i can’t take all 5. unless i want to check my baggage, since nowadays you’re allowed just a plastic grocery bag filled halfway with your stuff as carry-on luggage. i guess you can also take a “personal item.”

strangely, the airlines suggest your “personal item” can be something like a purse or laptop bag. i’ll stand firmly against the airlines here in saying that those are more “personal items.“ a purse isn’t all that personal! when i think “personal item,” i’m thinking of a nude video tape of you and your wife or a vibrator or a dirty magazine. not a laptop bag. that’s more of a “business item.”

also, i have to find plastic baggies in which to put my liquids. i’m polish. we don’t use ziploc bags. we use saran wrap, and just wrap our sandwiches like you’d wrap a house with tyvek. (that joke is funny if you’re a polish contractor that puts up aluminum siding for a living.) when i was a kid, if my mom ever packed my lunch, it was usually 3 or 4 food items wrapped in saran wrap, which were then combined together using saran wrap. i never had a brown paper bag to take with me. saran wrap isn’t all that environmentally friendly, but when my parents grew up, their raw meat, vegetables and cheeses were all packed up using dirty three day old newspaper. they must have been excited about plastic as much as cavemen were excited about creating fire.

now, i’m off in search of ziploc bags…and deciding which two pieces of clothing i’m bringing with me.

my friends that know my parents usually ask them, ”how did the two of you create him?” they usually answer by starting a sentence with, “well, when a man and a woman fall in love…” which causes a large uproar.

see, i’m fairly straight laced. my parents on the other hand, are much much much cooler than me. i’ll safely admit it. some of the things (they call them stupidities) that they’ve done in their life are activities or ideas that i would just never consider doing.

lets do some background.

ludwik is my father. he came to the united states in 1980. he had $500 to his name and bought a fiat spyder with a hole in the roof and the floor for $100. my dad had been to the united states each summer while he was in college, and his english was enough to get by, but not the greatest.

barbara is my mother. she came to the united states in 1981. she had $20 when she came to the united states. my father actually sent her $800 to buy a ticket to come to the united states, after buying the ticket, getting a visa, and buying presents for her family, she left poland 3 days before martial law was enacted in ’81. my mom boarded the plane, only praying that my dad would be at the airport. this was before cell phones for everyone, so they arranged their lives together using hand written letters that had took 3 weeks to get to and from the u.s.

my dad worked as a cook in the sears tower, cooking 400+ eggs a day for the hundreds of employees in the sears tower. he made $3.50 an hour.

my mom worked as an assembler on a factory line making automatic transmissions. she made $100 a week.

i don’t want to spoil their wonderful story, as my mom is writing a novel about our lives in the states. its intended for my future wife and my future children, so they can understand their in-laws and grandparents.

my first part of the series will be about my parents recreation when i was a child.

when i was 6, my dad bought a harley-davidson speedster 883 in candy red. he loved that bike, but my mom hated it. he always loved motorcycles, and his old home in poland still has two of his old motorcycles (one partially disassembled) from his childhood that he’s considered shipping to the u.s. eventually, my mother didn’t think it was safe for me to be around a father who rode motorcycles.

so my dad sold his bike, only to replace it with a bigger one a few years later, a fatboy, also candy red. 6 months later, my MOM bought her first motorcycle, a sportster 883 in candy red, just like my dad’s bike. she ended up customizing it to have drag pipes that ran nearly 110 db’s on wide open throttle. she had me and my dad disassemble the bike, get everything chromed, had a custom green paint job with a hummingbird and the words, “midlife crisis” on the fuel tank. a few years later, my dad upgraded to an ultraglide in candy red, which had more lights than a typical christmas tree. my mom, too, ended up buying a heritiage softtail classic, and between the two of them, before i left for college, they owned 5 harleys. i have leather jackets, vests, the works. my dad and mom have multiple pairs of custom-made chaps. they were featured in the newspaper and harley magazine (mainly because my mom would write stories for the magazine, and she’d always win)

my dad also took up skydiving when i was 15. his dream was always to fly. his proudest moment was during his training on his 13th jump, he failed to get control after executing a loop in the air, and fell 9,000 feet in 45 seconds. the instructor he jumped with, caught this all on film, and caught up with my dad, stabilized him, and got ludwik to open his chute at 2400 feet (a dangerously low opening, considering it takes nearly 1000-1500 feet to fully open your chute.) he was so proud of that video. i nearly puked thinking he could have died. my mom wanted him to stop jumping. he ended up jumping nearly 200 times. his worst injury was a sprained ankle.

as is customary, instead of my dad following my mom’s recommendation, she ended up ignoring her own advice and did 5 tandem jumps herself.

since going to college and entering the real world, my mom has tamed, resorting just to oil painting and writing her book.

my dad gave up skydiving, but instead became a weight-shift trike pilot.

he is a sport pilot instructor, a weight shift instructor, can fly using instrumentation-only conditions, and is a certified rotax 912 engine inspector. his call number for his trike is nine-twelve-lima-mike. (912LM)

on my last visit with him, we flew to 9,000 feet. made me remember the time he used to fall out of planes. i prefer him flying.