a musing julius…

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 hope my series of stories give some people an idea of how my childhood turned out. i was latch key kid during the week, but during the weekends, i went on some serious adventures. aside from the bigger stories, i’m gonna share some quick jaunts about my parents and me when i was a young kid.

1. my dad, mom, and andy my dad’s friend were driving henry’s 1969 mercedes sl one evening downtown. its a two-seat car, so 3 people in the car is highly illegal. my mom, being somewhat playful decides to wave to cars behind them down the street. one of them was a cop. when the cop pulled them over and walked up to the side of the car, he suggestively said, “you people must be from germany right?” nodding his head vigorously. everyone in the car said, “yes!” (although they hate germans and are polish). next question from the cop was, “in germany its legal to have 3 people in this car right?” again nodding heavily. they were let off with a warning.
2. my dad and his friends took a boat to cuba, from florida. they almost died twice during their journey. i learned from my dad, everyone in cuba can be bribed with a can of coke. they caught a barracuda off the coast of florida and ate it, not knowing that barracuda’s have poisonous meat.
3. my mom and dad went cliff diving in utah. they took me. i can’t dive, but i jumped off a 40 foot cliff onto my feet. i lived. my parents are good swan divers.
4. my parents know every dance on the face of the earth. they tear it up. i can’t wait until my wedding, where they’ll likely put me and my future wife to shame (unless we take lessons)
5. they watch a movie everyday. usually foreign. they make it a point to see each and every academy award nominated film. they usually know each winner before the show starts.

i love those guys…they’re great role models, and awesome people.

my life was dominated by a nightlife that rivals all but college alcoholics. from the age of 12 to 18, i spent nearly every single weekend at a bar or lounge or restaurant or club in chicago. my parents took me everywhere (except strip clubs…but they didn’t go to those) and i would usually sit, chat with everyone, active in conversation with people over 3 times my age.

when i went to college and turned 21, my friends always wanted to go downtown. “hey man, lets go to man vs. margarita,” a friend would say, to which i would respond, “been going there on the back of my dad’s bike since i was 12, not interested, have fun.”

anyway, i recall one night where we had a guys night and girls night, so i was naturally with the guys. we were out, having fun, and after a few hours, we someone decided to leave. so we all jumped in the car, a range rover that belonged to a dad’s friend. so we’re driving down and minding our own business when we get cut off by a mercedes benz on the street. at the next light, we pulled up to the driver, and the two dudes in the mercedes flicked us off, and they started laughing. why? i guess they thought they were cool, little did they know the net worth of the car they were flicking off was probably in the 8 digits (my family contributes nothing to that total).

for some reason naturally, this infuriated my dad. he immediately jumped out of the car, and everyone else “got his back” ludwik calmly walked over to the drivers side of the mercedes, where he literally reached into the vehicle grabbed the guy by his shirt, and removed him from his vehicle through the window. in one fluid motion, after removing the man from his car, he placed him on the hood of his mercedes. he said calmly, “you cut us off, you flicked us off, and you were laughing at us. now…who’s laughing.” he let go, walked back to the car, and we drove away.

my dad is not violent, and i’ve never seen him use force…but the one time he did, i was incredibly impressed. we talked about the story this past christmas, and all my dad will ever say about the incident was, “that guy pissed me off”

lesson: don’t piss of ludwik.

hopefully it’s evident by now that my family enjoyed the outdoors. we liked camping, jetskiing, the works. when i was 17, my dad and his friends hatched up a ridiculous plot. to our knowledge, no one had attempting something so daft.

they were going to cross lake michigan on jetskis.

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the plan was simple…leave Belmont Harbor early in the morning, use a compass to point roughly east south east, and just do it. 2 jetskis, 1 jetboat (which is nothing more than a glorified jetski that seats 4), 2 extra cans of gasoline, 1 cooler filled with beer, some wetsuits, and 2 gallons of fresh water. the trip is about 46 miles… Read the rest of this entry »

my parents and i camped often as a hobby. we’d go 3 times a year, sometimes 4 or 5 times a year. we loved it…basically, we’d drive to the upper peninsula of michigan towing our jetski with 3 other couples, also towing jetskis. we’d camp in fayette state park, or pictured rocks national lake shore. both are great places to camp, and surprisingly, both are home to the only remaining iron ore smelting furnaces in the united states. how ironic that i’ve camped at both?

anyhow, two separate instances that i recall were rather amusing…there were dozens of fun camping episodes that range from freaking awesome to freaking time-to-go-to-the-hospital-awesome.

1. we once visited fayette state park in the summermonsoon season of 1999. it rained all 5 days we were there. obviously everyone was pissed except one person.  henry, one of my dad’s friends (one of the captains responsible for demolishing the engine of the 72 foot yacht) made the best of all situations. he decided after two days of rain, we would sit outside in the rain, and sing. all day. all night. next to the camp fire, which became my job to upkeep. yay. so, in the drunken stupor of everyone except me…my dad decided to take pictures with our old 35 mm camera. it wasn’t anything spectacular, but in it’s day, it was a fancy camera. the humidity took its toll on the poor camera which never wanted to work. without thinking, my father threw the camera into the campfire. here, i learned batteries explode furiously violently. it was funny. plastic smelled. my shoes were damaged by the exploding battery.
2. in 1997, we went to pictured rocks on lake superior. for those uninformed, lake superior is the coldest of the great lakes, and usually runs at 35 degrees year round. our campsite was nice, but for chilling during the day, my parents and their friends preferred the extraordinary, and so it was their wish to travel around to the north side of grand island, about a mile offshore from where we drop our jetskis into the water. this was our first year on the water of lake superior, so we didn’t know it was so cold. so we pack up our stuff, like we have done in the past…me and dad on one jet ski, henry on another, mom, andy, ola and stuff in a jet boat. begin the mile long travel off shore. in 35 degree weather. in nothing but swim trunks. hey, it’s just like lake michigan right? my dad entered hypotheric shock about a half mile from shore and began shaking uncontrollably. i freaked out, signaled to the other jetskis (which were far ahead of us) with flares shouts of uncontrolled rage. realizing it was up to me, i had to manuever the jetski from the back seat, while i thought my dad was having a seizure. nearly 5 minutes of my dad shaking, me crying, and driving a jetski as quickly as i could to shore, the other jetskis noticed we were severely off course and followed us. i got to shore, put my dad on the ground, and jumped on top of him to help keep him warm. the other boats figured out what was wrong when they got to shore, and immediately grabbed towels and blankets spiced rum to warm my dad. dad and i shared swigs of rum from the bottle that day. we continued on our course after warming up. upon our return from that camping trip, the family bought long wetsuits for future trips to the cold lake.

those are just two camping stories. there were dozens of other great memories, jetskis or not. but now i’m cold just thinking about it…i need a blanket.

in september of 1997, my parents and i, and a group of 7 other family friends, went to see the rolling stones on the bridges to babylon tour at soldier field in chicago. problem was, we didn’t have tickets to the concert.

so we travelled downtown and wandered outside of the stadium, asking scalpers if they had 10 tickets together. what? this was the launch date for the tour (the canadian venue and double door concerts were part of a beer company promotion for surprise concerts in small venues) the soldier field dates were the two opening dates of the major north american tour!! we tried for an hour to get tickets. it was impossible. we were crazy to think we could get tickets.

out of the blue, my dad’s friend andy suggested we get on one of his client’s boats at burnam harbor, and watch listen to the concert. great. what none of us knew, was the boat was not really a boat. it was a 72 foot yacht. so we walked from soldier field to burnam harbor, and arrived at a gated door, which my father promptly jumped and climbed to open so we could get to this boat.

so, the 10 of us, boarded this yacht, and as night fell, the concert started at soldier field. listening from the top of this yacht, was not enough for my parents and friends. so…on a 72 foot yacht, that wasn’t ours, my dad and another guy undocked this boat, and drove it out onto lake michigan. problem is, no one really knew how to operate the boat…and most everyone was drunk. matt, one of my dad’s friends, had brought a bottle of johnny walker with him to the concert, which he consumed in the hour it took us to decide to steal this boat.

meanwhile, the others found the bar on this yacht, which contained thousands of dollars worth of rare wine and champagne*, which my parents and their friends quickly consumed. i wandered the boat, curious what the heck i was doing there, while my parents friends got drunk, my dad drove a 72 foot yacht, and matt was on the top deck of the boat, throwing the furniture off the top of the boat into lake michigan. i opted to stay with matt, as the massive amount of whiskey he drank, and the physical exertion of throwing all the furniture off this boat made him tired and, well, stupid. i held onto his belt, as he puked over the edge of the boat, ensuring we wouldn’t lose him to the lake.

the concert we came to see became secondary to acquiring more alcohol. so the boat was driven to navy pier, where we pulled up and my dad asked me to follow him to the bar, where he bought 20 margaritas, and expected me to carry some of the boat. the bar was prepared, and gave my dad two trays to carry the drinks in plastic cups. i carried one tray back to the boat.

everyone continued drinking, matt kept puking, and i laid on the top deck of this boat, hoping we would go home soon. so here’s me, a 14 year old accomplice to a grand theft boat, making the best of my evening. eventually, the concert ended, the party on the boat didn’t, but it was time to return the boat we stole. at 3am.

upon returning to the harbor, henry, one of the operators that decided he knew best on how to park the behemoth of a boat, managed to damage one of the transmissions on one of the engines. it was here, at 14, i learned it’s impossible to park a 72 foot yacht without 2 engines. so myself, my dad, and 3 other males, all completely drunk except for me, thought it best to pull the boat into dock. so we’re pulling, henry is reving the engines on full throttle in harbor, ramming the end of the boat into the dock. slowly, i noticed lights were turning on in other boats. people started to gather. sober-er people joined in the struggle to park this boat. questions were asked. obviously people knew we weren’t the owners. matt slept on the dock in the fetal position, exhausted from his furniture removal.

my mom drove home, as she was most sober and i couldn’t drive at 14. we dropped matt at home. by dropped, we mean we carried him to the front door, and rang the doorbell and drove away, leaving him to his wife’s wrath. the next morning, the police called our house. my dad answered, claiming we were at the rolling stones concert. i was the only person that could remember the first song of the night. that was the only song we heard.

to this day, i still claim it was the best concert i’ve never been too.

*later, we learned one of the bottles they drank cost $1500

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.

forgive me if i start to sound like andy rooney for a while (man is that guy unbearable unbearbly annoying) but parents these days are getting cah-razy. as i watched the movie Vitus yesterday (an incredible german film about a  12-year old wunderkind genius piano player who fakes a head injury to get a normal life) i decided it’s time to write my piece about helicopter parents.

helicopter parents are, as i define it, parents that focus and engage themselves constantly in their child’s life, in both an academic and social sense. they will usually rush to their child’s side, preventing their child from experiencing harm from failure, or allowing them to learn from mistakes. i’ve heard of parents “helping” with college essays, hiring college consultants, and doing children’s homework. my parent’s accountant was a helicopter parent. each time my parents went in to his office to do the magic they do, they discussed their kids. when college application time rolled around, my parents accountant told my parents how he hired a consultant to help his kid with essays, complete applications, and fine tune his son into an interview machine.

my parents did no such thing for me. their accountant made them feel stupid. they came home to me asking immediately if i needed anything. i told them they were being crazy and so was their accountant. 4 months later, when their accountant talked about the wonders of getting his son into the university of illinois, he proudly asked my parents where i had decided on going. when they told him northwestern, he was speechless, and didn’t talk to my parents for two years. he handed off their taxes to another one of his drones.

my parents weren’t around much when i was a kid, except in the evenings. they rarely helped me with my homework (but always asked) and missed some critical events that at the time was the premier event of my young life (like tennis matches and speech competitions)

my parents never made decisions for me, or really engaged much in my life when it came to decisions that affected me. when i tested out my regular elementary school in 4th grade, and was offered to go to a “special learning program” (kids called it SLP) my parents had me make the decision. i decided to stay, and i was the only student to decide to stay. the principal called my parents urging them to reconsider. they said it was not their choice, and told her that she’d have to convince me if i was to leave my school for the 5th and 6th grade. later my parents told me that the principal thought they were crazy.

anyway, from kindergarten to 10th grade, i walked to school. when i came home, i opened the house up on my own, took the dogs out, and took care of stuff. my parents would almost always come home after me. we’d always eat dinner together, but after dinner, dad would usually goto work at some building, and mom would go back to cold-calling people wanting to sell their home. sometimes i would help.

i call my parents twice a day, sometimes many more times like today (driving through the snow storm in my all-weather 3-season coupe) i talked to both parents at least 5 times before arriving in detroit. that said, i choose to keep my parents close to me. i don’t have any other family in this country. seeing my grandma was amazing. many of my friends have grandparents that lived with them, and aunts/uncles/cousins that live within driving distance. many of my friends have cousins that live close and see frequently, but i have no such luxury. before my 16-year old cousin paulina came to visit my parents this summer, the last time i saw a real blood cousin, paulina wasn’t alive.

so christmas eve went off without a hitch. my family (me, dad, mom plus grandma) opened the 52 presents we had under the tree. yes, 52. 4 people, 52 presents. 13 presents on average. in actuality, mom and i got the most. dad was ridiculous again, purchasing not only 10 articles of clothing for my mom from her favorite store, he went the ‘laptop’ route. now, grandma, mom, dad and i all have laptops. christmas morning was spent on our respective computers*

dinner was different this xmas eve. we opted for non-polish fare…no pierogis, herrings or potatoes. the only thing we had remotely polish was barszcz (yes, that’s 5 consonants in a row) instead, seafood stew, bruschetta and baked brie (not all together, and not all at once) made up dinner for the night.

polish people open gifts on xmas eve…and this year, santa was good to me, mostly in the area of running effects. santa thinks i can run a 1:45 half-marathon, and did everything in his and her power to keep me running. the signature gift, a suunto t4, not only tracks my heartrate, but knows exactly the distance i’ve run, the pace, how many calories i’ve burned, and then downloads all of that to my computer, so i can see just how well i’ve been regressing progressing in my running.

anyway, after dad and i plowed down a bottle of wine between the two of us while opening presents, we decided to polish off another one (this time we split with mom and grandma) before we had to walk across the yard to our friend’s place. there, we told stories of the old polish country.

this morning (christmas day) we ended up spending an hour at starbucks with polish friends, in the corner, having a blast, and making fun of more absolutely ridiculous holiday greetings from poland. i’d translate these, but they rhyme, and their in polish. sadly, the words “yank” and “testicles” don’t rhyme in the english language, so the poem about santa getting his ass kicked when he comes down your chimney rhymes in polish, but not in english.

i took the new running gear out (which is ungodly accurate when it comes to identifying how far i run: 4.18 miles today)

but mostly, this christmas was a great time to be with the family. we rarely spend this much physical time together, and usually, we seperate and do our things, like work, visit friends, etc. it’s been 4 solid days, and we’ve not left each other’s side. this time, love has been the word of the week. i’ve never felt this way about my family. despite the distance, i feel closer and closer to my parents each and everytime i come. i’m not sure if its maturity in general, or if i’m gaining emotional maturity when it comes to my parents. i love them lots (obviously, we talk constantly, but they’re all i’ve got) but this week continues to show that my relationship with them continues to evolve, and i learn more and more each day about them and my relationship with them. it’s neat.

also, everyone should watch the movie Vitus.

*in all actuality, i left my laptop in detroit, but it makes the story sound better if i actually imagine i brought the laptop with me and used it this morning.