Warren Miller didn’t teach me to love skiing; my parents did that when they put me on skis at an age before I can remember. But my parents also taught me to love Warren Miller. And what Warren Miller taught me, sitting in the cafeteria at Boyne Mountain cold and wet and happy, with a hot chocolate in my small hands, neck craned, eyes glued to the big screen, was how far my skis could take me.
So many of our memories are rooted not in sights and experiences, but in smells and tastes—especially around the holidays. When I think of my Grandma Klara, I immediately think of koldūnai stuffed with blueberries, the combined joy and dread of eating greasy potato pancakes on a hot Florida day, and the smell of day-old kugelis frying in butter. The only thing my grandmother was more enthusiastic about than cooking was getting us to eat.
But when I think of Teta Marija, my grandmother’s older sister, there’s only one food that comes to mind: angel wings. While she made them year round, a special treat whenever we came to visit, they were available in abundance around the holidays.
The idea for Adrenalin started with an email from Del Olsen to a few interested parties. The subject line read, “A Crazy Idea.” In the email, proposed putting together a consortium of like-minded dinghy sailors (Del sails International Canoes) to purchase a boat fit to race to Hawaii. The response was as fast and as sure as a summer squall: Not so crazy an idea after all!
By early Fall 2014, Del along with I14 sailors Greg Mitchell, Kirk Twardowski, and Andy Bates had found the boat they wanted, a Custom Santa Cruz 50 built in South Africa and currently residing in Southern California. Adrenalin was in good shape with an extensive inventory of sails and a lengthy racing resumé—she can be seen in the Disney documentary Morning Light at the start of the 2007 Transpac. By Thanksgiving, Adrenalin was at the dock at the Richmond Yacht Club, which is where I met her. I told Del, “If you need a good snacktician, I’m raising my hand!”
I remember my father telling me that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was once the greatest country in Europe, extending from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea. It was in the fifteenth century—but I was too young to understand that. One Sunday when I was twelve, at my grandparents' church in Southfield, he bought me a little gold pin with the American flag flying opposite the Lithuanian tricolor. He told me that the colors of the Lithuanian flag—geltona, žalia, raudona—represent Lithuania's golden fields, its forests, and the blood that has been shed for the Fatherland. It doesn't sound so melodramatic in Lithuanian. I had always been aware of my heritage on both sides of the family, but from that day I began to identify myself as being something other than American.
Even before I left for Sochi, Lietuvos Rytas television journalist Rita Stankevičiūtė contacted me to ask if I'd mind giving an interview. Of course I never mind the chance to promote my skiers, and I quickly agreed. And then she asked me, "Do you speak Lithuanian?" Sure I said, I just can't write very well.
Off to Sochi we went, and up to Rosa Khutor on a sloppy Tuesday morning to watch the women's giant slalom. Rita found me after the race, pointed a camera in my face, and asked me if I was ready. The fruits of that interview appeared in a segment titled "Olympic Fever."
After the interview, I told Rita, still speaking Lithuanian, "I'm so embarrassed for my Lithuanian. You know, I really learned it from the kids."
In Sochi, we measured everything in hot dogs. The concessions inside the Olympic venues were limited, to say the least, and the hot dogs were the most appealing. A “classic” hot dog with ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise was 150 rubles. The specialty hot dogs, which included the “Brooklyn,” covered in melted cheese product and bits of bacon, and the “Manhattan” with ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise, as well as fried onion bits and pickles, cost 200 rubles. Because it's extremely difficult to comprehend that an American hot dog covered with baked beans (the “Boston”) could cost over $6 in Russia, we simply ignored the conversion rate and measured the world in specialty hot dogs.
My parents taught me how to ski. We spent many winter weekends on the slopes of Northern Michigan, went to Colorado every spring, and I loved to watch ski racing in the Olympics. I remember Tommy Moe’s gold medal in the men’s downhill in Lillehammer (I was teaching a young cousin how to ski that day), but I don’t remember the first Olympics I watched—like skiing, it is something I’ve just always done.
My favorite word in Lithuanian, grybauti, means “to go mushrooming.” In English, the meaning is simple and to the point, but in Lithuanian, the sentiment of the word is much more poetic. I didn't fully understand it until recently, when some friends put me in a pair of rubber boots, handed me a basket and a knife, and drove to a “secret spot” some 20km outside of Vilnius on a cold, damp morning.
In Lithuanian, the word užupis means “beyond the river,” though the Vilnelė River, which divides Užupis from the Vilnius Old Town, is more of a winding creek. In 1997, a group of bohemian artists and writers declared the neighborhood independent and founded the People’s Republic of Užupis. Independence Day is April 1st, and a sign marking the entrance to the district features four distinct symbols including a smiley face and the Mona Lisa warning you of “art ahead.”
March 11, 2010 (Kovo 11-ąją), celebrates the 20th anniversary of modern-day, independent Lithuania; though it was nearly three and a half tumultuous years before the last Soviet troops retreated to Moscow. On this day I reflect on my first trip to Lithuania, and all the things I could not have done if it were not for those brave men and women who stood up to the Supreme Soviet and declared their independence.
