McKee's McThoughts: Flying high for nationals

I love to fly. I hate to fly.
    Commercial flights really are a lot to endure. Sitting elbow to elbow with 300 friends and strangers in a metal cigar tube for hours at a time is a testing experience. Doesn’t matter how many movies they show, it sucks.
    But there are moments.
    Flying into Newark, of all places, early in the morning with the sun shining off the Manhattan skyline, the Statue of Liberty and the Jersey swamps are amazingly pretty. I’ve always been struck by the way traffic flows, like the life-blood flowing through the veins. If we go to the same area and take it a few more miles up, as Goggle-Earth takes us, we find the blood flow moves strongest in the cancerous regions, the cities, where there can be little doubt the planet is not being done much good. That may be another subject.
    The other end of the flights came in over Alaska, headed, as much of the racing community is this week, into the U.S. Alpine Championships. Mile after mile of bright white mountains converging on the sea, ribbons of glaciers and not a trace of traffic. Now that’s stunning. I love to fly.
I LOVE TO FLY. I hate to fly.
    Commercial flights really are a lot to endure. Sitting elbow to elbow with 300 friends and strangers in a metal cigar tube for hours at a time is a testing experience. Doesn’t matter how many movies they show, it sucks.
    But there are moments.
    Flying into Newark, of all places, early in the morning with the sun shining off the Manhattan skyline, the Statue of Liberty and the Jersey swamps are amazingly pretty. I’ve always been struck by the way traffic flows, like the life-blood flowing through the veins. If we go to the same area and take it a few more miles up, as Goggle-Earth takes us, we find the blood flow moves strongest in the cancerous regions, the cities, where there can be little doubt the planet is not being done much good. That may be another subject.
    The other end of the flights came in over Alaska, headed, as much of the racing community is this week, into the U.S. Alpine Championships. Mile after mile of bright white mountains converging on the sea, ribbons of glaciers and not a trace of traffic. Now that’s stunning. I love to fly.
    For that matter, Alaska is stunning in general. I completely understand those who live here.
    And what a good reason to travel the nationals are. The younger athletes, and others less traveled than the World Cup team, get their shot at America’s best. The Cup teams get to race at home — though for some of them Alyeska may be nearly as far away from home in terms of miles than Europe. For a group of J2s it is their first taste of the big leagues, having won the opportunity at Junior Olympic competition, and the collegiate racers get to try and show they chose to ski the college circuit for the education, not because of limited ability. And then there’s the Canadians, who occasionally roll in to the U.S. champs to get a few more race runs under their skis and perhaps a few bucks in their pockets. Twenty-one Canadians have won U.S. titles over the years.
    Probably won’t happen this season, according to the list of competitors.
    Has anyone else noticed the problems in the grand old sport of cricket? The Pakistan coach, Bob Woolmer, was murdered less than 24 hours after Pakistan lost in a stunning World Cup upset to Ireland. Murdered. I don’t recall much like that in skiing. Yes, Spyder Sabich was murdered, but that killing was not related to the outcome of a sporting event. It’s a small mark, over in the corner of the bottom of the page, but skiing is one of the good sports from this chair.
    Does anyone else find it interesting that Bode Miller wins a World Cup title — one of only 17 earned by Americans in the last 38 years — and he’s still going to be considered a disappointment for the season. What’s the guy have to do? Mighty steep price for the amazing success he has had over the years. Or perhaps it is the price paid for playing games with the media.
    It was nice to feel the enthusiasm with which the core of the ski racing community embraced the NCCA title by Dartmouth. It was a connection solidly made and the electricity flowed through unabated. The connections were multiple. Dartmouth spearheaded racing in this country, but the energy ran deeper than that. Dartmouth was an all-American team — no foreigners — and that aspect cannot be underestimated, but that wasn’t the conduit the electricity truly flowed through either. To this view, the strongest connection was money, and there is nothing America loves more than money.
    Skiing is a sport the wealthy play. It’s an unspoken truth. Just look at Beaver Creek. Look at the Mount Washington Hotel. Look at the lift-ticket price at the local hill. Money was the conductor. The connection was pure gold.
The tuition at Dartmouth is irrelevant. It’s more the atmosphere the college provides. Dartmouth is an old established institution. Those families who send their grown youngsters to Dartmouth feel comfort in doing so. Comfort is the payback of wealth.
    The athletes we spoke to from other universities at the NCAA championships seemed like great kids. No question they were very good athletes. But the boost Dartmouth provided to the skiing community, the excitement that surged through the hard-wired soul of our very sport, oh, that was special. In this age, it seems, wins for the establishment aren’t as easy to come by as they once were.
    So thank you athletes of Dartmouth. Thank you for the hard work and pure joy you exhibited in New Hampshire.
    March has been a crazy month. In Vermont, the view from the porch has been rapidly shifting. The sap has been running. Massive amounts of snow have melted. The creek broke through the ice. Temperatures swung upward of 65 degrees in less than 24 hours and then headed back down. Then upward of 20 more inches of snow fell. It’s hard to keep track of. Around the nation skiing future has been taking shape in Junior Olympic competition, sponsored, by the way, by Chevrolet and a tip of the McThought hat for that.
    The JO’s aren’t all that easy to keep track of either, not with five or six hundred competitors participating at ski areas coast to coast. A small group of those skiers will one day compete in a U.S. national championship. A handful of those skiers will make it into NCAA competition. A very small percentage will make it to the World Cup, a World Championship or the Olympics. A dozen would be a large number. Of those, two might become international stars.     Friends, they are all stars. And, more importantly, they are fine young people with ideals and goals and a capacity to enjoy working toward those goals.
    That’s the way we all should approach life.
    I hope they like to fly.