McKee's McThoughts: Home (or not) for the holidays

Sometimes in this wacky business, you find yourself standing in a totally amazing place. Like the finish corral at Aspen, up against a plastic fence mere inches away from racers who pretend the fence separates them completely from the world. They have friends over there in their world, familiar faces, teammates, buddies from other national teams, tech reps, other various team officials and the like. And sometimes they chat like friends often do.
SOMETIMES IN THIS wacky business, you find yourself standing in a totally amazing place. Like the finish corral at Aspen, up against a plastic fence mere inches away from racers who pretend the fence separates them completely from the world. They have friends over there in their world, familiar faces, teammates, buddies from other national teams, tech reps, other various team officials and the like. And sometimes they chat like friends often do.
    I’m not completely fluent in English let alone any foreign language, but there is a lilt to casual conversation that is the same in all languages. Certainly laughter is readily identifiable, though there wasn’t laughter in abundance during the downhill what with the crashes, the adrenalin and no small amount of fear.
    Slalom day, though, was a bit more relaxed. It was a postcard day with bright sun, fresh snow, colorful banners and flags all around. It was a pretty enjoyable time and place.
    Then all of a sudden, a young racer standing inches from me laughed heartily and responded to someone in perfectly clear English: “I can’t wait to go home to Europe.”
    Not to a specific country, mind you, but to Europe.
    And I wonder how many Americans can even fathom that someone young and bright and in control of her own destiny would rather be somewhere other than the US of A.
    We’re so lame.
    Of course they wanted to go home. They’d been on the road for three or more weeks, and while the accommodations for World Cup athletes in Canada and the U.S. are pretty darn nice, and although they get treated well by the U.S. populous and such, it still ain’t home.
    Our racers, of course, are on the road for longer stretches at a time than three weeks. Some will skip Christmas at home in an effort to stay fresh and race at their best. Our guys don’t have a lot of sympathy for the Euros on a three-week sprint through North America, and shouldn’t. But while the collective “we” has often waxed on about the problems our teams face on the road, it is so hard to see what the other guys really face when they come here.
    The distance, for one easy-to-digest example, between airports at New York or Boston to Colorado would take a person across the bulk of Europe. Pop up Goggle Earth and compare. But the key ingredient — the biggie that usurps any European comfort level — has to be the culture, or lack of it. Basically, it’s us. Frankly, in the terms our grade school teacher might use, we don’t play well with others, and history proves that out. Generally speaking, of course. Plus we have steak on virtually every menu outside of McDonalds.
    So hearing Lindsey Vonn talking about her friendship with Maria Riesch was a real refreshing notion. They spend time at one another’s houses, become comfortable with each other’s families. Teach each other the native language. Lindsey can do finish line talks in German; Riesch in English.
    This is not uncommon on the World Cup tour; particularly, it seems from here, among the women. Friendships develop among competitors. That’s not unique to skiing, but it is a wonderful part of the sport.
    Thankfully, this does not appear to be un-American.
    Moving on, I know it was rough for our main man Steven Nyman, but as a guy with gray hair I loved the super G podium at Val Gardena: Didier Cuche 33, Bode Miller 30; Marco Buechel 36; Didier Defago 30. Also in the top 10 were Benni Raich at 30 and Hermann Maier at 35. The average age for the whole scoring platoon was over 28. If we can celebrate Brett Favre, we can celebrate these guys, too. Don’t you think Buechel ought to be a Favre level hero in Liechtenstein? Though I suppose that would still make Buechel a tiny principality of a hero anyway.
    That’s the kind of tasteless humor the Euros have to deal with when they’re over here. See why they wanted to go home?
    So thanks for coming. It was a swell party and it really helped get us in the holiday mood. We’re  sorry if we offended you, but we really didn’t mean anything by it. Say, have you heard the one about the Pope, the bear and the rabbi? No, no we understand, that’s fine. Alek Glebov — nice result at Val Gardena — we got a spot for you on the McThoughts All-Name team – somebody should buy you a beer. Say, we're coming over to your neck of the woods for a few months. And the guys were wondering; You got a sister?