Going Home

Travel in Canada is an odd thing, especially when you do it as much as athletes like I do. It’s a lot of repetition, doing things over and over; the same cabin interior, the same airports, the same crowded airport Starbucks.
The flight from Calgary was uneventful, save for the fact that it almost didn’t happen. I think I’m getting just a little too good at cutting things close. Those last few minutes of sleep almost cost me a few hundred dollars. I’ve always been mildly amused watching other folks barrel frantically through the corridors, luggage flailing, only to stand in impotent frustration in the security line. Hurry up and wait isn’t so funny when it’s happening to you. The security guard waves me through, but stops me short for a moment. He grins as he reads my tee shirt, with its skeleton highland piper and Dropkick Murphys lyrics. “Nice to see a fellow fan,” he says.
“Sing loud, sing proud, man” I reply, also grinning as I grab my backpack and dash off to my next obstacle.
I arrive at the gate just as the last passenger is boarding. The gate attendant and I share a moment of awkward silence as I rummage through my stuff for my boarding pass. I manage to find it and hand it over. The attendant checks my ID, saying, “Oh good, you’re the one we were waiting for.” I begin to stumble over two or three apologies at once, but she just laughs and says, “Enjoy the flight, Mr Winter.” I take my seat half way through the in-flight safety demonstration that no one really pays attention to anyway, and I’m fast asleep by the time we reach cruising altitude on the way to my stopover in Toronto.
Another gate, another boarding pass. The woman behind the counter raises her eyebrow in surprise.
“I’m sorry sir, this aircraft is bound for Vancouver.”
“It is? But I’m…at the wrong gate.” I shake my head ruefully, the woman behind the counter smiles accommodatingly. I’ve done this all before; sat at the same bar eating the same misspelled Sicillian Panini and drinking the same overpriced beer while waiting for a flight. I had finished my meal and walked mistakenly on autopilot to the adjacent gate from which I have boarded so many flights bound for Thunder Bay. Curses to the airport for changing their gate schedule on me. I head back to the bar, casually wondering if it’s acceptable for me to ask the bartender to watch my stuff while I run to the washroom…after all, Never Leave Your Luggage Unattended. Still, he seems like an all right guy, and it’s pretty quiet right now.
“Of course, buddy…no worries, just remember to tip well.” He grins, his thick Italian accent matching his pressed black shirt and bouquet of heavy rings to a tee. His friendly wink is a reassuring glimmer of humanity amidst the chaos of beeping metal detectors, disembodied boarding calls and throngs of travel weary people.
As the plane climbs smoothly up through the broken clouds over Toronto, I am struck, as always, by the immensity of cities like this. As a kid, I can remember driving to The Big City with my parents for the weekend. Back then you passed Canada’s Wonderland about forty minutes before hitting Toronto…now you hit Toronto about forty minutes before Canada’s Wonderland. The lake where I grew up, once quiet, is now churned incessantly by the pleasure craft southern Ontario’s elite as The Muskokas are pushed further north by an ever-expanding suburbia. Cottage Country may be getting closer, but at least my parents’ house is worth more now. I imagine present day South River, the town where I grew up, as having a close resemblance to the Canmore of the 60’s and 70’s, before the 1988 Olympics and the tourism boom, just a hotel and a gas station on a highway. Granted, Canmore has the mountains, but South River, as the crooked sign proudly extols, is ‘The Gateway to Algonquin Park’. After a few days in Thunder Bay to visit old friends and help my brother set up his new digs, it will be nice to head back to South River with my parents to visit my old high school, do some sponsor hunting and have a few days of much needed relaxation by the lake, before braving the chaos of Pearson International a second time for my flight back to Calgary. A break away from skiing is something I’ve been looking forward to for a while. I can almost hear the static-choked CBC Radio One that is the soundtrack to my childhood playing in my parents’ kitchen.
Despite my last minute check-in, my duffel somehow made it through the gauntlet of the Calgary airport baggage services and repeated this impressive feat again in Toronto to immerge onto the conveyer belt in Thunder Bay at the exact moment that I arrived to claim. A baggage handler in an orange jump suit steps from behind a door to hand me my pole tube. “Ski poles?” he asks.
“Uh, yeah…thought most people usually guess fishing rod,” I reply.
“There are a lot of you skiers here in Thunder Bay,” he says. “You hear for training camp?”
“Nope, just visiting old team mates,” I say.
“Well, have a good one.” With that, he’s gone back through the door, the howl of jet engines sinking to a dull hum as the door shuts behind him.

People often complain about air travel, about how exhausting and inhumane it can be. As an athlete who usually travels with fourteen pairs of skis for weeks on end, I have had my share of horrendous experiences over the years. Those awful stories of forty plus hours of travel, of lost and broken luggage, or narrowly missed flights go really well with friends and a pint of beer. However, it’s the simple examples of kind people along the way that stand out most to me, the kind that are so common in Canmore. Maybe that’s why I love my new mountain home as much as my old Algonquin one.
On the mountain, as in life, it’s good to know that everywhere, there are other people out there who always ride the high line.