Shaking the Snowglobe

I did wonder if at some point throughout this roadtrip whether I would catch some sniffles or otherwise come down with an illness. It was so far so good, but this morning I woke up in the Dulchin’s Colorado Ski Lease feeling deeply nauseous: food poisoning seemed like the culprit. I questioned my decision at the time, but on the drive from Taos I stopped by a cafe who had a delicious sounding Tuna Melt. I figured it would be canned tuna, maybe it was, but I’ve a feeling this is what did me in.

I mustered up some strength to head upstairs, took one bite of a peanut butter toast and then bolted back downstairs. Like a mento dropped in a vat of Coca Cola, the peanut butter toast bite caused an eruption. Post vom, I actually felt great and declared a premature victory. I stomached the rest of the PB toast, an avocado toast, and headed to the Rec Center with Nick’s sister and friends for a spa day. Things were going great at the spa, complete with a hot tub, eucalyptus steam room, sauna, and cold shower, but at roughly the 90 minute mark I felt depleted, achey, and unsettled. We headed to a food hall where I got some tomato soup and grilled cheese. I alternated between the babiest of spoonfulls of soup and burying my head in my arms. Food poisoning is just a relentlessly awful feeling – you can barely even use your brain. Everything just wants to shut down and melt away. Back at the house I rolled around in bed, attempted to put down some Vita Coco, Gatorade, and various other sports recovery hydrators, and begged for mercy. I threw on the second half of Rounders – some content I know like the back of my hand sounded therapeutic. Tearing up while Judge Petrovsky writes Mike McDee a $10k check, “for this, I owe”, I settled into a haze and gradual sleep.

I woke up and Nick brought me some chicken noodle soup, some sourdough bread, and more hydration beverages. We hung out while I took soup sips and crawled into the fetal position several times. Eating was just so difficult; bread took a long time to chew, soup went down slowly, even water felt like molasses. I tried some new content: Everyone is raving about Fargo Season 5, Keely from Ted Lasso apparently is amazing. I turned it on and for some reason just couldn’t enjoy it. Back to known content: Pulp Fiction. This was a blast, and distracting. Watching something new while your ill is just not the move, watching something where you know 3/4 of the lines is rejuvenating. “Does he LOOK, like a BITCH?”. Awesome. And then by some miracle, my hunger abruptly returned, my body stopped aching wildly, and my mind no longer felt like some recursive maze of nonsense thought. I heated up the remaining soup, scarfed down some more bread, chugged the Vita Coco, and chatted with the rest of the group upstairs at the dinner table. It might just be the Advil kicking in, but I am hoping we’ve made a turn around.

While I would have preferred a voluntary break, rather then being induced into a stupor by some microscopic bacterial marine core, a rest day was needed. I’ve skied nearly every day in February, and Taos was filled with many hikes up to the ridge on top of the hard packed descents. This is ultimately a good reminder to take it easy voluntarily before my body takes over and puts me on my butt as a self defense mechanism. More sipping, less gulping, as some might say.

Now, back to Pulp Fiction, and hopefully a deep REM sleep that has me feeling raring to go again in the morning, or at least not moaning and groaning my way through the day.