Last winter I went with 13 family members and my boyfriend Spencer to Colorado for an annual ski trip extravaganza. This trip is something we look forward to all year. We dream about the view from the slopes of the Rocky Mountains. We anticipate the fresh snow, the smell of the pine trees, and the inevitable catastrophic wipeouts that strip you of everything but your jacket and ski boots. We were ready for a relaxing, stress free vacation. We had no idea how badly the trip would go.
We rented a two-story log cabin with a loft, three bathrooms and two bedrooms. A number of us slept in the loft where there were four beds, while others slept in the bedrooms downstairs, and still others slept on couches. We were packed into the place like sardines. Perhaps this was our first mistake.
The first night in the cabin, my grandparents fell ill with a stomach virus. They were debilitated. Being optimistic, we assumed it was altitude sickness and hoped it would pass. Nonetheless we spent our first day on the slopes without them, and upon our arrival at the cabin afterwards they greeted us with dinner, which we ate hungrily. This may have been our second mistake. We all headed to bed, ready for another attempt at the slopes in the morning. But at around midnight, trouble stirred in the loft.
I heard my boyfriend Spencer groan next to me. He stood up, holding his stomach with one hand, gripping the railing of the staircase with the other and headed to the bathroom downstairs. I knew exactly what was about to happen, and within seconds after closing the door behind him, he was hurling his dinner. His long and loud purges echoed throughout the cabin over the hum of the bathroom fan. I was mortified. I was mortified first and foremost because someone I was dating was capable of making such awful noises, but also because I was just beginning to realize this illness was contagious and could have infected the whole lot of us.
A few moments later, with Spencer still in the bathroom, I heard my cousin stir from across the room. She shot out of bed with her hand over her mouth and sprinted to the bathroom on the second floor. I sat in silence without a clue as to what could happen next, waiting for the next casualty to emerge. We could hear the both of them almost simultaneously spilling their guts.
I made my way downstairs to comfort Spencer when I saw my stepmother shuffle quickly toward the third bathroom. That brought the number of victims to three in 30 minutes. Both the speed and the brutality of the bug alarmed those of us who had not yet shown symptoms, and we began to look at one another with a sort of fearful suspicion, trying to guess who would be next and questioning whether the pains in our stomachs were due to nausea or terror.
It was at this point we realized that at the rate the illness was picking us off, we might not have enough vessels to vomit in. As a result, my father gathered all the trash bins he could find and put them in strategic locations throughout the house.
Between vomiting sessions, when the house fell silent, we sat around the kitchen table in the dark, sipping Fresca and laughing embarrassingly at the noises coming from the bathrooms. We had no choice but to endure them. You hope no one has to hear you make those noises, and you hope never to hear them coming from another person, let alone someone you know and have to spend the next week with.
The next morning, with all of us exhausted and some of us at least 10 lbs lighter, we decided we would be safe to stay off the slopes for the day. We figured the worst possible time to vomit is on a ski lift, 100 feet above solid ground where snowboarders and elite skiers glide helplessly and unsuspectingly below.
While some of the family ventured back onto the mountain for the last day of the trip, we lost most of our precious vacation to the flu and our fear of contracting it. While we had wanted the view from the slopes, we spent most of our time peering into a toilet bowl. The smell of the pine trees was replaced with the smell of vomit and hand soap. And while there were no wipeouts or fantastic takedowns on the mountain, we were in disarray, defeated, handicapped.
Despite the calamity, we reflect more fondly on this trip than many others from the past, not because we enjoyed being sick, but because the illness forced us to stay positive, to find the good in time spent in close quarters, and to be vulnerable with one another. We felt closer not because we enjoyed the mountains together, but because we all saw the irony in the impeccable timing of our plague. We had, essentially, spent thousands of dollars to vomit at high altitude. And in such hopeless times, there is little to do but laugh, and play Jenga, and drink large quantities of ginger ale.
