Cesar Chavez, Patron Saint of Vacation Days

When Scooby decided that he wanted to go on a little ski vacation to Colorado, I was definitely excited by the idea, but given that I need to conserve vacation for the endless string of weddings, reunions and bachelorette parties this summer, I wasn't sure I could swing it. But then I remembered Cesar Chavez. Chavez was a migrant worker turned labor leader who improved conditions for farm workers. More importantly, his very existence warrants a vacation day in California. I had never heard of the man before moving here, but he is all over the place. It seems like every third street is named after him, and last Friday was Cesar Chavez Day.

So, since I had never taken Cesar Chavez Day off before, I figured I wouldn't miss it if I decided to work that day and instead take the previous Friday off for Colorado ski fun.

The trip promised to be stellar on multiple levels: we would stay with Scooby's parents, so there would be no lodging expenses; the snow in Colorado is amazing this year; one of my best friends from college was going to be there at the same time. There was just one thing I forgot to account for: I am, apparently, a delicate flower. It's funny, because I don't usually think of myself as a weakling. In fact, I often make fun of other delicate flowers, namely my sister's dog Dexter, because he is so sensitive and easily injured. I mean look at him:










But I'm slowly starting to realize that I may not be able to live up to my sturdy Germanic heritage. Even high altitude makes me sick.

Of course I've been skiing in Colorado before, and I've been to a number high-altitude locales, but for some reason this time around my body refused to tolerate it. As soon as we were driving from Denver up into the mountains, I could feel my head start to pound. I decided to start guzzling water, since I knew that being at 9,000 feet can cause dehydration and then headaches, but the pain persisted. I was so exhausted by the time we arrived, I decided to go straight to bed, but I slept restlessly and was awake for two hours in the middle of the night. By the time the alarm rang in the morning, my head hurt so badly, I could barely open my eyes. I reached for more water thinking it would alleviate some of the pressure in my head, but it only seemed to exacerbate some rumblings in my stomach.

And that's when the puking started.

After an hour and a half of running between the bed and the bathroom, I finally decided to follow my mother's advice and head to the hospital. So I hopped in the car with Scooby, his friend (both dressed and ready for the slopes), his mother and stepdad. And wouldn't you know it? I had to request that Scooby's stepdad pull over the car so I could hop out and vomit on the side of the road. In a word: humiliating.

Scooby's mom stayed with me at the hospital, where I sat in the waiting room with a tiny blue cone that was supposed to be my vomit receptacle, should I get sick again. I couldn't help but think of Garth in Wayne's World saying, "if you're gonna spew, spew into this," and holding up a little Dixie cup. Luckily, I didn't need to use the cone, but I did have to run to the hospital bathroom--again--to dry heave.

Once the doctors saw me, they immediately put me on oxygen and pumped me full of drugs and fluids. The medicine made me feel strange and jerky though, and I was preoccupied with the fact that I was acting strange and erratic in front of my boyfriend's mother. I felt miraculously better in the next couple of hours, but they made me take the oxygen tank with me, which made me look uncannily like my grandmother at 70. On my way out, as I was waiting to pay for my medications, I sneaked a glimpse at a little boy who was in a wheelchair with a broken leg, broken arm, fat lip and a black eye. His mother walked over to him and said, "you okay?" and he just looked up at her without saying a word, his chin starting to quiver. It broke my heart and simultaneously made me miss my mother.

The little boy looked over and caught me staring, so I looked away, but when I looked back he was staring at me, which reminded me that he wasn't the only spectacle in the hospital. I did, after all, have a oxygen tank slung over my shoulder and plastic tubes descending from my nose. How quickly we forget...

In the end, lots o' drugs and pure oxygen perked me right up and I was able to go skiing the following two days and even eat chili on the slopes, but being in the hospital is not exactly the ideal way to spend Cesar Chavez Day (observed).

Plus, I had to come to an empty (except for one person) office building on the real Cesar Chavez Day. I decided to use the luxury of an empty office to call my brother. "It's a holiday, but I'm working," I told him. "Cesar Chavez Day."

"You gotta be kidding me," he practically yelled into the phone. "You get a day off to celebrate that guy?" I wondered for a second (a) how Rob knew who Cesar Chavez was and (b) why he would dislike the migrant worker turned hero.

And then it dawned on me.

"Not Hugo Chavez! CESAR Chavez." I mean Berkeley may have protesters living in trees and people picketing the Marine's office, but we do have some standards.