Despite our best efforts, Alain's cabin remained unscathed after last year's Crab Boil and my cabin privileges remained intact. Alain must have expected the worst and saved up some repair money because he went ahead and renovated the place during the summer and now it was ready to be broken in. Time for another "Sort of Annual New Year's Eve Crab Boil". However, little did we know the Fates would be working overtime to sabotage the whole event. We continually ignored omens of Biblical proportions and overcame hell and high water to make it a rocking weekend.

The first omen was Famine: torrential Christmas rainstorms kept the crab boats in the docks and there was no crab to be found anywhere in the Bay Area. Ok so famine may be a bit of a stretch, but it's my website and I can lie if I want to. No problem, my backup plan was to make Frogmore Stew, a shrimp boil from Tennessee.

The next omen: Flood. Phone calls to Alain and others already at the cabin brought bad news: it had rained all day Thursday and Friday and there was a river of water flowing down the mountain behind the cabin. The resort was currently closed and there may be no snow at all if the rain kept up.

The third omen was Pestilence: the day we were all to leave, Colleen and Randy both got sick. That meant their significant others, and consequently their cars, weren't going up anymore. So of the lucky thirteen people heading up that Saturday, eight were either sick, not going, or without a ride. I am starting to get a bit stressed. Fortunately Randy and Colleen sacrificed and let their significant others go and Yuri and Yoshimi rented an SUV allowing the troops to rally. Ranch 99 saved my bacon and provided gigantic Thai shrimp larger than crawfish with long antennae and tails bigger than your thumb. They were incredible. We were on our way.

Fourth omen: Flood again. We get to Vallejo and Colleen calls to tell us TV news reports a levee has broken in Fairfield, Hwy 80 is flooded, and traffic is stopped. Then Dan calls from the cabin to tell us the power has been out for a few hours. Lovely. I'm stubborn (or maybe oblivious) so we keep on trucking and make it to Fairfield where all four lanes westbound (opposite direction) are flooded under 2-3 feet of water held up by the concrete median barricade acting as a dam. Traffic is backed up for miles. Water is pouring through gaps in the barricade and our lanes are flooded under 6 inches. Fortunately we got through just before they shut down our side.

So, no crab, no snow, people sick, no power, flooding. Could it get worse, and more importantly, why in the hell are we still going? Which brings us to the last omen: Landslide. Jean calls us to say a mud and rock slide has blocked Hwy 89 between Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows. She's going to try to take Hwy 267 to the lake and back up 89 to Alpine. After a while, she calls back and says she made it. We keep going. What could possibly happen?

We finally make it to the cabin five hours after leaving and the power is back on. The plastic drop cloth is laid out, the disco ball is hung, the new stereo is set up, Frogmore stew is boiled up, people eat an unhealthy amount, drinks are aplenty, Dave manages to ditch his son at a friend's cabin and comes back to party with us, the new shot ski is warmed up, a bottle of Don Julio and half a bottle of Macallan disappears in 10 minutes, Adam gets too familiar with the shot ski and acts as our party cage dancer while dollar bills are stuffed in his pants, O-Katy and G-Katie sandwiches are made on the dance floor, Adriana shakes it like she means it, Pugs manages to keep is shirt on, Doug gets jiggy with it on the dinner table, Zach tries to keep Katie from vomiting on the floor, Alain is dancing with every girl within arm's reach, O-Katy and Shilpa make out, champagne and noise makers ring in the New Year, the Three Stooges from the South Bay manage to wrestle each other and giggle uncontrollably into the wee hours of the morning, and Adam falls asleep under the dinner table with his ski helmet on. It was awesome.

The next day was awful blue-ice-out-of-the-refrigerator skiing in the morning, then good powder in the afternoon. We got hammered with snow all night, played poker, Ken set a record for holding the most simultaneous conversations at one time, and we woke up to 12 inches of fresh powder the next morning. What a dramatic turnaround to the weekend. Let's do it again next year!