The 4th of Blackout

This weekend the Kathys along with 5 other friends headed up to Lake Tahoe to spend the weekend sunbathing and drinking. Normally when I go up to Tahoe I stay on the north or west shore, but since we wanted to party at the casinos, we decided to stay at my grandmother’s cabin in south shore.

We left the city on Friday around 2pm and the drive took us about 6.5 hour, which included one stop at In N Out and another at BevMo for booze and so Party Kel and the Gaussie (my gay Australian co-worker) could shotgun beers.

Shotgunning at BevMo

Once we arrived and unpacked the car we decided the best thing to do was to get drunk. As I mentioned before, I won a party pack from Firefly’s Fourth of Firefly contest so we had a ton of drinking paraphernalia in tow. One of the gifts they included was a pack of temporary tattoos which we each applied to our shoulders. I pointed out the obvious parallel between our arm tattoos and that of Jacob's from Twilight, so I immediately started calling us the wolf pack.

Wolf pack tattoos

We started to play the card game “Fuck the Dealer” when we soon discovered that Party Kel was cheating and not drinking her portion. We immediately made her take a shot and decided that she had to drink from a clear cup the remainder of the trip. Somehow the card game turned into a rave where we grabbed a bunch of Firefly flashlight key changes and danced around to Party in the U.S.A. on repeat.



The next morning we woke up and drove to Zephyr Cove in Nevada to have a relaxing day in the sun. My friend CB drove up that day and met us on the beach. She had stopped by the house to drop off her stuff before heading over. On the counter of the kitchen she found the temporary tattoos and decided to put one on as well. This was such a crazy coincidence that it just confirmed the wolf pack scenario. She must have read my thoughts.

At the beach we soon encountered the Fun Police who told us we couldn’t bring alcohol because Zephyr Cove had a Beer Garden set up. Once we noticed the kind of people entering and exiting this establishment, we renamed it the Bro Garden. There was something about the people at the beach that day that was so trashy. I am not sure where they all came from, but it was not the Bay Area. I imagine they all crawled out from the sewers of Central California. The guys had gelled faux-hawks and tribal tattoos and the girls wore jewelry and full make up to the beach. This one girl in particular had on a gold lame swimsuit, bleach blonde puffy hair, and Dior style sunglasses. She looked like an albino Snooki.

On the night of the 4th of July, the Gaussie was really excited. He had never been in the U.S.A. during the 4th and couldn’t wait. He walked around all night waving an American flag wearing an outfit that can only be described as the gayest safari outfit I have ever seen.

The Gaussie is gay for U.S.A.

We started the night by cruising down to the beach to watch fireworks with bottles of wine and a blanket in tow. We parked ourselves next to a tree and set up our picnic. Throughout the entire fireworks display, this annoying kid perched in the tree kept yelling, “Hey! Look at me! Look at me I am in a tree!”  Yeah kid, we see you.

Annoying tree child

Afterwards we head back to the house to light off sparklers, and prepped for our Firefly photo shoot. The rep had told me to send in pictures, so I wanted to guarantee that we would make the website by strategically placing their paraphernalia in all of our photos. After another dance party to “Money Can’t Buy You Class” things got a little hazy.

Pimping Firefly

The next morning on the ride back we got stuck in ridiculous traffic. Party Kel demanded that we stop at the Jelly Belly factory despite the fact that we had been in the car for over 5 hours. The place looked like Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory on crack. They had murals made from jellybeans and even had jellybean shaped pizza and burgers in their café. At their sampling table, we decided to all try one of their weird flavors. Party Kel ate pencil shavings, I ate canned dog food, and the Gaussie ate rotten egg. It was the most revolting thing I have ever eaten. People actually choose to buy these things!

After a long drive we finally made it back to San Francisco. All in all it was an amazing weekend and I hope I can head back up to Tahoe (not the south shore) again this summer.