Thanksgiving Weekend, 2000

They had three days off. A rarity on tour. Of course, being the holiday week, they actually only had one show at all – Friday night in Vegas. Immediately after the show, they were whisked away to the airport and shipped off to a small ski resort somewhere in the heart of Colorado. The idea had been someone's in management. The thought was they would have Thanksgiving with their families sometime between Saturday's show and Friday's show, then spend the long weekend together as a group. Ski, relax, maybe start work on their next album. Give them time to hang out together as guys and not band mates per say.

 

The ten men – Lonnie, Todd, Dre, Randy and Wes were accompanying the guys for their retreat made it to the resort sometime around one Saturday morning. Since landing it had been snowing lightly, big fat, fluffy flakes that stuck. The resort was so small that the ten of them used up all the available beds. They had two cabins and they quickly divided up. Security guards in one, the singers in the other. Exhausted, the five men divided up quickly enough into the three bedrooms and went to bed.

 

JC was the first to wake up, sometime after five am. He had kicked off his blanket. The wind had picked up so that even with the heat on, the cold was still seeping through the walls and chilled the bedrooms. He sat up, quickly locating the nice quilt on the floor and resettled it around him. That task finished, he found his stuffed animal of the week – a dog from a few shows back that oddly reminded him of someone he couldn't quite place, and curled up around it, inhaling it's fading scent of some flowery perfume that the fan had sprayed it with. He immediately fell back into a deep sleep again, not noticing that the storm outside had become a full blown blizzard in the four hours since they arrived.

 

Lance was the first one truly up, his phone beeping him into consciousness. Across the room from him, Joey kept snoring away. He turned his phone off and sat up.

 

“Whoa,” he murmured. The view outside their window was solid white. He got out of the bed and shuffled to the kitchenette area of the main room, making a pot of coffee from the hotel style of basics that were there.

 

He listened to the wind howl as he waited for his coffee and drank a cup of it to warm up before getting on with the real reason he was up that early. Getting the first shower, guaranteeing him hot water.

 

While Lance was in the shower (singing a lovely rendition of “Let It Snow” though he'd never admit to it) Chris and Justin had gotten up. The later one was glowering around the main room, slowly sipping his coffee when Lance emerged.

 

Chris was staring out the window of the lee side of the building, not that it made any difference since it was snowing hard enough to be a whiteout through the glass panes.

 

“Reminds me of when I was ten. Two blizzards in a month. Of course, they both hit on Saturdays so no snow days,” he muttered to nobody in particular. “Mom would leave me to watch my sisters while she went next door to watch Dick Goddard.”

 

Not long after Joey woke up, there was a knock on the door. A flurry of snow burst in along with a gust of wind and Lonnie, covered from head to foot and holding a bag in his gloved hand.

 

“Everyone okay?” he asked. “The phones are out.”

 

The four men assured him that they were all indeed alright.

 

“Where's JC?” he asked once he had removed his ski goggles and did a head count.

 

“Being JC,” Chris answered, nodding towards the closed door of the third bedroom. “Where else?”

 

Lonnie inclined his head once and placed the bag down on the floor. “Essentials,” he explained. “Was just at the lodge. They're closed until the storm has abated,” he paused. “In a few days. We may be stuck here past Monday.”

 

“We've got a show on Tuesday night,” Lance reminded them all.

 

“Well if we're still here, there's not going to be one,” Justin piped up.

 

“Johnny's not going to like that,” Lance added.

 

“Johnny's going to have more on his mind than just the concert if we can't get a hold of him,” Joey spoke up.

 

“Yeah, I can see the headlines now. 'Not So 'N Sync: Boy Band Found Frozen at Ski Resort'.” Chris tried to lighten the mood a little. It worked to a point where the other four men smiled and changed the subject.

 

After Lonnie left in another burst of frozen wind and snow, they went through the bag, putting the food away, the candles and batteries along the back of the counter, and a store-bought starter log next to the fireplace. 

 

“C! We're snowed in!” Justin told JC as he finally made an appearance just before noon. Then he started laughing like a loon as JC flashed him a thumbs up, obviously in zombie mode as he located a cup and poured himself the end of the coffee.

 

Lance looked up from the script he was reading. “Phones are down, can't get a hold of Johnny and we'll probably have to reschedule Tuesday's show,” he filled in the rest of the morning's events. JC flashed another thumbs up, leaning against the counter as he sipped his hot drink.

 

“YOU CHEATER!” Justin yelled from his seat across from Chris, where the two had been playing Chess with the set they found in a cabinet.

 

“I didn't cheat!” Chris yelled back.

 

“You did! Castles can't do that!” he picked up the offending piece and put it back down halfway across the board, presumably where it supposedly started. “They only go straight.”

 

“It was straight!”'

 

“Yeah a straight up cheat, old man!”

 

“I'll show you old!” Chris jumped up and Justin followed. An eye blink later they were on the floor, rolling about and insulting each other. Mostly in a good-natured way.

 

“My bet's on Justin,” JC said, sinking down on the couch between Joey and Lance, cupping his mug in his hands.

 

“Justin,” Joey agreed.

 

“Agreed.” Lance added. They laughed as Chris' next insult emerged, even causing Justin to pause.

 

“I am NOT a 'turtle-licking-poodle-headed q-tip!” Justin nearly yelled. “You...you....member of the Lollipop Guild AARP!”

 

“At least my breath doesn't smell like dog butt,” Chris replied, shoving the younger man off him.

 

“You'd know the smell,” Justin grumbled as they got up.

 

“What's that?” Chris put a hand up to his ear like he was deaf. Justin's response was a middle finger and a grin behind it.

 

“I'm starved,” he announced, digging through the cans of food and pulling a few out. “Chef Boyardee?” he asked the rest.

 

“Yo,” Joey replied. Justin opened two cans and started to microwave them. That's when the power went out.

 

“Damn,” he glared at the ceiling for a moment. “Still cold.” The pulled the bowls out of the microwave and ate his anyways.

 

Lance put his script aside and started piling wood into the fireplace. JC joined him while Chris and Joey started lighting candles and putting them around the room.

 

“We really can't call out?” JC inquired as they arranged the wood over the starter log. Lance was practically married to his phone and laptop.

 

“Nope. Not a single bar and the land line is down as well.”

 

“What now?” Justin whined after they had finished the tasks. “I'm bored.”

 

“Didn't you bring something?” JC asked.

 

“Ski resort. Figured I'd be you know, skiing.”

 

“He's got a point though,” Joey brought up. “It's not like we can go online here or something.”

 

Chris jumped up and rummaged through the game cabinet. “Monopoly, puzzle, puzzle, Mouse Trap, Operation, Oooh, cards!” he pulled out of the cabinet, holding up a deck of cards. “Poker anyone?”

 

An hour later found the quintet sitting around an end table they dragged over to the hearth. Piles of coins sat stacked in front of each of them as Joey dealt out a new hand.

 

JC got up to let Wes in when the knock on the door came. The burst of wind that blew in extinguished some of the candles.

 

“You guys alright?” he asked.

 

“Yes,” came the chorus.

 

“We know where you guys are if Chris dies of old age,” Justin added. “I raise two cents.” He tossed two pennies into the pot at the center.

 

“Or if J suffocates in his sleep,” Chris joked. He tossed two more pennies into the pot. “I call.”

 

Wes left them to their game. JC pulled Joey into a headlock for making a crack about high rolling with a raise of four cents a few hands later.

 

With the combination of being winter and the blizzard, dark fell really early. When Chris had won the poker tournament (and a whole five dollars in change), he celebrated by bringing out some hard liquor.

 

They were soon retelling stories of the early days in Europe, laughing at each others expense. The time Chris tried to eat a Muscle. The ostrich farm. The fan that tried to climb into the van with them. The shenanigans that they only half remembered from the sugar high that induced them.

 

They ended up going to bed early that night, and as a result, were all up earlier the following day. The snow had let up overnight, but the wind was still blowing hard enough to cause it to drift.

 

In the face of another day of nothingness, Justin started putting his ski gear on.

 

“Come on, it's not really snowing, it's just windy out there.”

 

Deciding there was nothing better to do, the other four men also suited up and joined their friend outside. The wind was biting, cutting right through all their layers, but Justin was right, it had stopped snowing. It was impossible to tell how much snow had fallen with it blowing around like white sand in a frozen desert, but it had to be at least a good four or five feet.

 

It was windy enough that a snowball fight wasn't feasible, the wind would actually blow the snowballs off course. But the attempt at one showed that it was the perfect snow for packing.

 

So instead they built snowmen. Faceless snowmen with plenty of arms. They had plenty of sticks they could pluck off the nearby trees. While Lance concentrated on a snow deer, Joey decided that his snowman needed to be of the fairer sex and so pressed snow breasts onto the front. From there they went right down the slippery slide as JC's snowman, right next to Joey's, got it's arm moved to feel up her breast implants.

 

By the time they finished, there was a rather hilarious collection of snow people in various degrees of poses from the simple snowman to some rather interesting, innovative adultesque poses. Some of them were even seemingly anatomically correct.

 

The wind had abated enough for a snowball fight while they had been busy with their snow-posse. Lance, Joey, Justin and Chris shed their snow gear as quickly as possible, trying to be the first one in the bathroom to get the hot shower before the others. JC lagged behind, picking up everything and hanging it up or spreading it out while Justin won the bathroom. Less fortunate, the rest went to their rooms and changed out of their wet clothes and reconvened at the hearth.

 

JC had put a pot of water on the stove and stretched out on his stomach as close to the fire as he could stand, scribbling in one of his notebooks like a mad man. Chris and Joey settled into a game of War with the cards and Lance picked the script up again. When the water boiled JC made himself a cup of tea and settled back down where he had been, writing away again. 

Twenty minutes passed before Justin re-emerged from the bathroom, leaving no doubt that the hot water was gone for the rest of them.

 

“C, could you poke the fire?” Joey asked as Justin came to join them on the floor. JC was no longer writing in his notebook, his head resting on his folded arms, facing the fire. Justin walked over and poked his friend gently with a toe.

 

“He's asleep,” he deduced and poked the fire before joining the card game.

 

The power came back on, after lunch (and a visit from a laughing Todd, who gave props for the snowscape additions). The cheer finally stirred JC from his nap. Celebrations included plugging in phones to be charged (Still no signals) and microwaved burritos.

 

The afternoon and early part of the evening was spent with the Monopoly board. Lance claimed banker, and the dog piece. While Chris and Justin happily squabbled over the car piece, Joey picked the top hat and JC grabbed the shoe. Chris ended up with the prized car and Justin resigned himself to the ship.

 

Joey was losing miserably when he decided to implement a new rule – collecting $200 for landing on Free Parking because you “Robbed da bank!” And managed to land on Free Parking three times and collect $600 before Lance caught him at it. Lance retaliated against them all by building hotels on all his properties.

 

Their dinner consisted of bologna sandwiches and microwave popcorn. The little store in the lodge wasn't meant for more than snack food for the people that stayed it seemed.

 

The game had wound down to just JC and Lance left when the phone rang. Dre was calling to say they had finally heard from Johnny. Tuesday's show was going to be rescheduled the following week, after their last scheduled show. Tour was going to be extended by a few more days. The storm had passed, but they still couldn't leave since the roads weren't cleared yet.

 

JC valiantly lost to Lance finally, and after the game was put back in the cabinet, they turned the radio on, finding a station that played things from the 70's, 80's and 90's. Cabin fever had set in so instead of just talking like they had somewhat planned on doing, they found themselves up and dancing to most of the songs playing.

 

Chris found himself laughing like a hyena during a breather he was taking and he looked around at his closest friends. Lance was kind of swaying to the beat, Joey was shaking everything, JC was doing something with his arms that reminded him of a drunken giraffe and Justin was moon-walking.

 

Needless to say they all slept well that night. Monday dawned clear pale blue skies and no wind at all. As luck would have it, the resort finally opened the trails as they were finally able to check out and leave, relieved to be going back to the last two shows of their tour.