9-STABLE doesn't boot: can't load 'kernel'

[J David]

loader.conf was empty and there's no 4k gnops, geli, anything like that.
 This is a 100% normal install.

Although, since you mentioned 4k blocks, I did leave a gap between ada0p1
and ada0p2 to start the root partition on a 4k boundary.  (It's an SSD that
will almost never be written to once installed, so that might be a bit
silly, but it's a habit already.)

I decided to try this again without the gap, and that seems to have worked.
 I made it through install and partitioning and OS updating to 9-STABLE and
installing new boot blocks and it seems to have worked.  I even got it to
work with a ZFS root.

Here's the partition table I ended up with:

=>       34  234441581  ada0  GPT  (111G)
         34        990     1  freebsd-boot  (495k)
       1024  226051072     2  freebsd-zfs  (107G)
  226052096    8389519     3  freebsd-swap  (4.0G)

I'm not sure why this would make a difference, but either it does or doing
it cleared out whatever else was wrong.  This box will be stress tested and
rebooted quite a bit in the next few days, so I will report back if it
comes unglued. :)

Thanks for the suggestion!