Latest Update: June 22, 2002 by Ben Marcus

4:26 SATURDAY, JUNE 22, 2002 ROOM 517 OF THE ALYESKA PRINCE HOTEL

In a message dated 6/21/2002 6:29:27 PM Pacific Daylight Time, SchaefSx@sutterhealth.org writes:

Ben, i loved your first two emails--

WELL OKAY THEN.

i guess there is enough light there that you can spend lots of time emailing and seeing the great outdoors.

OH THERE IS PLENTY OF LIGHT HERE.

SENDING BACK DISPATCHES FROM MY TRIPS HAS BECOME A REGULAR THING, LIKE FIRESIDE CHATS OR WHATEVER.

say hi to colin for me since i missed his phone call today.

HE JUST READ THIS. NOW HE'S CRYING.

the girls were happy to hear his phone message last night saying he missed them--it inspired a nice round of crying--they miss you, colin.

NOW HE'S PROSTRATE ON THE FLOOR AND BANGING HIS HANDS AND CRYING.

(i am lazy with the capital letters--sorry).

IT WORKED FOR ARCHY AND MEHITIBEL.

what a good daddy you are.

HE ALMOST HIT A MOOSE LAST NGHT AND THREW ME OFF THE SEAT I WAS SLEEPING ON. REALLY.

i am finishing work (the endless pile of charts) in the office and then i go pick them up at casey schirmer's--janna's other job--they are having a play date with the schirmer kids, in effect.

ARE THEY RELATED TO JOE SCHIRMER? I REMEMBER HIM.

should i call nina nina ballerina to babysit friday 6/28 am? janna tells me you have court and she's driving to san diego that am. saw barbara drucker (nina's mom FYI ben) yesterday and she said now that nina's out of school she spends the whole day doing her nails and babysitting would do her some good.

BARBARA DRUCKER IS RICHARD DRUCKER'S WIFE. I KNOW RICHARD DRUCKER.

ben, i am sorry to take over your email with domestic issues.

I DISLIKE THAT WORD "ISSUES" BUT I FORGIVE YOU.

(well, only a little sorry). i like homer (the town, that is)

WOW OH WOW WAS IT ALL LIT UP NICE AND PRETTY ABOUT SIX HOURS AGO. ALASKA IS THE PLACE TO BE IN SUMMER, NO DOUBT ABOUT IT.

WE GOT A LIGHT SHOW THERE AND ATE IN A CHINESE PLACE AND THEN TURNED AROUND AND CAME BACK.

we stayed in a nice--lesbian--B&B there--colin would love it!

A LESB AND B? A LESBIANB?

you can swim at the high school pool for a workout--that's what i did in addition to running....we went halibut fishing with grandpa in ???1993 or 1994.

IT'S THE HALIBUT CAPITOL OF THE WORLD, NO LESS.

ok gotta finish my charts. love to colin!

I JUST KISSED HIM AND HE STARTED CRYING AGAIN.

and best wished to ben

BEST ISSUES? OH, BEST WISHES.

and everybody else including leonard martin leonard although it sounds like he took off????

NO HE WENT WITH US TO HOMER AND ALMOST GOT A MOOSE IN HIS LAP.

susan

Most of the above, in a back and forth with Dr. Susan Brown, wife of Colin Brown Esq. is true. Colin did almost hit a moose and I was thrown from the seat I was sleeping on and I was so damned tired that I thought it might have been a dream. I caught a glimpse of the big, dumb lunk running in front of the van in the dawn's early light and then went back to sleep because I was beat from too much driving and bad Chinese food. Now I am safely back in Room 517 and Colin just confirmed that he had a Close Encounter of the Bullwinkle Kind and that Martin Leonard Martin really did almost get a moose in his lap.

Bullwinkle is a dumb moose because moose are pretty damn dumb. Big and dumb. Funny when you think of all the comedy that has been derived from stupidity of the northern latitudes: Fargo, Bullwinkle the Moose, Dudley Doright. There are others but I'm too tired to dredge them up.

Must be the lack of light or something. Or inconsistency of light. My pops the psychology teacher reckons that a lot of mental illnesses like manic/depression are related to these inconsistencies in light. I certainly have noticed that things like alcoholism and manic depression are related to the northern European climes. Ireland is the mental illness capitol of the world, so maybe he has a point.

But I am all over the place here. How to sum up the last 15 elongated, attenuated Alaska hours and all that happened between Colin Brown's incredibly daring ride on a one-foot tidal bore, and now, with us safely back in the hotel room and the van safely in the parking lot without a one-ton dent in the hood.

Chronology, I guess.

Yesterday afternoon Colin Brown bravely paddled out into Turnagain Arm with Martin Leonard III and another surfer and challenged the Turnagain Arm Tidal Bore. He caught it and rode it for at least a minute. He was steering toward the shoulder on the left when he should have stayed in the soup on the right but as he didn't have his cell phone on him (for once) I couldn't direct him. He caught the wave for a while off First Parking Lot and rode it along with Martin Leonard III and the other surfer and then he came in all abuzz from endorphins and his adventure. He's into this thing and it could get interesting on Sunday and Monday.

When he came in he said it was fun but his fin scraped bottom at one point and that freaked him out a little bit and that was why he missed the wave. I remember him paddling frantically trying to catch up with the thing after it pooped out underneath him, and that was kind of funny.

We jumped in the car and went down to Second Parking Lot to see if it would reform, but it was too weak by then although I did use Amy's camera to video the most perfect, reeling, three-inch right point on earth.

And that was that. Colin rode it a while and then we spent a good few minutes convincing MLIII to jump in the van and drive down the Kenai Peninsula with us. He had boxes to pack and bills to pay and domestics to take care of, but we talked him into it.

Yesterday morning at breakfast I read that the sockeye salmon were moving by the tens of thousands into the Russian River from the Kenai and I wanted to go have a lash at that, and maybe continue further on into magic land.

After breakfast Amy and Colin dragged me into a hike that was kind of fun and then we "Turned Again" to return to the hotel and prepare for the bore.

After the bore, we "Turned Again" to the hotel room. I packed up all my fishing gear and we hit the road with me driving. The road along Turnagain Arm goes deep toward a glacier at Portage and it's all pretty spectacular, like full Immigrant Song, dude. If we had seen a woman in breast plates and horned helmet hitch-hiking on the side of the road, we wouldn't have been surprised.

MLIII pointed out all the good kayaking rivers and history and Amy had to stop for the bathroom every three minutes and there was talk of something called a Lady J but it's not for polite company.

After about three dozen rivers we finally got to the Might Kenai and then to the Russian River and it was a fricking mob scene. There were RVs and people everywhere, by the dozens and hundreds and you could see lots of fish flopping around on the opposite bank.

It was pandemonium and interesting to see in passing but I didn't want to jump into it because I had three people along with me and that would have been rude. I did try to flog the river a little bit down the road, but I don't have an Alaska license so it was all half-hearted.

10:22 AM SATURDAY JUNE 22, 2002 ROOM 517 OF THE ALYESKA PRINCE HOTEL

Well, fell asleep again in the middle of a dispatch. Imagine that. It's 10:23 and it looks like it might be a blue sky day outside right now. And that is a good thing.

Colin is up and around and threatening to sue me if I don't recant and retract and redux all those gay innuendos.

He's talking to Doctor Wife right now. She just sent an e-mail in wish she said she wished she and her daughters wished they had come to Alaska. I tried to convince them, but now I'm going to try to convince them to come to Hailey, Idaho for the Fourth of July. That is another place to be.

So where was I? I was at the conflux of the Russian and Kenai Rivers watching a feeding frenzy of fishermen and campers going after 40,000 sockeye. One guy said he'd been there when it started on Wednesday and it was ridiculous. Almost hard to walk there were so many fish.

Oh well, Martin Leonard Martin is talking about friends who are starting a daily newspaper in Anchorage to challenge the Anchorage Daily News and he says I should talk to them. Maybe I will and get some kind of a permanent job here and then I can catch weekday sockeye runs like that.

We pushed on and stopped for an overview of the Sixmile River which Martin Leonard III says is great for kayaking.

And then we drove and drove and drove, along the Mighty Kenai River, which apparently closed early for Kings and is causing a lot of economic havoc for guides and such, who rely on the season to get them through the year.

My goal was just to get to Kenai but once we got there and poked around a little bit, MLIII campaigned to push on to Homer. For some reason I resisted because I thought it was too far but then I thought, "Why am I resisting? Homer is heaven."

So we drove on, south along the Cook Inlet, with Valhalla taking shape across the water.

The Kenai Peninsula is Sportsman's Central. There is great salmon and halibut and steelhead fishing and I'm sure there is moose hunting and whatever else off in the tundra.

The Kenai Peninsula is close to Anchorage but it is still very big and very remote.

Along the way we stopped at one of the rivers where there were a lot of campers and people gill netting. There was a fish processing plant that was hiring, but I passed. Amy stayed in the car while Colin and Martin went exploring the mudflats. I can't remember the name of the river, but there are so many. Maybe the Kasilof.

We pushed on with me driving and listening to an oldies station from the 60s.

We began to get into familiar turf: The Ninilchik River, Deep Creek and the Anchor River, all places I had flogged for steelhead two years ago.

I drove down to the mouth of Deep Creek looking for the hobo guy with his sled dogs but he was long gone. There were a lot of RV's on the beach and Amy took some video of a bald eagle eating a salmon on the beach. Welcome to Alaska. This is the Wild Frontier down here, and when I tell people that "Alaska is too big to screw up," I'm thinking of the Kenai.

Back in the highway we stopped Deep Creek near the bridge and I saw some big salmon splashing around so I had a lash with the Fenwick. There were big, freshies swirling around in there and May was getting excited but I couldn't catch on. I had a purple on but maybe they were looking for orange. You never know, but it was nice to see a river full of fish.

I also looked at the Anchor River and parked on the bridge and they all yelled at me, but there were no fishermen around and few cars, probably because it was 22:00 at night.

Martin Luther Leonard III was pushing us to get into Homer for the Raging Solstice Parties. As we approached Homer the sun was low and lit up the mountains on the other side of Kachemak Bay and you could hear the French Horns, baby. Again, if there had been a woman with breast-plate and horned helmet on the side of the roadƒ.

Well Homer was closed. We couldn't get any halibut to eat down on the spit, at that restaurant where I met Linka two years ago. It was breathtaking down on the spit with the mountains all lit up gold, and the sun shining at 23:00.

So we went back into town and ended up eating a Chinese buffet which was pretty bad, but we were so tired we didn't care.

Amy was sleeping in the van because even though she acts like a tough guy, she is a delicate flower.

After dinner I was beat so Colin drove. I suggested he stop by Duggan's Bar near the Driftwood Inn for some local color and we got it. I was too tired to go in and so was Amy so Colin and Martin Leonard III chose to push on.

At some point I remember flying off my seat and winding up on the floor and when I woke up I saw a moose gamboling in front of the van. Colin said he almost hit it and it could have been bad. Moose are really dumb and big and they will run in front of a car and get smacked for no good reason at all.

That's all I remember. I slept the rest of the way and so did Amy and now it is 12 hours later and we're all getting up and getting ready for breakfast and another lash at the tidal bore.

The intensity of the thing has doubled with every day and so by Sunday or Monday it should be interesting. Maybe even worthy. We shall see.

16:49 SATURDAY JUNE 22, 2002 ROOM 517 OF THE ALYESKA PRINCE HOTEL

Blue skies, nothing but blue skies...

It was such a beautiful day today that even I went in the water. Yes, I attempted to ride the Turnagain Arm Tidal Bore today and learned many things, mostly that it is hard to start surfing if you haven't surfed for several years. The Turnagain Arm Tidal bore is very convenient in that you really don't have to paddle to catch it which is a good thing because I paddle like a hillbilly. I went out in my 6 mil Norway wetsuit pulled halfway down with a t-shirt on, but it wasn't all that cold. It was actually very nice and it was a beautiful, blue-sky day. The Turnagain Arm has now official usurped Fort Point as the most scenic surf spot on earth.

I walked down the shale rip-rap and put foot to mud and hit the water and started to paddle on Colin's board but holy cow the muscles you use to sit behind a desk all day and write and drive around aimlessly are very different from the muscles you use to do things like paddle. Boy howdy.

So the current took me out and up toward Bird Point and I had my out of shape back to a lot of people watching from the First Parking Lot including the Charming and Glamorous Miss Amy Van Sant and a bunch of tourists and a reporter from the Anchorage Daily News.

Colin got over to the other side okay but I was so shocked at how out of it I was that I just drifted in the current and hope it would take me outside and to the other side and not to Kamchatka. It didn't do either.

But I wasn't too worried because I thought the bore was a bust. A six-inch thing was going straight at Colin and I figured I would just drift down to Bird Point and the Coast Guard would hopefully pick me up down there.

But just as I had given up, a perfect, three-foot left popped up in the middle of the channel, right in front of me. This was a really good little wave. It was peeling and even throwing a little bit and I paddled for it but boy oh boy am I out of it and I missed the wave.

Colin got it and I watched him ride it from the back as the current took me out a little bit and then reversed direction and started sweeping me back toward First Parking Lot. It felt a bit like Mundaka and I wept for my youth when I was able to paddle and surf.

Eventually the current Flotsamed me to the base of First Parking Lot. Colin came down to escort me to dry land and he was eager to get in the car and drive down to Third Parking Lot. The Anchorage Daily News guy was hovering and there was a woman there from the Tourist Office.

So we drove up to Third Parking lot but it was piddly. The AND news guy asked some questions and took some photos of Colin and I watching Colin's ride on Amy's video camera. The wave was better this time and actually looked kind of nice and sparkly under the blue skies.

The Anchorage Daily News guy was wearing a Hawaiian shirt with surfboards. He was from Eugene, Oregon and had gone to Stanford in the late 70s. He was bemused by our escapade and we apologized that the Pros from Dover hadn't come from Santa Cruz and that the bore wasn't happening.

So now it is 5:10 and we have a whole 'nother 8 or 10 hours to kill so I think we're going to Whittier and then Seward. I've been to Seward but never to Whittier so that will be an adventure. Colin is tempted to take a nap and The C and G Miss AVS brought in some beers and there is just no hurry to do anything. With all the light here in the summer, there is as much time to do things as there are places to go. It's rather nice.

What else? The reason I went in the water is Colin and Amy lead me on a six-mile hike to The Gorge and got me all sweaty. They pushed on from the Gorge and found this hand-over-hand trolley that goes about 70 feet over roaring rapids, but I missed that part.

We walked all the way back and got to the hotel around 15:00 and got organized and jumped in the van and hauled tail for The Bore.

Alaska rules, baby. I just took a nap and now it's 5:50 and we're going to get going pretty soon. No rush. That's the fun of Alaska. Endless places to go and endless time to do everything.