Latest Update: June 26, 2001 by Ben Marcus

23:41 MT JUNE 25, 2001 ROOM 7 OF THE CHALLIS MOTEL IN CHALLIS, IDAHO

ODOMETER: 55507
TRIP METER: 429.9

MONEY

CASH MONEY
Beginning $173.00
Last Chance campground: $10.00
Scratchers: $ 5.00 (Won $3)
Lotto $12.00 (4 plays X three weeks)
Gas in Arco $28.59
Water in Arco $ .57
Mallo bar $ .99
Cheeseburger, coke and tip $ 8.00
Postage for magazine to Norway $ 7.55
Cat food
Sharpie pens (X2)
Cat snacks $ 5.28
$ 95.02
Cash remaining $82.00 Difference $13.00

CREDIT
Challis Motel $39.59
110 minutes on phone card $27.00
AOL fees paid $104.15
New AOL 80 fees $34.10

Wow. That was a long day. Hope I have enough energy to write it all up. I'm watching a thing on Nazi Death Squads on A&E. Ike is on the bed and the door is open because the air up here is nice and fresh.

I'm staying in a $37 motel because I needed to have access to a phone and a phone line, and I wanted to watch some TV and sleep in a proper bed. Ike did, too.

Where to start? Guess I'll begin this morning in Last Chance, Idaho. Woke up in the campground and left right away. I was on the hunt for Yvon Chouinard and found him pretty quick. Patagonia was having a retailers' seminar in the second story of a log building which had a cafÚ down below. I walked in and up just as it was all starting. No one knew I didn't belong there, so I just sat down and listened.

A guy made a short introduction and then Yvon stood up from the back and sat down in front of anyone. He made apologies about being there and how much he hated public speaking, but that was shuck and jive. Yvon has a lot to say, and he says it well. I wish I had recorded or videoed it all. He is a natural story-teller.

He talked about his introduction to fishing in French Canada somewhere, and his ascent from worms to lures to flies. I think he was baptized into the world of fly-fishing in the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, which I would be seeing soon.

Yvon talked about all kinds of things. Mostly he talked about the 1% that Patagonia donates to environmental causes, the kinds of environmental causes that no one else will touch. He told a story about fishing on the Bulkley River in B.C. and being approached by a burly guy in a lumberjack shirt. The guy said, "Are you Yvon Chouinard?" Yvon thought he was going to get his ass kicked. Instead, the burly lumberjack guy asked if Yvon would be interested in saving thousands of acres of virgin forest and salmon rivers on the B.C. coast, They went up in a helicopter the next day, landed, fished for cojo, talked to the Indians, and soon enough, the lumberjack had a $150,000 grant, and the Indian's land was saved.

He had another example in Nevada, which saved 750,000 acres of wilderness. He paid the salaries of the people who got involved, and figures it cost 10 cents an acre. He had lots of stories about that, and encouraged all the assembled retailers to donate 1 percent of their profits to local environmental causes. Yvon figured they'd get the money back in good karma and good press.

Yvon talked about the R and D that goes into the Patagonia fishing line, which includes vests, waders, boots and shirts. They talked about the hassle of having to order equipment six months before a season, and said that Patagonia was working hard to change that system. Yvon doesn't really like business. He thinks most businessmen are scumbags, and that "the surf industry is the worst," which I agree with.

I wish I had recorded it. He talked for a long time, and I'd love to turn it all into an interview for a fishing magazine. Oh well.

Yvon finished and asked if there were any questions. I spoke up first and guess what I asked, "Are you going to do for fly rods what you did for surfboards?" Which meant, "Are you going to make them stronger, lighter and unbreakable?" I told my story about Locatelli's rod on The Big Hole.

Yvon laughed and said he was too smart to get into the fly rod business. Surfboards are one thing, fly rods are a much more difficult ball of wax.

People talked for a long time about inventory turnover and ordering and dealer networking and lots of stuff. When it started to break up, Yvon walked downstairs and I followed him. When he came out of the bathroom I hijacked him a little bit and pushed that Kamchatka map in his face. I told him how I had bumped into him and he was bemused. We had talked a few times but never met.

He looked over the Kamchatka map but didn't have much to say. He still said most of the east coast is "cliffy" and that our best bet would be the rivermouths. He wished us luck.

I also pitched him a Patagonia marketing idea. I said I thought it might be cool if Patagonia went back into history to all these famous incidents where people froze and suffered and died because of cold and lack of good clothing: The American forces in the Battle of the Bulge. The gold seekers walking over White Pass in 1896. The Donner Party. The men who were shipwrecked in Antarctica in Endurance.

Patagonia should recall all these famous historical events and show what the current technology was in outdoor wear. I told Yvon I had met a guy in the Yukon (Czech Frank) who swore that beaver pelt gloves were the best thing for Ü60 degree weather.

Yvon thought that was kind of cool, and told of a few things he knew, like Laplanders wearing reindeer skin underwear that was oh so snuggly.

Then he broke off to get back to business. All of the retailers were going to drift the Henry's Fork of the Snake River, which Mike and Rich and everyone else I've spoken to calls "The Super Bowl of Trout Fishing." Apparently if you can catch fish on the Henry's Fork, you can catch trout anywhere.

There were a lot of guys lining the Henry's Fork as I drove south on Highway 20. There were a lot of things I wanted to hang around to do: See Old Faithful, fish a zillion rivers. But I had to be in Bosie or Ketchum by Tuesday, so I got out of there.

Actually got stuck in a traffic jam on Highway 20, similar to those construction jams I experienced in B.C., the Cassiar and Alaska. Instead of taking the direct route on Highway 20, I took the road less traveled, and detoured onto Highway 47. This loop took me past the Warm River and into the view of the snow-covered Grand Tetons in the horizon. I eventually got back to Highway 20 at Ashton, Idaho. It was nice in Ashton. The land was green and lush with what I took to be potato seed fields. I also saw what looked to be strawberries but was probably something else. The fields were green, the Tetons were in the distance, the sky was blue and it was rural heaven.

That heaven faded a bit as I got closer to Idaho Falls. The land flattened out and dried out, and Idaho Falls turned into a pretty typical ugly American mid-size town: gas stations, Subways, strip malls, tacky housing developments and junk yards on the outskirts.

I realized that the reason I liked Montana is because it was remarkably free of that kind of civilized flotsam and jetsam. I discussed this with Stuart Martin at the Headwaters' Restaurant. Montana has a king of sophisticated unsophistication. And now I know what that means. I think there is a conscious effort and a sort of pride that keeps Montana from getting too overgrown and ugly. There isn't much population up there anyway, and I think Montanans take pride in their state.

In Idaho Falls I got gas and made a few phone calls. I pitched my second marketing idea of the day to Tom Brady at O'Neill. This is kind of a crass idea that could be successful if it were done right. When I was in Bozeman I walked into a gas station bathroom and saw a fairly typical bathroom condom machine. I thought it might be crass/funny if a wetsuit company used a sort of condom machine angle to sell wetsuits. Safe Surf instead of Safe Sex. Wetsuit rubbers instead of condom rubbers. I went back into the bathroom with my camera hidden in my blue bag and took a photo. You could rewrite the condom copy to apply to wetsuits, and make an oversized display either in an ad, in O'Neill shops or at a trade show.

It's a thin line between crass and clever, but Tom Brady didn't ixnay the idea right off the bat. I also talked briefly to Bernhard Ritzer, the O'Neill Europe employee who brought Jay Moriarity's body back from Maldives by way of Sri Lanka. I got his home number and said I would call him at home at 19:00 California time, which meant I had to be somewhere and in a hotel by 20: Mountain Time.

In Idaho Falls I had two choices. Take Highway 15 to Highway 86 and do the low loop up to Boise (250 miles). Or, take the road less traveled, and drive Highway 20 as far as Arco and then decide whether to go to Boise or up to Ketchum.

I took the road less traveled, again, and it has made all the difference.

Again, the terrain changed on Highway 20, and water made all the difference. The area around Highway 20 down to Idaho Falls was green and well-irrigated by the Henry's Rock and the Snake and other rivers. But Highway 20 west of Idaho Falls turned into desert very fast. There were no rivers, just nice-looking mountains to the north and a procession of buttes to the south. Ba da boom, ba da bing. No rivers = desert. That's what Cadillac Desert is all about. Without rivers and irrigation and dams and diversions, most of the United States between the Mississippi and the Cascades/Coast Range is desert. Water is everything in the west. I still need to order a cop of that for Donnie. I should have just brought a bunch with me. It's the book to read in this part of the world.

Between Idaho Falls and Arco there wasn't much but desert and nuclear power plants. Apparently the D.O.E chose this very dry, isolated part of Idaho to do the first nuclear research, and that research is continuing. I saw a number of sci-fi looking research facilities way off in the distance, way out in the middle of the desert. One of them had a sign along the highway advertising a bunch of different kinds of reactors.

World's first nuclear generator.

A little further along, there was the first nuclear reactor in America. It was just a teeny little building housing a breeder reactor. Not exactly sure what that is, but I wondered why there was no water around. I always thought the idea of nuclear power was to create steam.

Anyone? Anyone?

It was weird, as I was driving along, I kept having to check my driver's license to remind me of what my name was. I couldn't figure out why, and then the Classic Rock station I'd been listening to for das played America's "Horse With No Name." There is that lyric. "In the desert, you can't remember your name because there ain't no one for to give you no fame." And they were right, as soon as I turned north into the Lost River Valley, I remembered who I was. Odd.

Pushing on through more desert, I ended up in a place called Arco. I bought some gas and stopped at a Auto Electric store to see if they could fix my 110/12 volt inverter. The fuse in the inverter wasn't bad, and the fuses in the truck weren't bad. Guess I need a new inverter. That thing served me well. I had it all through Alaska.

In Arco I made some more calls. Called sister in law Jane to check my e-mail. There was a "no thanks" from Montana Magazine and a few others of interest. I called Jeff Galbraith and talked to his girlfriend. I told her I was going to head up toward Mackay on the backside of Sun Valley and take the road over the mountains to get there. I wouldn't be able to pick up Jeff in Boise.

Arco reminded me of Eddie Arco, another Pleasure Point guy who died tragically back in the 70s. He tried to ride his surfboard down the Soquel River during a rainstorm, got stuck under a log and drowned.

At Arco I turned north and drove up Highway 93. with the Lost River on my left. I'd seen the Lost River in the desert, but it was a dry hole. There was a sign that explained the river was sucked dry by irrigation, but used to go underground like the Salinas River in its heyday.

The terrain changed the farther I got up the valley. The river had water in it so there were lots of fields of green grass, irrigated with these pivot irrigators I see everywhere. There were some nice ranches and it started to all get spectacular again. I guess those were the Sawtooth Mountains to the west, and there was a big, rugged range to the east. It was really nice.

I passed through a couple of towns then stopped in Mackay, a town big enough to support a small theater playing The Mummy Returns. Thought there might be an Internet cafÚ, but there wasn't. Bought some cat food at a grocery store, and the checkout girl was wearing a Hurley shirt, reminding me that there were much worse places in the world than Idaho. Namely, Costa Mesa.

Past Mackay there was Mackay Dam, which explained why there wasn't much water in the river. They pull a lot of water out of the Lost River for irrigation, and it made me wonder what that river looked like when it was untouched, and how far it flowed into the desert. I thought of that America song again, "And the story is told of the river that flowed made me sad to think it was dead."

I'm kidding about all this, of course. That America song is dumb, but I like to date myself.

My map had a road running over to Sun Valley from just past Mackay, but I couldn't find it, and wasn't too sure I wanted to take it anyway. The mountains looked rough.

Kept going through a valley that got better and better: the mountains were higher and rougher, the valley was wider and greener. There were historical signs along the way and one of them diverted me two miles off the road to check out a "scarp" caused by a 7.3 earthquake in 1983.

Apparently that valley got nailed by a giant surface earthquake, which caused the entire valley to drop seven and a half feet, while the Lost River Range rose a foot, all at once. Holy shit. Imagine the energy released by all that moving earth.

I found the scarp, which was a big chunk of land along the fault that showed the slip. It was 15 feet deep in parts and there were three signs describing the effects of the earthquake. A 7.3 is a lethal quake. It sent out shock waves for 500 miles all around, wrecked building s in Challis and Mackay, sent boulders out of the mountains and into houses in Mackay and opened up "sand boils" and new springs which dumped 400 billion gallons of water.

The evidence of the quake was right there under my feet. I took photos for mom who lives all that "upthrust fault" geology stuff. I took photos of the scarp, and all I could think was, "What if you were mountain biking here when it all happened?" Yow.

Eventually I pulled into Challis, where the road goes over and down to Ketchum and Sun Valley. On this drive I got to thinking I was lagging about the Russia trip. When I got to a gas station I called Brock's cell and found him in New York. There were bar sounds around him but he stepped outside. We talked about this and that. He wanted to know the details about Jay. I told him Jay was most likely free-diving by himself and blacked out. I said, "He shouldn't have been diving alone." Brock called BS on that. He said, "No, that's just life. I do stuff like that every day and so did Jay. Shit happens, and it happened to Jay. That sucks though, and it's a bit of a wake up call. Too bad it happened to Jay."

I asked Brock if he was still interested in Russia and he said he was. I asked who his second choice would be and he said "Chris Malloy and Noah Johnson." Brock said he was rising very fast in the stunt world. He was getting jobs and responsibilities that it takes most guys years to get. I told Brock he was competent and intelligent and that people usually appreciated that.

I asked if Brock might bail out of the Russia trip if a really good job came along, and he said he would go if the trip was established. Brock is as good as his word, and that is why he is doing well in stunt land.

After that I called a bunch of people. Wingnut Weaver, to ask if he wanted to go. He said he was busy, but recommended Jed Noll, who is a fishing and surfing fool. I called mom and told her about the scarp and said I'd send photos. I called a bunch of people and pissed off a cowboy-looking guy who walked around the back of my van. I could see the thought bubble over his head, even before he saw my license plate, "What part of California are y'all from."

I called Jeff Galbraith and took his gal's advice to "Stay in Challis and save fifty bucks." I found a hotel room for $37 owned by a lady who is a cat lover. She liked Ike and gave me some books about some hammerhead who actually traveled to Paris with his cat. Sheesh. Takes all kinds, no?

I got into the room and got on the phone. Jed Noll was interested but it was too expensive and he had to finish his dad's boards for the trade show. Don't want to piss off dad.

I left a long rambling message for Chris Malloy, letting him know that the trip was a little sketchy: I don't know if there is any surf there. We'll be cruising in expensive helicopters. There are bear and Siberian tigers and Russian gangsters.

I also called Flea and left a message, and got Anthony Ruffo on the phone. He was intrigued and even went so far as to say, "I'll do a Russian bush pig just to say I hacked a Russian chick."

That is EXACTLY the spirit we are looking for on this trip (not). But Ruffo and Flea are always fun to travel with, and I also thought Josh Mulcoy might like to go, because he's very mellow and a fishing fool and a great surfer.

I'm thinking the more the merrier on this trip, because it's going to be lonely and the bear and tigers could cause some attrition and we can trade up to a bigger helicopter. We have the option of Mil 8's and Mil 2's. The 8s hold as many as 20 and the 2's hold six, I think.

Looking for surf in helicopters sounds like fun to me. Just have to keep the surf leashes away from the rotors.

I made a zillion calls and it took at least 45 minutes before I could check my e-mail. There were a few things on there, including a description from the Aussie diver who found Jay Moriarity's body. Evan wants me to keep the gory details out of the story and make it a celebration of his life, not his death.

The pier at Lohifushi

Here is that description from Tim Godfrey, a staff diver on Lohifushi. It was nice of him to do this.

25/6/01

Hi Ben,

I sent a message to you as soon as I heard from Mandy but for some reason we cannot make contact so I am sending this via Tony. Please let him know when you have received it as I know you have a deadline to meet. Then I can email you through the pic, if you want it.

Firstly Ben, I understand you were a friend of Jay's, I'm sorry, it must be a sad loss. No I didn't meet Jay before I found him but I can understand you wanting to know the full story and wanting to do the right thing by his friends and family

After the discovery of Jay, I returned to Tari and wrote a detailed report. I know the Maldives system well as far as diving is concerned and how the details of accidents such as these are often overlooked and official reports given out to family and friends are often sketchy and even inaccurate. The effect of this is to reduce the media coverage and the adverse publicity to the Maldives. In fact later, while reading some reports on the internet, my concerns were confirmed as I noticed a couple of inaccurate details that could lead to adverse speculation about Jay's death.

After Jay's discovery, everything seemed a bit confused and I wasn't asked to give a report. I did offer to go to Male with the body and make a report to the NSS (National Security Service) but my dive buddy, who was Swiss German, I think, went instead and I returned to Tari. The dive base leader of Lhohifushi gave the final report but I was surprised that the ASP and O'Neill people did not contact me to find out my version of the story as they knew who I was, that I was a keen surfer who'd been going to the event and that I had joined the party of rescue divers. Perhaps they just didn't realize the need for it.

In any case, I wanted to get to the bottom of the story, and even if it was late at night and I was disturbing a few people with my calls and questions, I felt justified because if he were my friend, I'd be wanting to know exactly what happened and I felt an obligation to find out and tell someone.

I sent out a couple of brief reports to various people in the media informing them of the details of Jay's death as I wanted to get them an accurate report. I also asked about payment for a detailed report as I feel magazines, should pay, not only for the personal time and mental energy that I put in but because of the newsworthiness of the story. (By the way, payment is not for personal gain but for a donation to a fund for Jay's wife or for some third world environmental cause of her choosing). Perhaps, I was wrong to say this, for so far, no one has tried to contact me, except yourself.

So, the situation hasn't changed, yes you can use the attached report, but if you want to edit it, please inform me what you want to take out as it may affect the details. If you want to remove my last paragraph, then you may do so and use it yourself if you want. And I require the payment to be paid into a cause as mentioned above. Also, if you want a good aerial pic of Lhohifushi jetty, I can send you one. Please write on the caption "courtesy of Atoll Editions".

Let me know if you have any difficulties opening my attachment of the report and inform me if you want a jpeg of Lhohifushi and I'll send it. (I do not have the original pic with me, but the JPEG quality will be good enough for a small sized pic in a magazine)

One other thing. It is a relevant point to add at the end of my opening paragraph "The currents at the end of Lhohifushi jetty can be treacherous too. Just over one year ago a scuba diver disappeared without trace from the same site." But I want to check the details and I'll get back to you on that one.

Good luck with the tribute, I hope I have been of some help. Tim

In answer to your questions I have not covered in my report.

COULD HE DESCRIBE THE AREA WHERE JAY WAS DIVING: HOW LONG IS THE PIER, HOW DEEP IS THE WATER, HOW CLOSE TO THE REEF?

The pier is about 150 meters long to the edge of the reef. The reef drops away quickly from 0 meters to 24 meters to a sandy bottom. The end of the jetty is about 100 meters from Lhohi's surf break. The jetty is near the edge of the atoll in the channel between Kanifinolhu Resort (Club Med) and Lohifushi. Currents through this channel can be extremely strong.

WHAT DID HE THINK JAY WAS DOING"? JUST DIVING AROUND FOR FUN, OR WORKING ON SOME KIND OF BREATHING EXERCISE?

I was informed by Europe Sponsoring Manager, Bernard Ritzer, that Jay had been doing breath holding exercises and had been in training every day for the whole week diving consistently between 15 meters and 20 meters.

WOULD JAY HAVE LIVED IF HE HADN'T BEEN DIVING ALONE?

Most probably. In free diving competitions, there is a back up team, but in training, it depends how seriously you take it.

PLEASE HAVE HIM SEND HIS FULL NAME, AGE AND HIS POSITION ON THE ISLAND, AND HIS EXPERIENCE.

Timothy James Godfrey, 43, temporary dive base manager at Tari Village, 15 years diving experience in the Maldives. Author of book Dive Maldives, and Malways, Maldives island Directory.

I just read the whole thing, and need to get back to him about payment and such. He also tried to send me some kind of HQX file but I couldn't download it. I sent an e-mail back asking him to send it as a Microsoft file. He sent it pasted into the body text.

Here is his official report.

Hi Ben, It seems I received your email from you direct this time, let me know if you receive this one. I'll send it via Tony as well. Let me know if you need that sentence checked in the first paragraph and if you need the pic as well.

Regards Tim

Tim Godfrey has worked in the Maldives diving industry for the past 15 years. At the time of Jay Moriarty's death he was working as the dive base manager at Tari Village Resort, one of the two host resorts for the ASP O'Neill, Deep Blue Open contest. He arrived at Lhohifushi resort wharf at around 9pm with a group of surfers and staff from Tari Village. He joined a group of rescue divers who found Jay's body. Here is his report.

"After someone told me Jay Moriarty had been freediving at the end of the jetty and missing since around lunchtime, I immediately became concerned as the currents at that time of day would have been flowing strongly out of the atoll. The currents in the Maldives are notorious for their strength and over the past 15 years many divers have drifted away in the Indian Ocean, some never to be found alive again. The currents at Lhohifushi can be just as treacherous and just over a year ago a scuba diver disappeared without trace from the same location as Jay (I need to check this fact)".

"I asked someone if Jay was wearing a weightbelt and fins. "No", he said, "he was not wearing either" and my initial reaction was there was still a chance. Even though it was nighttime and he had been missing for around ten hours, there was a slim possibly he could still be alive drifting outside the atoll. Jay could have been hyperventilating at the surface before his free dives to prolong his bottom time, and this would have increased the risk of shallow water blackout on ascent. If this happened, he could have possibly regained consciousness at the surface and drifted off in the current. This was our only hope. Someone else informed me Jay had been free diving near the rope on the house reef. I hurried off to the dive school where I joined a group of divers preparing for a rescue dive. Someone was already organizing search boats.

"My dive buddy and I immediately descended the reef slope and followed the rope toward the flat, sandy bottom at 24 meters. In the faint beam of the underwater light, I saw Jay's body lying on the bottom a short distance away from the reef.

"It was apparent he died while diving at depth and not on ascent, as his body remained near the bottom of the rope where he was diving. He most probably died of hypoxia, caused by low oxygen in the blood and in his last seconds when his oxygen reserves would have been severely depleted, he may have become disorientated and unsure of which way was up or down and been overcome by the desire to breathe. More probably, he prolonged his dive so much, that he blacked out instantly. The condition in which I found his body seems to confirm this as his body remained rock hard and cemented in his final pose. Being at more than three atmospheres of pressure, with little body fat, his airspace's compressed and possibly with his lungs full of water, Jay's body was negatively buoyant and very heavy, hence the reason it didn't drift away in the strong current.

"When I first saw his shadowy outline, it was like an apparition, as though I was viewing some gladiator-like statue that had fallen over. He was lying face down in the sand with his head tilted to one side and his mask and snorkel firmly in place. His legs were spread apart, like he was balancing to do push-ups and his arms were bent at the elbows and tucked under his body. His fists were clenched and fingers closed tight, like he was racing himself for some sort of onslaught. He was wearing only his O'Neill board shorts, a watch and a ring on his wedding finger. His back muscles rippled in the torchlight. That dying image was one of strength and determination, not confusion and panic, as one may have expected in the final moments.

"Jay's unlikely death, in the depths of the warm tropical waters of the Maldives, seemed as far away from the chilly waters of Mavericks as you could possibly get. Yet somewhere in between that contradiction was the realization that no matter where you are, our great mother ocean can never be fully mastered, even by the most committed waterman".

Wow. Evan might not let me use that, but I wish all my correspondents were that detailed and good. Poor Jay. As Brock said, "Shit happens. And it happened to Jay."

I sent an e-mail to Frank Quirarte asking him to send me a copy of his video and details on the benefit premiere of his Mavericks video, but I haven't heard back. Screw him. There is something wrong with that guy.

I spoke with Bernhard Ritzer, the Managing Director of O'Neill Europe who was running the contest in the Maldives, and flew back to California with Jay's body from Sri Lanka. I got too tired and hungry, so begged off and drove into town to see if anything might be open. I found a bar that was still open and used my substantial charm to order a cheeseburger. This is beef country. It was a good cheeseburger. The woman running the bar was in town for the 1983 earthquake. "I thought the propane tank was exploding," she said. She rode it out with her kids. I guess two children were killed by the quake when a masonry building crumbled.

My mom knew about the quake when I called her. I said, "I'm in Lost River Valley and I saw a scarp." She said, "Oh yes. That was 1983, a 7.3" What a nerd my mom is. It's a wonder I turned out so well. Ha.

Anyway, I ate the cheeseburger and watch a 60 inch big screen TV. (I don't know if it had remote control and picture in picture) The Giants beat the Bums but Barry didn't get 40. That guy is on a tear. Thirty nine dingers before the All Star Game. That is awesome.

I got back to the room around midnight. I won three dollars on a scratcher from the bar, watched TV and worked on this. I eventually pooped out, and just watched TV.

AS the perfect ending for the day, which began with me talking to Yvon Chouinard, as I was flipping through the channels, I caught a glimpse of a Mil 8-the same Russian helicopter we may be using in Kamchatka, hovering over snow-covered forest. A guy with a tranquilizer gun was taking aim at an electronically-tagged Siberian tiger. He put two into the male and one into the female, then they took them back to a compound to breed.

Turns out this is the same Siberian Tiger compound Yvon Chouinard had told me about when I called him about Kamchatka a few weeks ago. He suggested I contact the people for info on the coast, and maybe to use their internet hookup.

I watched the entire show, got excited about seeing some Siberian Tigers who act a lot like Ike, but on a much larger scale. I don't think that Siberian Tiger preserve is in Kamchatka, but Yvon was having trouble with the east and west coasts of the island.

So there it is. The day begin with Kamchatka and ended with Kamchatka, and in between I think I got the ball rolling. I'm taking all that as a sign.

00:52 MT TUESDAY, JUNE 26, 2001 ROOM 7 OF THE CHALLIS MOTEL, CHALLIS MONTANA

MONEY
Cashed in Red Dog lottery tickets: $3.00
Water and Chap Stick: $2.00

I just wrote a 5000 word description of yesterday-from Yvon to Siberian tigers-and all Evan wants is a 2500 word tribute to Jay Moriarity. I'm having trouble with it, but we all know it's easier to write too much than too little. At least for me anyway.

I woke up with cottonmouth and chapped lips in Challis and it reminded me once again of a line from Lawrence of Arabia.

Woke up around 9:00 and got a few e-mails. Tim from the Maldives sent an aerial JPEG of Lohifhushi Island and the pier where Jay was diving. Looking at the photo, it is comforting to know that Jay went to a better world from one of the better parts of this world.

Sent a few e-mails back and forth to people and agreed to call Jeff Galbraith from here around 14:00, then head for Sun Valley. He's taking the Wiki Wiki bus from Boise and we're meeting at a saloon.

While I was online I got an IM from a girl named Ella in Morgan Hill. She sent me a link which showed me a live video feed of the paddle out at Pleasure Point, which they are now calling Jay Moriarity Point. I don't know if that will stick, but I'm going to pursue the Live Like Jay thing.

I'm going to write for an hour and sort out the van. I'll be having company in the passenger's seat soon, and I want to unclutter it a bit.

This place is dry. Time to head for some water with my fancy, felt-sold wading sandals.