Latest Update: June 30, 2001 by Ben Marcus

12:37 MT SATURDAY, JUNE 30, 2001 THE STREETS OF KETCHUM, IDAHO

Forgive me again father, for it has been now two more days since my last confession and five whole days since I've sent an update.

I am in the van in a parking lot behind the Sawtooth Bar and Restaurant. Jeff has run into The Casino Bar across the street, but I've already had six glasses of wine, eight pints of Guinness and ten shots of Jagermeister, and I'm starting to feel it just a little.

We had cheeseburgers and fries for dinner and it was good, because we spent the whole day fishing. This morning I went to the Newslink CafÚ and absolutely nailed the ending to the Jay Moriarity Memorial. I came up with a goofy Nordic "Charger's Valhalla" angle that worked, for me, anyway. We'll see what Evan says, but I think he's gonna like it. We went back and forth several times with that story. I gave him a 4,000-word version that he trimmed down to 2700, but we needed an ending. He gave it back to me and I filtered in some words from an e-mail from Chuck Gallagher about the paddle out at Pleasure Point for Jay and I wrote the corny Valhalla ending, which went like this:

Jay Moriarity misses his friends and feels their pain, but he is happy in Valhalla. He is using that sweet smile to convince the Powers That Be to kick up more giant west swells for his still-mortal friends on earth. For fun, he free-dives the giant, reefy clouds with Angell and Chesser, and surfs the Northern Lights with Foo. And when the surf is giant down here on earth, Jay and the others are watching, carefully, to see which of their still-mortal friends do the deeds that will bring them to the Big Table.

Jay is watching, believe it. The next time you are out surfing, put your face to the sun and feel that warmth and joy and life flow through you. That's Jay.

That's either a corny or a cool ending. It's a thin line. Anyway, that bugger is done and out of my life, and thank goodness. I've been thinking about since I was in Wise River, which seems like months ago, and now it is done.

After finishing that Jeff and I drove to the lovely home of Andy Gilbert and his wife whose name I can't spell: Janessa?. We had dinner there last night-salmon and pesto sauce-and it was great. Andy works at the skateboard park and coaches snowboard kids and guides for trout on the Big Wood. He has a lovely wife whose name I can't spell, a beagle named Ella and a nice house on an acre which they got for an unbelievable $120,000. There are some extremely fancy-ass houses in Ketchum, but some of them are right next to trailers and hovels. Ketchum is an odd place but a good place. It is very chi-chi, but also classy. They let a Starbucks in here somehow but other than that there are no chain stores. There are lots of bars and a restaurants and an unbelievably high percentage of pretty girls. I don't know where they come from, but this place is holding. I even talked to a girl in a bar tonight, believe it or not. She was from Virginia originally but lived in the Okanagan Valley in Canada for a while and was now in Sun Valley with her jet-setting mom. She had a thing for the Friendly Bartender I think, although she admitted she was having trouble making friends in Sun Valley, and was "relationship dysfunctional." She didn't like alcohol, but did take some shots of tequila.

Last night at Andy Gilbert's I watched some of the video that Eric Nelson and Curt Myers sent. I watched the tribute to Jay Moriarity they had edited together and it gave me a jolt that reminded me who I was writing about, and what a good person and surfer he was. I think that helped this morning, because I nailed the finish, as I have said.

Also last night, I paid $150 for a decent trout rod and reel, because I had learned that going after hyper quick trout with a stiff, 20-year-old steelhead rod is not the path to nirvana.

This morning after a stint in the Internet CafÚ we drove to Andy's house, where he was cruising on his lawnmower. He wasn't guiding today, so we kicked around for a little bit and then went and cruised the Big Wood River. Andy rejected a bunch of places as too crowded before leading us on a long walk through bush and over cobblestones and past some gazillion dollar mansions hidden away in the bush, along the river. There is a lot of money in Sun Valley. This is a strange place, and not at all what I expected.

Anyway, we spent a few hours fishing the Big Wood River, and it was fun. I had my new/used trout rod all rigged up, found a nice deep hole and caught an OK trout on my first cast. I caught another one a little while later, but I don't think I released it properly and it made not have made it. This was a typical fish for me. I caught it without trying. I was distracted and retrieving the line and all of a sudden I had a fish on. I think half the fish I have caught on this trip have been when I wasn't looking. The line is slack, I'm doing something else, I start to retrieve it and there is a fish.

I fished that hole for a while then moved up to where Andy and Jeff were fishing some riffles. I guess they caught a few but it was obvious that things were slowing down. We all walked up to a very promising, deep pool below a rapids. I got a few lookers and splashes on a dry fly, but no takers. I was up high overlooking the pool and could see the fish strike. Trout are incredibly fast fish, at any size. I was glad to have the trout rod, because I could respond to quick strikes. The steelhead rod was way too long and stiff. Now I am trout fishing.

After a few hours of roasting in the sun and catching a few fish we headed back, but not before I went for a dip in that big pool I was fishing at the start. It's very refreshing to cool off after wading all day, because it gets warmish here in the summer.

The reel I bought wasn't working properly and I think I might have bent it before I even used it when it fell out of my van. Andy tried to bend the scraping part back with pliers, and suggested I get some silicone reel grease.

We've been bathing in the river in front of our camp after fishing all day, and even shampooing, which the EPA might not like, but it feels good to be clean and it's fun to do it that way.

After fishing we made it back to Andy's house and I managed to send the final version of the Jay story to Evan and a bunch of other people: some who helped, some who are curious, some who might pay me for it. I'm running out of dough and need to buy more fishing equipmentƒ and tiresƒ.. and a new 12volt/110 power inverterƒ and food and clothing for Ike the Cat.

We hung around Andy's for a while and Jeff got a little embarrassed by my hogging the phone lines. "We're going to do a Cyber Intervention," he said. But I sent the files and we were on our way. To the Laundromat.

We each did a load at a Laundromat next to Grumpy's bar, which was jumping. Jeff ordered a schooner which is a huge glass of beer. I went back to the camp to check on Ike, who had been running around all day. I also went to a fly fishing store to buy some lubricant from the reel. It's squeaking and catching but I think it's because I dropped it last night, right after I paid for it. Duh. I still caught some fish on it. But the line doesn't strip from the reel easily and that could be a problem if I caught some big fish. I nearly caused three accident just driving from the Laundromat to the Silver Creek Outfitters. I have trouble seeing out the sides of the van and it caused trouble this afternoon as I cut off half the drivers in Ketchum in only three blocks. Goddamn California drivers.

But I found the fly-fishing store which is more chi-chi than Blue Ribbon in West Yellowstone and more chi-chi than Lost River Outfitters here in Ketchum. I bought some reel lubricant and told my favorite fish story to the guy behind the counter. He was intrigued by the story of the kid and the brown trout on the Big Hole so I ran out, got my computer and showed the staff the fish. They were impressed.

2:12 now, early Sunday morning. Just got back from town. I fell asleep writing this in the van and Jeff woke me up. On the way back we saw two fox-one running through town, the other running near our camp. That got me worried about Ike. A fox would be trouble. When we got back to camp, I ke was right there, and so was my wallet. It had slid off the hood of the van when I pulled away. I am constantly changing pants because I am always wading rivers, so things get confused. Jeff just grabbed "Bessie" his name for Mr. Winchester. He sleeps with it. You never know.)

Let's see, where was I? Bought the lubricant at the fishing store, pulled out in front of another pissed motorist and worried that my van might become a target for local, anti-California bad drivers. We drove back to camp and went fishing, taking our fly rods and walking upstream to where Jeff had nailed an 18-inch rainbow on our first morning here. We walked about a half-mile up and caught a couple of fish each. There are no whitefish in Warm Spring, so every fish you get on is a trout. I caught another one without trying: wasn't paying attention, pulled on the line and there he/she was.

Walking back to camp, I fished the hole in front of the camp and caught two little rainbows in a row. Warm Spring is very low for this time of year and the trout are all pooling up in the holes. Easy pickings, sort of. This is a pretty classic little trout stream, with some decent-sized trout in it. So far I've caught only medium-sized fish, but I just got the right equipment so now I think I am good to go.