Latest Update: July 12, 2001 by Ben Marcus

1:15 MT THURSDAY JULY 12, 2001 KINKOS IN CALGARY, ALBERTA

ODOMETER
TRIP METER

MONEY (PREPARE YOURSELF)

Total overdraft charges (10 X $30) $300 (#$5&!&#@!)

U.S. CASH Cash withdrawn at airport $60.00
Internet machine $ 2.00
Lapel pins at airport $ 6.00
Cash withdrawal at Mike's Conoco $100.00
Gas at Mike's Conoco $ 19.11
Orange juice at above $ .89
Montana lottery at above $ 20.00 (five draws)
?????? $ 11.99
?????? $ 3.69
Item for mean prank against enemy $ 14.00
Brass knuckles (for above, just in case) $ 12.00
Propane at Army/Navy store $?????
Flies and leaders at fly shop $ 17.70
Sandwich and buffalo steaks $ 21.57
Boxes at postal place in East Glacier $ 10.54

Cash withdrawn in Browning $200.00
Rabies shot for Ike in Meriwhether $ 10.00

CANADIAN CASH
Fee for bringing shotgun into Canada $ 34.01 C$ 50.00
Telus phone card somewhere $ 6.80 C$ 10.00
Phone call looking for Kinkos $ .68 C$ 1.00 (164.98)
Cheeseburger at Wendy's $ 3.40 C$ 5.00
Groceries, mags, BBQ at Extra Foods $ 49.28 C$ 72.48
$231.66

TOTAL CASH WITHDRAWN $360.00
TOTAL CASH SPENT $231.66
CASH THAT SHOULD BE REMAINING $128.34

CASH REMAINING $152.00

U.S. CREDIT
Huckleberry presents for friends $ 27.22
Wading sandals and blue bowl at A/N store $ 22.91
Mistaken USPS phone card charge $ 5?.??

CANADIAN CREDIT
Gas in Magrath $ 39.44 C$ 58.00

UNKNOWN
Lost right rear hubcap $?????
Cracked windshield $?????
CC phone call to Bruce Jenkins $?????
CC phone call to Evan $?????

Wow was that a long day. It took me an hour just to organize all the receipts you see above. Looking at all that money, I see why I'm broke. It's the damned cat. I mean, $10 for a rabies shot???!!! And probably another $5 for cat food. He's an extravagance, he's got to go.

No, looking at the above you can see that I went on a bit of a spending spree today. As soon as I got some money in the bank, I started spending it in Whitefish and didn't stop until I got to Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

I covered some ground today, and again I feel like a scene out of Lawrence of Arabia. When Lawrence gets to Cairo after crossing the Sinai, he tells the generals that one of his servants, Daud, died in quicksand.

Well it was. . . this morning that the airport cops gave me the bum's rush from the Glacier International Airport.

It was.. this morning that I realized my boots were lost and put up Reward posters to get them back.

It was. . . around noon that I went on a spending spree around Columbia Falls.

And it was. . . this afternoon that I crossed the border into Canada.

I saw a lot today, from Hungry Horse, through Glacier National Park, to the Blackfoot Indian Reservation in the Great Plains around Browning and then well into Alberta, Canada.

After I wrote that last dispatch from the Business Center at the G.I. Airport, I thanked the nice lady at the desk, who didn't seem to like me too much, or believe my story that my brother was coming in on a plane at 12:30. I think she snitched on me. She kicked me out of the office before I could send these dispatches and the photos. I went to the Internet machine to look into a few things, made some calls and when I looked up there were two cops giving me stink-eye. The van was parked illegally and I was sloughing around the terminal and I guess it was all suspicious. For a minute I thought they had found that little plastic container of bad Mexican pot on the dashboard, but they just wanted to chat.

I chatted like William Fricking Shakespeare. I gave them a story that I was waiting for my little brother who was Manic Depressive and who might be on the 12:30 plane or might not. I said that my brother was perfectly sane half the time and perfectly not so sane the other half, which is true, and that I had spent half my life chasing him around and making sure he was safe. "What am I supposed to do? He's my brother. Half the time I want to kill him, half the time I'm afraid he's dead."

I looked ashamed and confused and told the cops that being questioned by cops in the Glacier International Airport was nothing compared to what I had gone through with little brother.

I don't think they believed me. I asked the one cop, "Do you know what Manic Depression is?" He said he did, but he didn't look sympathetic. They told me to come back at 12:30, and take the cat with me.

So I got out of there. I really wasn't doing anything wrong and it is a very slow airport.

Before I left I checked out the gift shop which was pretty ritzy. They had some beaver skin bears and skunk-skin caps and some expensive money clips. The shop reminded me of the airport shops in Norway which sell really good clothing and such. I bought two jackets for Joanne in airport shops in Norway, and she liked them both.

The skunk skin cap was $300 and the sheared beaver-pelt bear were $100, so I passed, but feeling the beaver pelt supported my Patagonia ad idea. It is absolutely smooth to the touch. The lady in the gift shop said there was a "Rendezvous" going on, which meant that trappers and other mountain types were gathering nearby, like they did in the Jedediah Smith days. That sounded like a lot more fun than the rainbow gathering.

So, with the cops on my heels I got out of the airport and headed back to Hungry Horse. I was still stressing about those stupid boots, and I had called Chota Sandals while at the airport and got the name of their advertising guy. I'm going to attempt one of my charming/funny letters to se if they'll send me a replacement sandal for the one that fell out of my car. Might work. Might now. We'll see.

I stopped at a consignment sporting goods store and found exactly what I was looking for, an item that I am going to mail to an enemy as a very mean-spirited jab.

So after the airport I went on a buying spree. I stopped by a promising Army/Navy store and ended up buying another pair of cheap wading sandals for $12.00, along with a blue bowl to match my blue spot, and a canister of propane. There was a guy in the store buying a cast iron pot for $35, and he said he was heading to the rendezvous. I probably should have looked into that, but I blew it. As I was leaving I saw a pair of brass knuckles for sale. Again, it's something you can get in Montana that you can't get anywhere else, so I bought them. I'm collecting a pretty good string of enemies, so I've got the brass knuckles just in case, and the wading sandals so I don't trip in the slime of the likes of FQ and KM and SH and BS.

I bought a bunch of flies at the Sporting Goods store and also went to a fly shop to see about a float trip in the fall. Part of the reason I passed through Kalispell was because brother Dan will be here in October, and I want to take him fishing. Well I can only imagine what these rivers are going to be like in the fall, and I'm going to pass back through there on my way back from Alaska, if Allah is willing.

I bought some mosquitos and orange stimulators size 12 and 14 and also some may fly patterns, and told my Montana-kid-catches-pig story for the hundredth time-with the computer illustration. That really was an impressive fish that kid caught. I haven't seen anything even close to it yet. Not even half that size. That's almost a trophy fish.

Anyway, I shopped until I dropped into Hungry Horse and passed by the river one more time. My signs were still up and I thought I saw the worm guy fishing the riffle. I looked in the back of his truck and saw a pair of brown boots, but they weren't mine. Then I walked down the path in the new wading sandals, and didn't slip at all.

This was a new worm guy, and I apologized for snooping around in the back of his truck. I explained the situation and he saw the reward poster taped to a rock in the river. WE chatted for awhile and I watched him catch a couple of fish in a couple of minutes. Two casts in a row, even. I don't mind fishing worms. Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer fished worms. It's a step below flies, but it has roots. Floating a worm by a big trout is like floating a pepperoni pizza-they can't resist.

Eventually I gave up on the boots, walked up the cliff and that's the last I'll see of the South Fork of the Flathead until this fall when, hopefully, I'll be launching a drift boat from just under the bridge, and going for miles down river under fall color.

I stopped at the huckleberry stand and bought a bunch of goodies for friends, to counter the Bad Medicine of all the nasty things I've been e-mailing and mailing to enemies. So, if you get something in the mail in the next week or so and it doesn't explode, it means I like you.

I stopped by the Flathead Ranger station and left a reward notice and then, finally, after five days of fiddling around and nervous waiting and lots of phone calls, I pushed east into Glacier National Park.

And it was awfully nice. Montana at its best: sky, mountains and river, and very few people around. This is peak season, and it's like a fall day in Yosemite. There just aren't a lot of people up here.

I saw rivers and streams and mountains. I saw a train parked along a track that said "American Oriental Express." The train cars were painted up all blue and fancy, and it looked like a fun ride. There was almost an overabundance of commercialism around the park: water slides, fast-food stands, RV parks, but for the most part, nature dominated, and civilization was minimal.

I had the vague idea that I was driving through the park and out the other side, into the great plains and maybe to Great Falls, or to Shelby, to find a veterinarian for rabies shots for Ike before crossing into Canada.

Driving along, I saw a bout a zillion epic little fishing runs, but I kept going until I saw a turn-out where a dog was swimming where a creek emptied into the Middle Fork (??) of the Flathead.

I pulled over and got into a conversation with a guy who had learned to surf in Michigan, had lived in Tahoe and Pacific Beach for awhile and now ran a store in East Glacier. He was an interesting guy and absolutely swore by some point breaks in Michigan, which he showed me on my map. We shared a mutual dislike for Southern California, and he was glad to be living where he was living.

I let Ike out to run and he took off, and then was confronted by the guy's dog, Jed. His name was John, his son's name was Nigel and John told me not to bother fishing the hole at the end of the parking lot, but suggested other places.

Nigel was throwing rocks into the dog's mouth until John told him to cool it so he didn't chip the dog's tooth. Later, Nigel was playing around in the back of John's car and pulled a .380 handgun out of a holster. John scolded him and took out the clip. Later, Nigel put the clip back in and I was ducking back in my chair. That, right there, is why Canada doesn't allow handguns, and Canada is smart.

John told me to stop by his store in East Glacier and say hello and that he had an Internet CafÚ there. I pushed on.

East Glacier is on the other side of the park, in the Blackfoot Reservation. I bought a pastrami sandwich and some buffalo steaks at John's store, and bought some boxes at the Post Office for sending mean things to enemies and nice things to friends. The Post Office was brand-spanking new and very modern. The guy behind the desk was kind of an effeminate Blackfoot Indian, and I said to him what I say to all American Indians. If I lived in a place like East Glacier (Sequim, Massachusetts, Klamath River) and bunch of white men came through and started shoving people around, I'd scalp them, too. He nodded sagely, to himself.

I pushed on, and into a different world. Outside of Glacier National Park, you enter the Other Montana. The Plains Montana. The terrain changed instantly and completely, to flat, rolling, lush grassland, as far as the horizon. I was reminded of Lawrence of Arabia, where Lawrence is in Feisal's tent with Brighton and the Koran-reading holy man.

Well, my first impression of the Plains was that they were an ocean where no oar is dipped, and pretty soon I would find out that the Blackfeet Indians were similar in reputation to the Bedu: they were bad-ass, high-pride and didn't bow down or take lip from anyone, including the white man. I guess Lewis and Clark were turned back by the Blackfeet at some point, although I'm not quite there in the book yet.

I passed through the town of Browning which is to the Blackfeet what Neeha Bay is to the Makah Indians. The town looked typically disheveled, like Neeah Bay or Makaha or any kind of place where original Americans were placed. The town was semi-prosperous out in the middle of the Plains and there were a lot of tough-looking young Indian guys walking around with their chests out.

I got some money at a cash machine and asked a cop if he knew where I could find a veterinarian. The town looked sketchy and I didn't want to trust Ike's life to an Indian vet with Bad Medicine. The cop told me there was a vet halfway between Browning and Cut Bank, right before the turn-off to the road that lead to the ??? Bonita border crossing.

So I drove on, through the Plains, which get eerily monotonous very fast. It was beautiful in a way, the sky was hung with John Ford clouds, the kind an artist would paint all psychedelic on the cover of a Yes album and the sky was a pretty blue. Most of the plains were still green, and there was some farming, most likely alfalfa. A Buddy Holly song came on the radio and that was perfect, because he is the voice of the Texas Plains.

I was told to look for grain elevators just before the vet, on the right side. I saw a bunch of smaller grain elevators on small farms, but kept going into the town of Meriwhether, where there was a historical sign telling the story of Camp Disappointment. I had read this part of the Lewis and Clark story. Lewis and three men followed a fork of the Missouri that not even the Indians knew about. He was hoping this fork was the true Missouri and that it would go beyond the 49th parallel or something like that, because that would extend the boundary of the Louisiana Purchase. Camp Disappointment is as far north as they got. They found out the river was not the Missouri and flowed from the north and not the west. The weather was crummy so they made camp at Camp Disappointment then turned back the next day.

Passing through Meriwhether I saw "All Creatures Great and Smallªh veterinary clinic on the right side of the road. It looked like some of the Third World medical clinics I'd been to in Fiji and Sumbawa: Just a ramshackle place that looked neither professional nor hygienic. But there were lots of horses and dogs running around outside, so I figured it was safe enough.

I brought Ike in, telling him that what was about to happen was going to hurt him more than it was going to hurt me. We sat in a room full of dogs and Indians and a cute little girl with a classic Indian face. There as a picture on the wall that I couldn't figure out at first, and then the lady at the desk told me it was a dog with a face full of porcupine quills. Oh man I think that was just about the most painful thing I have ever seen, at least 50 big white quills stuck into this poor dog. They got them all out but the dog lost an eye. Ouch.

Eventually it was Ike's turn for a shot. For $10 he got a thermometer up his bum, a feel out and then a shot, which didn't seem to phase him at all. Just like that, we were out of there. For only $10, and you'd have to see where I was to understand how weird it was to find exactly what I wanted, where I wanted, out in the middle of the grassy ocean. Weird.

John had told me not to bother with Great Falls. He said the Falls were gone and dammed over and that I'd just be disappointed. I am at the point in Undaunted Courage where they are beginning the 16 mile portage to get around the falls. Although Lewis is in a very flat but treacherous area, as he is dealing with it he is all too aware of those mountains off in the distance. I say it as he saw it: Out in the plains, with the impossibly jagged skyline of the Rockies blocking the sky to the southwest. Lewis didn't yet know how he was going to get over, around, through and past those mountains.

Just after the vet I took a turnoff toward Porta Bonita, which is one of the entries into Canada. There were some really clean, modern prosperous dairies and cattle ranches scattered here and there, but it wasn't hard to imagine a bunch of Blackfeet Indians charging around on their ponies and going after buffalo, bear an anything else that moved.

The road to Porta Bonita got gravelly for awhile, but I feared it on my new Pirelli Scorpions. At some point, most likely on this sketchy road, the rear right hubcap that had been making all that noise flew off, but I wouldn't know it until later. At another point, a rock came up from an approaching truck and smacked the windshield hard. I didn't see the crack at first, but it's there now, a puka with a fracture line getting longer and longer and threatening to break the bank.

I was still spinning from all the money-spending I had done that morning, but I wasn't too worried. I was heading into Canada, and money there is a little like Monopoly money. You get $147 Canadian for $100 American, and that is just a good bargain all the way around.

The one thing that is expensive in Canada is gas, and I kind of blew it by not filling my tank in the U.S. of A. Oh well, everyone makes mistakes, just not every five minutes.

The van was a mess. Everything was strewn hither and thither. I had that little plastic container of bad marijuana form Sun Valley, I had the shotgun without the trigger lock, which was lost in all the mess. I had a box of .380 ammunition for Mr. Walther, but no Mr. Walther. And I had an evil, malicious cat, and long hair. As I approached the Canadian border I decided to hell with it. I wasn't doing anything wrong, I'd never done anything wrong and they'd just have to deal with me. As I drove in I got a twinge of worry that Frank Quirarte's silly meddling with the Pacifica Police Department had resulted in a warrant for me, but that was an irrational worry.

There was an older lady at the Canadian Customs and she was all business. She asked where I was going and how long I'd be in Canada. Did I have any drugs or alcohol, weapons, fireworks. I proclaimed Mr. Winchester and some firecrackers.

11:43 MT THURSDAY JULY 12, 2001 KINKOS IN CALGARY, ALBERTA, CANADA

MONEY

Kinkos charges from this morning: $ 9.52 C$14.00

Shoot, gave up on writing all that last night at about 3:00 in the morning, I was in a Kinkos with a guy trying to sue his landlord and Ike was running around and I was grimy and tired so I gave up.

I drove around and found a place to sleep in a neighborhood up above the famous Calgary Stampede, which is going on right now. I could hear bulls bulling all night long, and I saw a race track and a rodeo and a lot of buildings. Calgary is a big, thriving city, but it's a city. If Canadians worry that their country is a clone of the United States, they have no one to blame but themselves. Calgary looks like any big American city, but I think the strip malls and stores are even bigger and gaudier, probably a throw back to the day when people came in off the plains to the city expecting some color and excitement. There's lots of color here. Lots of big malls. I want to go back to the wilds. Cities are cities.

Anyway, Ike is running around that neighborhood now. I left him his food dish with water and some "salmon pateªh I bought at the Extra Foods. He's eating better than I am. I need to cook those buffalo steaks or get them on ice. They're thawed and bloody.

I'll continue the story of yesterday, which I left off at the Canadian Border.

I wasn't all that illegal, just disreputable-looking. The lady checked my ID's and came back and wondered why I had been finger-printed recently, I honestly couldn't remember why. I'd told her about getting handcuffed for the shotgun in Marin, but I wasn't finger-printed.

She said something about a gun license and then I remembered. I had been finger-printed when I bought Mr. Walther. I threw her my red Handgun Safety Certificate, forgetting that it was for handguns. She didn't notice.

Then I went inside and she processed papers for the fireworks I surrendered, and also the C$50 Canada now charges for bringing guns into the country. I said I could imagine some old boys from Montana with a quiver of 5 or 10 guns getting edgy about C$50 a piece, but she said she hadn't had much trouble. This border crossing was a true outpost, in the middle of nowhere, in the wind and the plains and the sky.

While waiting for her to fill out the papers, I saw a news report about a woman who had killed by a moose somewhere in Alberta. That moose stuff is something to be taken seriously. People get killed all the time when they hit the things. Moose way close to a ton and if you hit anything that heavy going at 50 MPH, you've got problems.

I paid the C$50 which wasn't as bad as the US$50 I thought I would have to pay, and remembered I was in Canada. Time to change the math. Fortunately, the conversion from C$ to US$ is about the same as K's to miles, I think you divide by .6 for K's to M's and .68 for C$ to US$. So, I did that.

I made some calls from a phone booth on the Canadian side and wondered if they had it bugged. I would, if I were Canada. Who knows how many dummies would jump on the phone and call their dope-dealing friends and scream: "I made it through!!! The hash will be there in, huh? Me, officer?ªh

So I pushed on into Canada, which was greener and wetter and more agriculturally used than the American side. The land was thick with three-foot high grass, which I assumed to be alfalfa. There were those big round hay-bales all over the side of the road and the occasional well-kept ranch and dairy.

I was starting to worry about running out of gas when I pulled into a town called Magrath. I asked the kid at the pump if he thought that Canada could field an All-Canadian major league team that was competitive, and he said no problem. I was thinking about that and other things as I drove through the plains. The Guess Who came on the radio a few times and then Alanis Morrissette and I thought that was appropriate, and there were lightning bolt crackles every few minutes.

I was heading for Calgary, which was about 200 K's away, just rolling through Canada, through Lethbridge and lots of small towns, which didn't seem much different from American towns, although every once in a while Alberta had the look of England. Not sure what it was that made me think of that. The politeness and order of the highway signs, maybe. The terrain was pure west.

I just rolled and rolled, listening to the radio. In one town I stopped at an Extra Foods to see if Canada had anything different to offer. I ended up buying a bunch of barbequing supplies because they were dirt cheap in Canadian dollars, and .68 cheap in American. I'm going to find some place to grill those buffalo steaks tonight. I'm through with cities and civilization. Ted Kazynski, here I come.

Finally rolled into Calgary around midnight, I think, and spent at least an hour driving around on Macleod Trail road, looking for this Kinkos. Then I spent several hours sorting out all the money I had spent, and feeling shagged and tired after a long squawk.

I sent an incredibly nasty e-mail to Hawk which made me feel better, and right now I'm checking to see how much money I have left. I don't want to get suck again, and I'm going to try to find the Dano guy in Whistler who has a cabin. I want to sit some place for a while and finish the five books I'm reading and get some other work done, then push on to Alaska. Canada's a good place to kill time. It's dirt cheap.

I think that's all of it. Well it's not really, there are several little intrigues and such going on. Minor stuff really that would be fun to write about, but I can't. Amazing how much trouble you can get into at a distance.