Latest Update: July 17, 2001 by Ben Marcus

7:36 PT TUESDAY JULY 17, 2001 THE CABIN, SHERIDAN LAKE, B.C.

ODOMETER
TRIP METER

MONEY
Four interesting stone-fly imitations at the gas dock: $10 Ice cream: $ 2

I like it here, and so does Ike, who is now posing as a head-rest, right behind me, purring away after a breakfast of ground beef and cr¶me. Last night Lee offered Ike slivers of one of the best steaks I've ever had and he sniffed up his nose and Morrised it. Spoiled.

It's early in the AM and Team Barefoot aren't up yet. I switched on the coffee, which is also very good and just checked e-mail and looked at the net a bit. No e-mails from anyone, including the little dipshit harasser who was sending me nasty e-mails yesterday. Not sure who it was at first, but I think it's Josh Pomer, this hideous little gnome who makes videos in Santa Cruz. I was disappointed. I thought it was someone at least remotely interesting or important, but it's just some guy who is so dumb, he can't even make a good video. He has stopped sending them, and today I only had one video for a porn site.

I did find some good news on the web though. I had heard that the new Surfer's Journal with my massive tow article was finally out, and when I went to the Surfer's Journal website I found the first few paragraphs had been excerpted. You can read it at: http://www.surfersjournal.com/
html/tiger_feature_vol10no3.htm.

Maybe it's over-written a little, or maybe it's just right, I don't know. But sometimes I read my stuff and get a little impressed. It's like there are two mes: The dingaling one who slopes around and loses all his stuff and insults and alienates everyone; and the one who is pretty damn smart and has no problem stringing sentences together. Oh well. Duality of man and all that.

Yes, that was a minor show of confidence.

Anyway, that Journal article has hit the stands and it will be interesting to see what the reaction is. I like that I made heroes of Doug Hansen and Perry Miller. They are good guys, and Hansen is the first surfer I ever knew. When I moved from Santa Clara to Santa Cruz in the 70s, and I was the most profound Valley Kook anyone had ever seen, Hansen was the guy wearing the Pleasure Point sweatshirt, and I thought he was cool. I also thought he and Karen were brother and sister, because she, too, had a Pleasure Point t-shirt.

Hansen is a funny guy and he provided the punchline to the whole story: "Dude, people hate Jet Skis." We'll see how the article plays with the Mavericks and Santa Cruz guys. I don't really give a shit, I think it's well-written and truthful, but sometimes the truth isn't always popular, and who cares what a bunch of dumb surfers think anyway, hey?

This morning I checked Aggroville and the SURFER Magazine chat room to see if there is any reaction to the Surfer's Journal article. There was a little bit on the SURFER Magazine site, but none, yet on Aggroville. It's coming. My line about: "There were two teams representing the Third World at Mavericks that morning: Carlos Burle and Rodrigo Resende from Brazil, and Sean Rhodes and Matt Ambrose from Pacifica." Ought o get some comment. I thought it was funny. Others might take offense.

Yesterday I was on the phone all day as the Glimmer Triplets went into Hundred Mile House to take care of business. I made a zillion phone calls all over, trying to round up people to go on the Alaska trip. Ruffo can't go because his Rusty sponsor thought Alaska wasn't as interesting as Russia. I left Josh Mulcoy a message because he is an easy-going guy to travel with and he likes to fish. I also left messages for the Malloy brothers and Brock. I called Jeff Clark to say "Get well" because he just had surgery to fuse his spine. I want to do an interview for swell.com with Jeff about his surgery and Jay and the last 10 years, and do a sidebar which uses arrows to point to various points of Jeff's body and show all the war wounds and damage he has had over the years.

I talked to Katharine Graham-Cracker briefly about this and that and she said Jeff won't be ready to talk for another week. He is all whacked out on pain killers and is bed-ridden.

Grant Washburn was there at Jeff' side and I broached the idea of the Alaska trip. He was interested and it will be good if he goes. I want to stand him up next to an Alaskan moose to see who is bigger, and if any bear get black or grizzly with us, Grant will be there to swat them down. It would be interesting to see Grant go mano a mano with a bear his size. Grant is a large guy. He probably won't be surfing the tidal bore.

I also called the Surfer's Journal and gave them an address in Whistler to send some issues. I talked to Jeff Divine and asked if he might be able to shoot the Alaska trip. Now that Surfer is owned by the company that owns Surfing, everything is all mixed up and maybe Jeff can shoot for whoever he wants. He is getting married in September and won't be available until the end of the month, but it would be good to have him. Any photographer will go nuts in Alaska.

On thing that bothered me about the Surfer's Journal deal is that I didn't get to thank all the people who helped out. So I'll do it now to expunge the guilt from my soul.

Thanks to Chuck Gallagher for computer time and the outdoor shower. Don Johnson and Anne Johnson for letting me use the Cave. Ken Bradshaw for cell phone time and hollering at me from Australia, because now I have a story to tell. Carol She and Mike McNulty in Hawaii for their side of the story. Perry Miller and Doug Hansen for their sides of the story, and for proofing help and bringing the medicine when I was so sick. Thanks to Danny Degeronimo and family for computer time and couch time. Thanks to Peter Mel and Jay Moriarity for giving a play by play. Thanks to Flea for grumbling out a few words. Thanks to Eric Nelson and Curt Myers for footage. Jeff Clark for chiming in. Grant Washburn for his words. Thanks to Scott Hulet and Steve Pezman for letting me write it, and thanks to whateve muse gave me the "Chinese stuff." It worked.

Okay, I feel better.

Made a million calls yesterday and it was good to sit in one place and get work done. I wrote a few pages of Fin, but that is slow-going. I've managed to trim one page off the first-draft and I'm hoping to take a few more off. The present version is at about 65 pages which is pretty much on target, as it ends where the Second Act begins, I just don't know where to take it from where I leave off: With Mason Thorpe saying goodbye to Butch at Midway Island.

I also called swell.com and pushed them on the Video Awards. I think they're lagging, but apparently they are either firing all their Tech Guys, or they are on vacation and will be swamped when they get back. I think the Video Awards is what the web was designed for. I've told them just give me a Tech Guy and Fran and I'll write it and organize it and they can just approve what I do and forget about it. They don't even have to pay me. It will be a fun project and a way to schnib SURFER a little bit. If the SURFER dingalings don't like it, I'll just tell them to steal their own idea. The Video Awards is mine.

Also got an edited version of my Jay Moriarity Memorial from Surfer's Path. They took bits and pieces from both versions and made something passable. It will work. Here it is.

LIVE LIKE JAY James Michael Moriarity: 1978 - 2001

When Jay Moriarity went over the falls at Mavericks in December of 1994, Jeff Clark claimed that was the biggest wave anyone had attempted at Mavericks up to that point. Jay was 16. He was a 16-year-old longboarder who didn't give a shit what others thought, and rode what he wanted to ride; a kid who got off his shift at Pleasure Pizza in his hometown of Santa Cruz, California, and midnight-surfed 10-foot First Peak the night before, charged up to Mavericks on a few hours' sleep, and banzaied the first bomb that came his way. He bounced off the bottom where no one but urchin divers had ever touched bottom, shook it off, paddled back out, got a half dozen bombs and then went home to get grounded by his Mom.

Seven years later, Jay Moriarity had matured from an obsessed, kamikaze kid to a mature man and great surfer. Jay wisely avoided all the traps and pitfalls of growing up in Santa Cruz as a very talented surfer. He was more a country boy than a nicknamed, tattooed verminous surfer punk. He was humble and polite, dedicated but unassuming. Talented, and doing what we all inwardly or outwardly wanted to do: Honouring the ocean by living up to it.

The drowning of Jay Moriarity in the Maldives on Friday, June 15 sent shock waves throughout the surfing world. People who knew him and people who didn't were stricken in ways some couldn't understand. Newspapers and TV news around the world reported the passing of this famous big-wave surfer; the kid who went over the falls at Mavericks; the kid who traveled the world for his sponsor, O'Neill, teaching kids how to surf. There were tributes high and low, and for proof of Jay's effect on the world, you only needed to log onto Aggroville, the chat forum on www.MavSurfer.com.

Within the next week and beyond, Aggroville was awash in more than 300 posts, all about Jay, from family, friends, bros and strangers. There were short and long tributes from people who knew him and people who knew of him; from people he had taught and people from whom he had learned. There were posts from Santa Cruz, England, South Africa and around the world, and if you read them all, the words that kept popping up most often were "smile," "stoked," "tragic," "How?" and "Why?"

OUR OCEAN TEACHER
Name: The Spears Family (spider-we053.proxy.aol.com)
Date: 06-18-01 11:57

We are all deeply shocked by the news in this little part of England. We live near Croyde beach where Jay and the O'Neill Academy came to introduce grommets to our wonderful sport. Both Connor and Kathleen were taught by Jay the basics of surfboard control and both were looking forward so much to meeting him again this weekend.
Our thoughts are with Jays family and friends.
We will never forget him.

Ester, Barbara, Connor & Kathleen
Jay Moriarity was very close to that rarest of things: a pure talent and a pure soul. Talented and sincere, determined and ambitious, friendly and compassionate, happy and content, he was successful in his teens, going full steam in his early 20s and still on his way up, eager for more. The ocean made Jay. He was a Made Guy, a Stoked Guy who paddled out everywhere with a big smile on his kisser, and kept it there. The first and last thing anyone noticed was his ever-present smile, and then the easy-going personality faded in behind that big grin. Everyone who met Jay was put at ease by that pure stoke. Everyone who met Jay admired him and even envied him. Here was a guy who had it, was glad he had it, knew what to do with it, was willing to share it and wouldn't dream of tarnishing it. But the ocean, in its weird wisdom, decided to take his breath, and left the rest of us gasping. Live like Jay

A bit of a jumble, as if they'd taken both my stories and thrown them in a blender and poured them into a Word Processor, but it will work. And every little bit of dough helps.

Looks like I'll hang around here today and get organized and get some work done and maybe head on out tomorrow. The money is getting low again and I don't think I'll be paid until this Friday. That check should last me a while, and then what?

I'll think of something. Just need to economize and start doing this trip the way I originally intended: sleep for free in the van, cook for myself. Alaska on $5 a day.

I can do that, and it will begin when I leave here.

Ike says hello. I'm bumping him with the back of my head. He's a good headrest and a good cat. Spoiled rotten and a mixer, but a good cat naytheless.