Latest Update: July 30, 2001 by Ben Marcus

16:12 PT SUNDAY JULY 29, 2001 IN FRONT OF VALHALLA OUTFITTERS, SMITHERS, B.C.

ODOMETER: 59507
TRIP METER: 4429.8

MONEY
Wheat thins, choco milk, can of chili at Chevron

Ike is on the loose again, running wild through the streets of Smithers. He bolted out and over me and into the Main Street of Smithers as I stopped to see if Valhalla Outfitters were open. They weren't, I was distracted and Ike was gone. He ran across the street and attracted the attention of a woman getting into her car.

"Is that your cat?"

"That's Ike. He's a rascal."

"You let him run loose?"

"Sometimes I don't have a choice."

"I have a cat in a cage in the back. Maybe I should let her run loose."

I said maybe she should and then went after Ike, who was running up and down and sniffing in all the shop windows, looking for who knows that.

I sniffed in the window of Valhalla Outfitters, because they were closed. They sell Patagonia gear and I want to go in when they are open and get an idea of what I will be buying at XXX % less than wholesale, pretty soon.

So now I'm parked in downtown Smithers, eating Wheat Thins and waiting for rascal to show up. If Ike were a Hawaiian cat, I'd call him Kolohe, which means Rascal. In fact, I'm changing the name of the Hawaiian kahu in the Fin screenplay from Montgomery Kane Kaluhiokalani to Kolohe Montgomery Kaluhiokalani-because the Butch character in Fin is a rascal.

I might even change the name of Mason Thorpe's cat from Ike to Kolohe to create a coincidence and a plot device. You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?

Who and what in the hell am I talking about? I'm talking about this screenplay I keep talking about: Fin. I've been working on it for awhile and just got some good feedback from Mark Lyon, who I sent it to by e-mail. He knows movies and writing and screenplays and structure and I wanted his opinion,

Here are his thoughts, with my responses IN ALL CAPS

GET IT ONLINE TOMORROW AND SAVE IT TO FILING CABINET.

I did all that in the Information Booth in Houston, British Columbia, which looked a lot like the Information Booth in New Hazleton which I remembered from the last time I was here, in November of last year. I stopped in Houston to get fishing information on the drive in, after I caught some lovely glimpses of the Bulkley River and wondered if there was anything happening this time of year. They had no fishing information, but they did have a computer so I checked e-mail and did some back and forth with Mark.,

That e-conversation took my mind off unproductive things and onto trying to figure out the second half of Fin. It's going to get complicated and intertwined and I want there to be lots of surprises. I just have to figure out the order and then I have to figure out the locations.

Anyone know of a restaurant somewhere in the tropical world where there is a live shark tank that two battling women could fall into? I'll bet something like this exists somewhere. I want the snoopy journalist and the devious lawyer to get into a horrendous cat fight which splashes into a shark tank, and where shocked dinners watch two enraged women go after each other like WWF mermaids, as the real sharks in the tank flee in terror.

That sounds like a good scene. What do you think, Mark?

Anyway, I have a few days to ponder all that, because I'm in Smithers in the beautiful Bulkley Valley and there are no fish happening because it's too early in the season. This is one of the best steelhead areas in the world, but I am too early. Maybe on the way back down I'll get after it.

I did see that sockeye salmon are happening on the Nass River, so maybe I'll pop over there. I fished Meziadian Junction last year, which flows out of Meziadin Lake and into the Nass. I remember seeing some spawning sockeye going into the lake, but we were after steelhead, and the sockeye looked black.

So, I'll try to find a road that goes down to the Nass, and poke around there for a few days.

Dan is depositing some money for me tomorrow, and at some point tomorrow I have to put everyone on red alert about Russia (Get it? RED alert? Eh? Know what I mean? Krazny alert?). It's almost the 1st of August, which means the tickets have to be paid for by August 4, and we have to start the Visa process. I'll be Fed Exing all my stuff, for sure, and I'm hoping George Nikitin's offer to help still holds. This is getting too close for comfort, and I want all this to happen.

So for now I'm in the beautiful Bulkley Valley, which is now running second to Montana for the place to live in a rural, fish-thick setting. The Bulkley Valley is as green and lush as a place can be, probably because all those Pacific Storms come up the valley from Prince Rupert and blast the place all winter long. When I was here last October it was raining non-stop, and I wondered what this place looked like when it was clear. Now I know, it looks good and green with lots of world-class rivers and even a ski resort up in the hills. There are little patches of snow here and there, and not many people around at all.

I went into one fishing store and got the word that it was too early for steelhead. I salivated over a bunch of great fishing equipment, but there was no Patagonia gear.

I'll find somewhere to camp tonight, check out Valhalla outfitters tomorrow, hopefully have some money to work with, and deposit the money for Olga, who is sending the Russian/English dictionary to Dease Lake. I also have to pay for that one hand-held GPS.

On Tuesday Iïll start heading up toward Dease Lake and hopefully by Wednesday or Thursday it will be there. Then I'll keep going up the Cassiar, maybe fish a river or two and then head for Dawson in the Yukon. After that, Fairbanks and hopefully up into ANWR before heading for Anchorage.

For now, I have a cat to wait for, and some plot points to plot.

Anyone wants to read Fin, send an address.

16:33 PT MONDAY JULY 30, 2001 BEHIND VALHALLA OUTFITTERS, SMITHERS, B.C.

ODOMETER

TRIP METER

MONEY
Cash taken out this morning $100.00
Catfood: $4.44
Oatmeal: 40.44

Phone card $20.00
Various phone calls. $10.00
Internet CafÚ charges $ 8.45
Internet cafÚ charges: $ 8.03
Internet cafÚ charges: $14.45
$55.37

Stupid fricking cat. Stupid fricking surfers. Stupid fricking phone cards. Stupid fricking Internet. Stupid fricking suicidal field mouse. Stupid fricking world. Stupid fricking me.

Another day as an itinerant journalist. Frick.

I just got back from a long, long cool-down drive, west out of Smithers toward New Hazleton through the lovely Bulkley Valley, which is lovely. In fact, the Bulkley Valley wins. Or it's a tie between this valley and some parts of Montana for the Best Place to Build a Ranch and Catch Pooloads of Big Fish Award.

Smithers and the Bulkley Valley remind me of Sequim and that area. Smithers is about the same size as Sequim, but a bit livelier, more young people and not as many retired. The mountains are high right behind the town and the sky is blue and everywhere you look is chlorophyll. This place is as relentlessly green as Hawaii, and I think I know why. All those Gulf of Alaska storms which come off Kamchatka usually end up in the Queen Charlotte Islands, which are at the same latitude as this valley. So those storms keep going up this valley and dump hat must be a tremendous amount of rain, pretty much year around.

Well I enjoyed that drive from Smithers almost to New Hazelton, which is where I stayed when I came through here last year. Along the way I saw a lot of green, thick farmland and thick black cattle and thick brown horses. It's August but this place is green, green and more green. I guess they've had a lot of rain this summer, but I doubt this place gets deserty. The mountains to the left of the road are high and snowy. The mountains off to the north look empty and Northlandish. I'm starting to get into the real Wild North. It all begins here, and goes on for hundreds and thousands of miles.

Along the way I saw one epic, dilapidated barn that could be the model for my ideal ranch house. I also saw the Indians net-fishing for salmon at Moricetown Canyon, a pretty dangerous-looking rapids that makes me wonder how salmon and steelhead have the juice to get up it.

I drove and drove and cooled down after a long day of sending angry, panicked e-mails and burning through phone cards and all my change making phone calls, basically telling everyone to GET THEIR FINGERS OUT OF THEIR ASSES AND TAKE CARE OF BUSINESS. THIS IS RUSSIA WE'RE DEALING WITH, NOT BERMUDA.

I promised Evan I wouldn't go into detail about the details of this trip because apparently everyone in the surf industry is reading all this. I don't know why that matters, really. This illusion of competition between magazines is just that. Really more of a device to let all the poor saps stuck in offices working on the magazines think they're being competitive or meaningful or something.

I digress. I sent some angry, evil e-mails today, telling the surfers on this Russia trip to get those damned Wild Russia applications in, and prompting Evan and Surfing and all the sponsors to start kicking down money and buying lane tickets and getting the whole show rolling.

One of the e-mails this morning was from Nikolay at Wild Russia. He said he had received no applications, and wished me luck.

Maybe those angry e-mails will be published posthumously or will be made available in my library. They were spirited. I just hope they work. I mean, how long ago did I start sending out those Kamchatka Dispatches, in which I very clearly spelled out everything that needed to be done. Did they think I was joking?

I had a lot of trouble with phone cards today. I burned through one $20 Canadian phone card in about 10 calls, and couldn't get my ATT card to work. The 888 number doesn't work from Canada, and I couldn't get it to work through 800-CALLATT. I had a couple of spirited conversations with operators, but they couldn't help me.

So, fricking surfers, fricking Internet, fricking phone cars. That was just a thumbnail sketch of what I went through today, typing furiously on two computers in the Internet cafÚ in downtown Smithers.

What about the fricking cat?

I should go back to last night. Yesterday Ike jumped out of the van downtown, and I spent most of the day driving around and killing time and waiting for him to show up. I made a long drive up into the mountains, following a surprisingly steep and bad road up to the Hudson Bay ski area. The view from up there was spectacular. The Bulkley Valley really does have it going on. While driving along I saw a mother bird and a chick on the side of the road. I figured they'd get out of the way as I approached, but they didn't and for a minute I thought I had killed the chick. I turned around, that's how much of a killer, hunter, gun-nut I am, but mother and child were okay. (I since found out that it was some kind of Field Partridge that is renowned for being dumb. Hard to believe they've survived this long).

I drove up to the ski resort and back down, and gave a ride to a Mountain Border I'd seen coming down when I was on the way up.

In the evening I parked downtown and waited for Ike to appear, but he never did. I called mom to see if anyone had found him. Someone had. I went to a gray house near Jake's Garage near the railroad tracks, and found Ike in a house with two women, a man and a lot of dogs. The young woman had found Ike wandering and took him home. They called my mom and everything turned out okay.

Ike was pretty flipped when we went walking out of there. Too many dogs around, so Ike put his claws into both of the women and then me, burying a single claw into my nose like a barbed fly hook, and drawing blood. Stupid cat.

We came back to the Municipal Campground and I got into a conversation with a couple from Kansas who had just driven down the Cassiar. They were debating taking the ferry down to Victoria or driving, and I tried to convince them to drive. I think the man had had enough driving.

As we were talking, Ike introduced himself and then pulled a disappearing act. There was a small hole in the wall near the phone and Ike did an amazing job of looking in and then pulling his whole self in after, and disappearing.

That scared me a little, thinking of all the situations he could get himself into that he couldn't get out of. But he came out of this one, emerging a little later looking pleased with himself.

I chatted with the Kansas man about this and that, and learned that Ted Turner had bought three big ranches near his home in Kansas, and was raising buffalo. This man didn't like Turner because Turner is agnostic, but he also admired any man who "stood up for what he believed in."

Eventually I walked toward my campsite and got into a conversation with the caretaker of the park. I pleaded poverty and said I would pay on Monday, if my brother deposited some cash.

The caretaker had been in the Air Force in the 60s and worked on P3 Orions, the planes I used to see flying around Moffet Field when I was growing up in Santa Clara, and the same plane that had gone down in China.

At some point, a blonde woman came over carrying Ike-his latest victim-she was nice and said she had called my mom because she thought Ike had been abandoned by someone in Washington.

So, a new record. Two Ike calls in a day. I'm sure it will be broken somewhere down the line.

Turns out this was a good hook-up. This nice blonde woman-whose e-mail I got but whose name I didn't-was married to an Alaskan Airlines pilot, and she knew a bit about Russia. She had passed through PetroPavlovsk on her way to Vladivostok.

She and her family had a big fancy motorhome with a boat behind and they were heading up to Ketchikan, taking the ferry from Prince Rupert.

I gave here the Kamchatka spiel, and she suggested taking lots of cosmetics and soaps and lingerie for the woman, because quality good like that are in short supply.

I said I always traveled with all those things, and would be sure to bring double amounts.

She gave me Ike back and later I walked over to their camp and talked to her husband. He knew Greg Reed and certified a lot of the things Greg Reed had said: " The only thing rougher than the runways is the rest of the society." Stuff like that.

I showed them all the photos I could muster, including the Mi-8 chopper and the map of Kamchatka.

(Wow, weird. There's a huge noise from birds or ducks off in the distance. Sounds like a scene from The Birds. Now Ike just heard it. It's over beyond the trees. No idea what it is. A lot of birds and it just died down. Odd. Just had a chat with a woman who had been to Saint Petersburg and Moscow. She said the birds were ravens and gave me the usual warnings about Russia. I don't think Kamchatka is going to suffer from the problems of more rural parts of Russia. It's a fishing port, so it probably gets lots of supplies from all over, etc. etc.)

Where was I? Last night I chatted with the Alaska Airlines pilot and his wife for quite a while, getting all the scoops I could on Kamchatka. He talked about flying in Alaska and navigation and lots of good stuff. It was a nice evening after a long day of driving. Nice to talk to someone other than myself and that danged cat.

As for that danged cat. This morning I went back and forth to town, sending angry, panicked e-mails and then making angry, panicked phone calls. At one point I was about to call someone when I saw Ike toying with a small animal. I went over and he had a small field mouse in his mouth.

(I keep getting interrupted. I walked over to the phone to call mom to check e-mail. Coming back, Ike got all squirrelly. I looked up and there was Bullwinkle and his Old Lady walking through the camp. Not big mooses, but two mooses. I walked closer than I should have to get a photo. Too dark)

Anyway, Ike caught a poor little field mouse and was toying with it. I interrupted the phone call and saved the poor little mouse. I put Ike in the car for about 10 minutes, made some calls and let him out. He caught the mouse again, poor little bugger. Ike was just toying with it, carrying it in his mouth and then letting it run. I put him back in the car, made some more calls and let him out. He caught it again. Then I started getting pissed at the mouse. I mean, come on. What is he, a dumb surfer or something?

Anyway, I went into town and took Ike, when I should have just let him run around the park all day. He jumped out the door the first chance he got, into the street and ran away. When Ike is running, not even Jim Thorpe could catch him. So I shined it and went in for another agonized e-mail session. There's just all kinds of stuff going on, but it's classified. I don't want to blow this trip, if there is indeed a trip.

So I drove back and forth from the park to town a few times, looking for Ike and checking e-mail and just being a nuisance. No Ike, so in the afternoon I made that drive west, toward New Hazleton. Wow. There's a nice airport in Smithers with regular air service. You could live well here, fishing for steelhead in the fall and into the winter, using the Hudson Bay ski resort in the winter, and maybe doing a little ranching in the summer. This place has it all.

I saw that epic barn along the way and took a photo for future reference, and also took some MPEGS of the local Indians dipping for salmon at those rapids.

Back in Smithers I checked e-mail expecting conciliatory e-mails from everyone, but only got one from brother Dan.

Oh I should mention that earlier today I got an e-mail from Chota Sandals offering to give me a deal on a new pair for $29.99. I thanked them profusely and then asked if they had any swag to offer for out Kamchatka trip. I'm shameless, sometimes.

So I drove around town looking for Ike, but didn't see him. I did see black cat at the end of one street prowling around in the bush, but it wasn't Ike. I bought some more chili and Wheat Thins at the Chevron station, went to camp, didn't want to cook so went back to town. I was driving through the alleys thinking Ike had probably been picked up, when there he was: sleeping on the back porch of the post office.

What a mixer. He was just sleeping out in the open, on the steps, absolutely confident that everyone he came across would love him and no one would hurt him and everything would be okay.

I grabbed the camera and got a photo and that woke him up. "Oh, hey Ben. Where ya been? Get it? Where ya been, Ben? HAHAHAHAAH"

Fricking cat. So now it's 11:00 and it just got dark. I called mom again to check e-mail. A few encouraging words. Vanity Fair finally came through with $300 for helping them scout locations for a photo of Greg Noll. And I had mom place a new bid on Ebay for that second Garmin GPS. If this bid works I'll be getting two hand-held GPS for the price of one, and that should help make things nice with our guides in Kamchatka, if we go.

Tomorrow is an important day. Hopefully everyone will get on the good foot.

Now I've got to figure out the money situation. I want to order all my Patagonia stuff tomorrow. I have to pay for:

The Russian/English dictionary:

The Garmin GPS:

The other Garmin GPS

The Chota sandals

Patagonia swag:

I want to get a new pair of wading sandals. There are all kinds of expenses in the near future, and I want to have enough money for Russia, if it happens.

So, long day, and even longer if I could tell you all the gory details, but that's classified mister. I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill myself.

I also have to fix the floppy disk drive on this computer. There is a metal clip from one of my floppy disks stuck in there. I performed the surgery once at Sheridan Lake. Time to do it again, I guess.

Bye for now.