Latest Update: August 31, 2002 by Ben Marcus

13:09 AM SATURDAY, AUGUST 31, 2002. A KINKOS ON CALIFORNIA AVE IN RENO, NEVADA

I'm in a Kinkos again and if I ever win an Oscar or a Pulitzer or something I'm going to ask Kinkos to co-sponsor my Oscar or Pulitzer Party or whatever it because I've spent half my life in these places and I owe it all to them-and Joanne, and Dan, and mom andƒ.

I'm in Kinkos checking e-mails and starting a new road journal but I want to go out to the van to listen to the midnight broadcast of that epic Giants game I saw on TV tonight. Besides Ike, those midnight rebroadcasts of Giants games have been my best friend lately, keeping me company on my long, lonely nights as a Bedu.

I'm in Reno, on my way to Yellowstone, lured all the way to the top corner of Wyoming/Idaho/Montana by one George Nikitin, who didn't have to lure me too hard. After the last two summers of driving all around Up There I have become a Fall Color addict, and the dog days of August were really getting me down around Santa Cruz. The place is depressing enough for me these days, without the gloomy weather.

I did manage to finish an eight-part article for the Santa Cruz Sentinel called

Shark Week
Myths, Legends, Rumors and Lies about White Sharks

Which I'm hoping they will start on Sunday and run through the week. It's interesting stuff with a lot of input from scientists and victims.

I got that done and then got out of Dodge yesterday, driving up along the cost past all the places I had talked about in the shark article. There was a nice little south swell running but you really have to wonder about guys surfing Waddell and Ano in late August.

If nothing else, writing the shark article and talking to all those experts will help me do what this trip is all about: Finish Fin and submit it to Project Greenlight. I've got the shark movie half-written but I need to finish the other half and I think that's what I'm hoping this trip will jar loose. I have until September 16 to turn it in, and my only worry is getting it under 140 pages. I write too much.

It felt good to be moving again, and doing it all on government money.

Tonight I spent too much money at the Silver Legacy Hotel in Reno, gambling and watching that epic Giants/Diamondbacks game in the Sports Book area. The Giants beat the Diamondbacks and beat them good. Randy Johnson plunked Kenny Lofton right in the small of his back-then picked him off first. But Lofton got payback on his next At Bat by hitting a double and knocking Johnson out of the game. Hell yes.

Holy shit that was a good baseball game and I watched it on about five different screens while gambling way too much money and over-tipping a Polish waitress who looked like Kirsten Dunst.

I ended up at the Silver Legacy because they had a parking garage that could fit the van.

And I may ask myself, "Well, how did I get here?"

This morning I woke up.... in the parking lot at the Saint Francis Yacht Club. I was there last night pacing off the scene in Water on the Brain where Bong and Clark swim from the St. Francis Yacht Club to Alcatraz and back, at night, drunk, on Halloween. As Ike ran around the Saint Francis Yacht Club parking lot, I walked out to the end of that jetty on a very black night and looked for details for the screenplay. There is a "wave organ" down at the end of the jetty which makes music powered by waves. It wasn't making any noise last night because the tide was too low. But it looks like a Greek ruin down there, and that fits in perfectly with the subtext of Water on the Brain, which is essentially a modern Jason and the Argonauts, complete with Harpies and Sirens and other perils and wonders.

This morning, after coffee and croissant and Internet at the place with all the Irish chicks at Java Beach, I convinced a Matt Warshaw to let me borrowƒ.

Okay I'm out of Kinkos and back in the van listening to KNBR because I want to hear that Giants/Diamondbacks game again and what the KNBR guys thought about it because it was such a humdinger.

..anyway, this morning I borrowed Ride the Wild Surf, Point Break, North Shore and a couple of Beach Blanket movies from Matt for the article I am doing for the Journal about surfers as stuntmen. I got kind of an angry e-mail from Dave Kalama today because I had said something about "Laird and them" riding Jaws for the James Bond movie.

Oh well.

After getting the tapes from Matt I found the AAA offices on Van Ness and dropped off a proposal for the Sports Awards and a copy of the SURFER Video Awards. Charles Schwab already said "No thanks" and I have yet to hear from Coca Cola, Bank of America or Panasonic. I actually think Panasonic is the most likely to take it on and maybe they could team up with AAA, who sponsor the Club Section.

All I know is someone should sponsor it. Things keep happening in sports that make the idea better and better: Aptos Little Leaguers, the A's winning 16 in a row, etc. etc. This is a great year for Bay Area Sports and it could get a lot better.

Maybe I should talk to some of the hotels in Reno to sponsor it.

The security in the AAA building was super-tight and I ended up dropping off the package in the mailroom. Then I got the hell out of San Francisco because it was gray and gloomy and bugging me.

I went over the GGB and stopped at the Kinkos in Sausalito then went over the top of the Bay and drove by Sears Point Raceway and around Sonoma for a little too long before I found Napa. While wandering around the Sonoma Valley I saw a fricking massive African American man riding a bicycle and figured he had to be a 49er from the training camp-which is in Napa this year.

Jesus Christ those guys are big and I wonder, as always, how those little quarterbacks survive all that. He was a monster.

Finally found Napa after buying some "world famous" beef jerky and finishing off the bag of fresh peas I bought near Tunitas Creek on the way up, the day before. That made me feel horrible and the cherry pie didn't help.

In Napa I stopped at Kinkos, again, and then pushed on toward Berryessa. I took a backroad just for the hell of it and ended up driving along Putah Creek which dumps out of Monticello Dam. At one point I stopped to shampoo my hair and cool off in the creek which was running strong and very cold. Ike got out and disappeared and while waiting for him I saw some hillbilly types pull some very decent trout out of that creek. Why go all the way to Jellystone?

Oh that's right: Fall color.

Back down in the flats I passed through Davis and the Central Valley which was hot and flat and vast and it made me think of Cadillac Desert and the whole Central Valley Project. Since you can only see the valley in bits and pieces you need to read that book to understand the scale of what those water engineers did in the middle of the 20th Century. It's amazing. California is amazing when you add it all up.

Through Sacramento I got stuck in hours of traffic on Highway 80 and then I remembered it was Labor Day Friday. That didn't make me too happy and Ike was over-heating on the dashboard until I dumped water on his head. It was a long grumpy drive through all that traffic which really didn't break up until Rocklin, where the 49ers used to practice. Too hot, maybe.

Too damned many people in California, boy howdy.

I stopped in Auburn to buy some Lotto tickets and water and then drove for a couple of hours through the foothills and into the Sierras. I was listening to KNBR and they were announcing that the baseball strike had been diverted and they also were asking callers to phone in with names of rock bands that had verbs in the names: Frankie Goes to Hollywood and such. I was going to suggest Run DMC and Sonny and Cher, but I couldn't find a phone.

As I got close to Reno the radio was crackling with lightning and at one point I stopped by the Truckee River for a possible dip, but I didn't do it.

I got to the Silver Legacy around 18:00 and did some gambling before I found the Sports Book. I put down a $10 bet on the Giants to win the World Series at 20-1, and then I realized the guy had messed up and given me a New York Football Giants to win the Super Bowl at 20-1.

While watching that epic Giants/Diamondbacks game I made another bet for the San Francisco Giants to win the World Series at 4-1 and the Oakland A's to win at 8-1.

I gambled too much money playing Pai Gow and Let It Ride and the poker machines. While watching the game I bust out the laptop and started to work on Fin when a Pit Boss guy came over and said computers weren't allowed in the Sports Book. That made sense.

The game, as I have said, was epic. Nen came on in the bottom of the eighth with the bases loaded and the Giants ahead 7-6. He struck out Arubiel Durazo on three pitches, and then finished them off in the ninth.

Los Angeles lost, and so did the Diamondbacks so maybe those 4-1 odds make sense after all, although I don't understand why the odds on the A's are longer than the Giants.

So I gambled and spent too much money although I did have a $1.99 salad bar and a $.99 shrimp salad and a nice dinner for $5.

Reno is smaller than Las Vegas and not nearly as depressing. The people working here are younger and seem to be happy to be here. The girl from Poland works all summer and then goes back with pocketfuls of dough. She was really nice. And a knockout, I might have mentioned.

So the game ended and I hung around and then went to the parking lot to find that Ike had slipped through the open window and disappeared. I have learned not to panic about Ike anymore. He is way way way too smart to ever get hit by a car or eaten by a cougar. He always comes back and after about a half an hour of waiting, there he was.

So I'm hoping Wells Fargo will be open tomorrow so I can replenish the travel fund and then I'm out of here. It's tempting to hang around and watch another game at the Silver Legacy, but radio is just as good. I wonder how far KNBR reaches into Nevada?

I have to decide whether to go to Yellowstone by way of Boise or Salt Lake City.

Boise seems to be the more direct way but I was there last summer and holy shit if you think Orange County is hot and flat....

Maybe I'll try to make it to Salt Lake City tomorrow. I didn't think I'd be going through there but what the heck. Maybe they'll be a good prospect for the Sports Awards. And I hear the strip clubs in Salt Lake City are epic-except for the funny underwear.

9:43 AM SATURDAY AUGUST 31, 2002 THAT SAME KINKOS ON CALIFORNIA STREET IN RENO, NEVADA

Last night I went to sleep afraid, very afraid that the banks wouldn't be open on Labor Day Saturday and I would be stuck in Reno with no money until Tuesday. I parked on the street near the Siena Casino and went to sleep around 3:00 in the morning afraid, very afraid.

Well it was all for nothing. There was a Wells Fargo in Sparks that opened at 9:00 this morning and I got enough dough to last me awhile as long as I get the heck out of Reno.

I might try to track down a decent $5 breakfast, but then I'm going to make tracks for Jellystone by way of Salt Lake City.

I don't have a spare which is kind of bad and I couldn't get one at the Big O in Sparks which was open before the bank.

But I'll just have to trust fate. Looks like I will get to Salt Lake City tonight and then head north and maybe drive on Highway 89 on the west edge of Wyoming. It's nice to be back in the land of reasonable prices. I saw gas for $2.39 a gallon in San Francisco and it's $1.39 here in reasonable land.

Ike is fine and he says hello.

Go Giants. What a game.

20:51 SATURDAY AUGUST 31, AN ATT INTERNET KIOSK IN CARLIN, NEVADA

FAISAL
The Arab doesn't love the desert.
The Arab loves running water and green trees.
There is nothing in the desert, and no man needs nothing.

I needed something from the desert and I found it in a combined Subway/truck stop/Chevron in Carlin. I was looking for one of those progressive trucker restaurants that have phones with modem ports on the table, but I couldn't find one from Winnemuca to here.

But I found this and now I have things to say. Drive from Reno to here and you won't be. This is a desert, occasionally there is running water and green things and the occasional truck stop/town, but for the most part there is nothing. They should have just called Nevada "Nada." There is nothing here.

The drive was mostly uneventful after leaving Reno. I listened to the Giants pre-game and game on KNBR and won $21 on a bet I made at Harrahs. I had trouble getting out of Reno without blowing more money but I finally did.

I think I sent a dispatch this morning about going to the Wells Fargo in Sparks, but I don't see it on my mail list.

Mostly I just drove and poured water on Ike's head and listened to the radio and worried about not having a spare or a jack. Hopefully I won't need it.

I remember stopping a couple of places and gambling and I did get to watch the last three innings to the Giants game in a restaurant/casino in a town I've alreayd forgotten the name of. They had a good salad bar so I didn't load up on chicken fried steak or whatever.

I lsiteend to KNBR and other station when KNBR blacked out. One station was some right-winger who quoted from a John Wayne patriotic poem he wrote in 1972 and he mentioned being impressed "by the waves on the reef at Waimea." John Wayne said that. Weird I guess that's why I travel.

I have 30 seconds left. I'm going to keep driving and try to get to Elko.

Bye

STILL AT THE TRUCK STOP IN CARLIN, NEVADA

That was a very hastily written and typo-ridden dispatch. I apologize.

There were some lines left out. It should have said, "Nevada is a desert. Surprised? You won't be if..."

That most of the American west from the Mississippi to the coast range is desert is the premise of Cadillac Desert, and since I am heading for Salt Lake City it's interesting that the people who were best at manipulating water were the Mormons.

Read that book, You won't regret it.

What else happened today? It was very hot and very dry and made me wonder how man pioneers died while trying to cross this desert. I guess the terrain here is like this all the way north into Idaho and all the way south to Mexico and beyond.

Hot and dry and nothing.

That "no man needs nothing" quote was from Lawrence of Arabia, by the way.

Okay now I'm just babbling.

Do I have anything more to say? I found e-mails from Mark Lyon, Noah Johnson and Steve Ogles when I logged on. Mark Lyon is jsut now leaving Emigrant, Montana and I may pass him on the freeway.

I was driving along looking for moose, but only saw a rabbit.

Ike is fine. He says hello.

Go Giants.