Latest Update: September 1, 2002 by Ben Marcus

20:02 CALIFORNIA TIME SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 1, 2002 ROOM 126 OF A MOTEL SIX SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH

I whimped out and got a room. After driving around Salt Lake City trying to find a sports bar, I gave up when I found out all bars are "private clubs" and you have to have a membership.

And since my last shower was in Putah Creek, I thought that getting a room might be the decent thing. I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror-unshaven, unwashed and unkempt. I look like a cross between a trucker and a homeless person.

So here I am, watching the Giants and writing e-mails and bothering corporate vice presidents with my whacko ideas.

The Giants just had a horrendous call against them. The first base ump missed a call against Reggie Sanders by three feet. One of the worst calls I've ever seen. The Giants have bad luck with umpires in Arizona.

There might have to be a category just for umpires in the Sports Awards.

And speaking of Sports Awards, here is the cover letter I just e-mailed to a name I found with Google.

John Monaghan
Director of Sports Marketing

Tracey Dickerson,
Project Coordinator
Marriott International Inc.

September 1, 2002

Mr. Monaghan and Ms. Dickerson

Please find attached to this e-mail a proposal for the San Francisco Bay Area Video Sports Awards.

The Sports Awards are inspired by the ESPY's, the MTV Video Awards, the Oscars and a show I used to produce while an editor at SURFER Magazine: The SURFER Magazine Surf Video Awards.

In a nutshell, the Sports Awards would be a live show honoring the accomplishments of all of the San Francisco Bay Area sports teams: From the Aptos Little Leaguers making it to the World Series, to the Cal Women's Softball Team winning the NCAA Championships, to the A's and the Giants and the 49ers.

The show would be done live in front of 50,000 paying customers at Pac Bell Park. I don't know if you have been to Pac Bell Park but it is a great facility. I think people want an excuse to go there and I think people would pay $50 a ticket to see this show.

The Sports Awards are a good idea looking for a sponsor(s). I have mailed hard-copied of the attached proposal to Panasonic, Coca Cola, Bank of America, AAA and Charles Schwab.

So far, Schwab are the only ones to say "No thanks." I take the silence of the others as either impolite disinterest, or careful consideration.

The Sports Awards would work. I promoted a similar show for SURFER Magazine for four years and it was a blast. We bootlegged all the music and film clips we wanted and did it in front of a thousand kids in Santa Ana. The first show was one of the most successful things I have ever seen, and the idea is still going.

The Sports Awards are a much more ambitious idea, but I am almost positive they would work in San Francisco. And if they worked in San Francisco, they would work in Milwaukee and Cleveland and two-dozen multi-sports cities around the United States.

Today I drove from Wendover, Nevada to Salt Lake City, Utah. This is my first time in Salt Lake City and it is like meeting Mel Gibson: I thought it would be so much bigger.

But Salt Lake City is a very nice, clean, orderly city and I'm sure 9/10ths of the city population would go to the Delta Center for something like the Sports Awards for Salt Lake City and Utah sports.

I wonder if Marriott would be interested in backing this idea? They would have the prestige of filling one of their hotels with a lot of athletes, and perhaps Marriott could sponsor a star-studded golf tournament on the day or the weekend of the awards.

Hopefully some of the other corporations I contacted will see the potential in a promotion that actually makes money, and there could be a partnership to spread the benefit and the risk.

I am heading for Yellowstone now and am best contacted by e-mail, if you are interested: TheBenM@AOL.com.

I can send a hard copy of the proposal and copies of the SURFER Magazine Surf Video Awards, if you are intrigued. And I will call you on Tuesday, hopefully after catching a bunch of trout.

Thank you.

Ben Marcus
Nothing is Written Productions
Santa Cruz, CA

I hate to be a pest but I had to be a pest to get the SURFER Video Awards going and I'm being a pest now. The Sports Awards would work. I just need to find a Deep Pockets sponsor who agrees.

The game is still on. The Giants have a one-run lead in the top of the ninth.

Go Giants. Where's Ike?

21:00 Crud, the Giants just lost. Ouch.

19:25 MONDAY SEPTEMBER 2, 2002 ROOM 126 OF THE MOTEL 6

Where am I? Where's Ike? Wow I'm sleeping in a real bed and not a stinky van full of cat poo. Nice. I have TV. CNN. Civilization.

But I gotta scoot and head north into unknown territory for Jellystone. Geroge Nikitin is up there with his friend the G-Man and I'm hoping to get G-Man drunk and get the scoop on Saddam. He might know.

Last night I went looking for something healthy to eat at 22:00, but Salt Lake City was closed. Even the fast food stands. Maybe because it was Sunday or maybe because it was Salt Lake City.

But I got a taco salad from Dees and then watched TV with Ike until I fell asleep.

It was nice to sleep in a proper bed and have a shower, but now it's time to get.

21:18 CALIFORNIA TIME MONDAY SEPTEMBER 1, 2002 KINKOS IN LOGAN UTAH

Through the power of the Internet I just got driving directions from Yahoo maps and my itinerary for tomorrow. Logan to West Yellowstone by way of US 89.

311 miles.

Six hours. No problem.

I drove around Logan for awhile as the sun was setting and I was going to leave and head north, but where driving at night in Nevada is no problem because there is nothing to see, I don't want to drive at night here because the scenery is so good.

So I'm going to hang around Logan tonight. I wish the movie theater was playing something other than The Bourne Identity and Lilo and Stich.

I'm still getting KNBR loud and clear on the night waves. No Giants game today, but Miguel Tejada won another game for the A's in the bottom of the ninth-giving the A's their 18th victory in a row.

Every time something like that happens it solidifies the Sports Awards idea.

This is the year for Bay Area Sports: The Aptos Little Leaguers, Barry Bonds hitting 600+, Julie Inkster winning a Championship at 40+, the A's winning 18 straight and maybe going to the World Series, the Kings almost beating the Lakers, the Sharks winning the Pacific Division.

It goes on and on.

This is the year to do it.

I hope Wells Fargo or Marriott or someone agrees.

Logan is a very very nice little town. This would be a great place to go to college if you were into the ski thing and wanted to study in peace and quiet.

Matter of fact, my mom went to school here.

This is the e-mail she sent me.

Ben -

Did you remember that the college in Logan is my alma mater? I was there for three years, and that's where I got my botany degree. If you'd driven into the residential part of Logan below the college (it's a University now) you would have seen irrigation canals running down the hill among the houses, with lovely clean water and little wooden bridges for pedestrians to cross with. It was very pretty, and I've never seen anything like it in the U.S. - or anywhere else, for that matter.

If you turned east on thirty, I think you went up Logan Canyon, which is where we fished most of the time - also in Bear Lake, in the winter. And I darn near froze my toes off in the Little Bear River one winter, sitting in a duck blind in a pair of borrowed waders that were too small, with ice chunks floating around my feet. Brings back memories!

M.

p.s. How is Ike's sore? If it's still there, get it looked at!

Bound to be a good veterinarian in an Aggie town like this.

Last year, Ike had to get shots to be allowed into Canada. We were driving through the plains in the Blackfoot Reservation of Montana, and found a vet in the middle of nowhere.

Shouldn't be as hard this time. This is just the kind of place where you feel good going to a vet. Here's another exchange with Mom, who has never spoken well of the Mormons.

I can see why you'd be attracted to the mountain states - they're beautiful, and fairly empty of people.

YEP.

But not Utah, please - maybe you didn't see any hillbillies, but they're there, just like everywhere.

I'VE SEEN A FEW HILLBILLIES AROUND. THERE WAS A PRETTY CLASSIC HILLBILLY COUPLE AT THE MOTEL 6 THIS MORNING, BUT THERE ARE LESS HERE THAN OTHER PLACES.

THERE ARE SO MANY TORN UP PEOPLE WALKING AROUND IN AMERICA.

IT'S SAD.

JUST LOOK AT DOWNTOWN SANTA CRUZ.

And the "respectable" look is all a front. Mormons in Utah act like a bunch of frightened puppets, and the Bishops spy on them and discipline them constantly.

I THINK YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT EXPERIENCES YOU HAD A LONG LONG TIME AGO.

THINGS CHANGE.

MORMONS JUST SEEM TO HAVE THAT SCANDINAVIAN SENSE OF ORDER AND CLEANLINESS AND AFER CALIFORNIA AND NEVADA, IT'S NICE.

It's a very irritating and uncomfortable place to live. Besides, Mormonism has never attracted intelligent people, and you'd see the consequences of that after you'd been there for a while.

I DIDN'T SAY I WANTED TO LIVE IN UTAH, BUT HOLY SHIT THIS PLACE IS PRETTY.

THE MORMONS COULD MOVE WATER AND THEY COULD ALSO BUILD TOWNS.

JUST NICE, CLASSIC LITTLE WESTERN TOWNS.

THE MORE I READ ABOUT JOSEPH SMITH THE MORE HE SOUNDS LIKE A TYPICAL RELIGIOUS WHACKO.

M.

9:25 MONDAY SEPTEMBER 2, 2002 ROOM 126 OF THE MOTEL 6

Where am I? Where's Ike?

Wow I'm sleeping in a real bed and not a stinky van full of cat poo. Nice. I have TV. CNN. Civilization.

But I gotta scoot and head north into unknown territory for Jellystone. George Nikitin is up there with his friend the G-Man and I'm hoping to get G-Man drunk and get the scoop on Saddam. He might know.

Last night I went looking for something healthy to eat at 22:00, but Salt Lake City was closed. Even the fast food stands. Maybe because it was Sunday or maybe because it was Salt Lake City.

But I got a taco salad from Dees and then watched TV with Ike until I fell asleep.

It was nice to sleep in a proper bed and have a shower, but now it's time to get.

13:33 CALIFORNIA TIME MONDAY. SEPTEMBER 2, 2002 PARKING LOT OF MOTEL 6

Stupid cat. Here we go again. Ike was in the room this morning and the cleaning people saw him hanging around for a while but now he's nowhere to be seen.

I woke up late and didn't clear out until noon but now I'm ready to go.

I've been waiting an hour and a half for Stupid Cat and intermittently driving around Salt Lake City. I've been looking for a supermarket, which seems to be illegal here.

I did buy a phone cord at Radio Shack, so I accomplished something.

But I want to get going and the stupid cat has gone missing.

Salt Lake City is still dead. No idea where everyone is.

Well at least I have NPR. They just interviewed John Fogarty and now it's Ray Manzarek from The Doors. Manzarek was the genius behind the music and he is still a genius. A lot of the best Doors music were riffs on Bach and Coltrane and when you hear him explain it, it all makes sense. That was a great show.

Oh and this morning, inspired by Blue Crush-which was really a documentary on the hard plight of motel maids everywhere, I left a $5 tip for the maids.

Stupid cat. I want to get going.

Why does this feel like dÚjà vu?

Oh and I put the Sports Awards proposal online last night, if anyone is interested.

www.cinemasanfranciscol.com/sportsawards.html

Stupid cat. I guess I'll work on Fin while I wait, and decide whether or not I will thank Ike at the Oscars.

22:40 CALIFORNIA TIME TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3 2002 IN THE VAN OUTSIDE OT STROZZI'S BAR, WEST YELLOWSTONE

Wild Kingdom? I'm living it. What a day. Holy shit.

I just had dinner and port with George and his friend. They went to bed and now I'm sitting outside of a bar where I left Ike a while ago. The Giants just beat the Rockies and it's coming through loud and clear on KNBR.

What a day. I have to be vague about the end of it, but the start was interesting.

Woke up in Logan what seems like a hundred years ago. Ike was missing but he came running with only one whistle from me.

My first mistake was eating a huge chorizo and egg and potato breakfast burrito in Logan.

Ugh and I'm still feeling it.

Drove east on Highway 89, through the Logan River Valley and the Wasatch Cache Range which was beautiful and reminded me a little of the McKenzie River Valley in Oregon and the Smith River Valley north of Greg's house.

It was beautiful and the wind was blowing but there was a lot of road construction which messed with the flow, bro. Finally emerged overlooking Bear Lake and wow! Bear Lake is a big lake and it kind of looked like the ocean even, but these are the kinds of views that must have driven the Mormons berserk. "Dude, how green is MY valley?"

Bought gas in Garden City and drove north on Highway 89, with Bear Lake to my right. This was a big valley of thick pasture land and healthy cattle and healthy horses and altogether the Land of Milk and Honey. No wonder the Mormons called it Zion.

Passing through the town of Paris-which was now in Idaho, I think-a very healthy brown colt bolted into the road and forced a truck into my lane, coming right at me. I thought, "Doltish colt, you gave me a jolt when you bolted."

The colt bolted back to the side of the road and the truck returned to its own lane and I decided to stop and keep that nice looking horse from getting killed-or killing somebody.

I stopped at a house with a bunch of nice horses in a pen and it looked like that was where the colt belonged. I knocked on the door and there was no one home so I tried to wrangle Mr. Frisky myself.

Horses and little kids have always liked me for some reason and this little colt was no exception. I approached with my hand out and instead of bolting for Utah, Mr. Colt came up for a sniff. It took three approaches but I finally got a hold of its blue lead and walked it back into the pen. I had to keep the other horses from coming out because colt didn't want to go back in, but with a little tugging he walked in and then I made good and doggone sure I latched the gate back right. I left a note on the door of the house, and I sure hope that was where the horse belonged.

Further on down the road, I saw a Wells Fargo in Montpelier and stopped to get some gettice. Idaho is big on historical signs and it turns out the building across from the Wells Fargo had once been a bank that was robbed by Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch, way back when. The Wells Fargo had a for-real wanted poster from back in the day, I think it was 1896 and there was a photograph of Robert Leroy Parker on the poster. Pretty cool.

That Wells Fargo had an awful lot of security cameras for a small-town bank, but I had to remind myself that I was in Idaho again, land of the Freemen and Aryan Nation and who knows what else.

So I got some dough and decided Montpelier would be a likely place to find a vet to have a look at Ike's infected chin. Just like last year, when I needed a vet on the plains of Montana and one magically appeared, one magically appeared just when I needed one, on the main street of Montpelier.

In Montana, that vet office was on the Blackfoot Reservation. It was pretty crude and there was a photo on the wall of a poor German shepherd that had been spined by a porcupine. It was one of the most painful things I had ever seen and the dog lost an eye.

Well when I walked into this vet's office, they had a bloodhound down on the table and they were pulling porcupine spines out its side. Weird.

I had to wait a few minutes with Ike, but then they let us in and got to work.

This guy's vet practice was evenly divided between ag animals, pets and the occasional wild thing. He had a wall of horrors showing photos of dogs that had been shot and hit by cars, deformed calfs and miscarried cows and horses and cattle that had been shredded by barbed wire, hit by lightning and, yes, hit by trucks.

So I felt good about rescuing that colt. Ike got a thermometer up his behind and a few shots and I have some medicine I'm supposed to give him, but he is running around West Yellowstone right now.

From Montpelier we drove north and north and north, taking Highway 89 east into Wyoming.

I ended up in the Star Valley, which is the proud home of Rulon Gardner, that massive Greco Roman wrestler who beat that Evil Russian in the last Olympics and won the gold.

The Star Valley was beautiful as was all of the land I saw today. Kind of high-desert pasture, with lots of sky and thick alfalfa fields and healthy horses and fat cattle. Land O' Milk and Honey.

Stopping at a store in Afton, one woman had seen Ike and said she had a fluffy black and white cat just like him. When I explained that Ike was a Norwegian Forest Cat, the woman behind the counter said she had a Main Coon, which is a relative to Norwegian Forest Cats.

This was one of those long driving days where I saw so much, I can't remember any of it. I do remember feeling ooky from that chorizo and egg burrito and pulling over to sleep a few times. I listened to Right Wing Radio on AM and NPR on FM and everyone was talking about Hussein, and England and Colin Powell and the possibility of war. Tony Blair is with us, but that's about it. Wimps. Or maybe they're just scared.

Well it all seemed pretty obvious to me, and I was driving north, hoping to run it all past George's fishing friend, who is in a position to know about such things. I'd never met him and didn't know if he'd talk, but it gave me something to look forward to.

I drove and drove and drove under a blue western sky, past mile after mile of prime pasture land, and the healthy horses and the fat cattle and it was all empty and beautiful and nice. Words don't do it justice.

Ike didn't seem to be suffering from the thermometer up the butt and all the shots and most of the time he sat on the dashboard and let me scratch his head. He's a good cat. Excellent cat.

My first objective was Jackson Hole, which I couldn't find on the map. All I could see was Jackson. A guy from the Pleasure Point days named Robert Garrett lives around Jackson Hole, but that was all I knew about the place.

I got into and out of Jackson Hole pretty quick. It's a pretty typical ski and resort town but it was traffic and traffic lights and tourists and yuck. I went to the library to look for an Internet hookup, but the library was packed. I ended up at an Internet cafÚ and spent an hour answering e-mails from more people who had read The Birds article in the Sentinel, along with a good one from Grant Washburn who told me about surfing Mavericks for the IMAX movie Wild California.

The Wells Fargo lady passed my proposal onto another Wells Fargo lady, but I still have high hopes.

Jackson Hole was frustrating. Even that little bit of traffic and congestion began to piss me off, and I got out after about two hours and headed north.

Jackson Hole is similar to Sun Valley. It gets better as soon as you get on the road heading north. North of Jackson Hole the road lead toward Teton National Park, past perfect rivers and perfect pasture land with the Grand Tetons towering off to port. There was a little bit of rain, which began almost exactly when Elvis Presley began singing "Cold Kentucky Rain" on the radio. That was the second weird water-song radio synchronicity on this trip.

I drove past the Tetons and stopped where the Snake River poured out of Jackson Lake dam. Damn it was a nice river, but there are nice rivers everywhere up here. And it just got better and better as I got closer to Yellowstone.

Yellowstone is amazing. It's one natural wonder after another, so relentless and perfectly laid out it seems phony-as if it had all been designed and laid out like a golf course. There were rivers and hot springs and an awful lot of burned-up trees. I guess the really bad fire was in 1988, but most of the road in was denuded on both sides, like Mount Saint Helens.

At one point there were a bunch of cars stopped by the side of the road and people looking into the bush. I stopped, thinking it was either BigFoot or the Crocodile Hunter. After a few minutes of nothing, a large elk with a huge rack of antlers came into view, chewing on weeds. Neato.

I was getting tired of driving by 7:00, but then I got the Giants game on the night waves from KNBR and that cheered me up.

I was supposed to turn left at some point to get to West Yellowstone, but I missed it and went about 14 miles too far north before I realized my mistake. So I backtracked over bad roads under construction and found the turnoff at Madison Junction.

While listening to the radio on the way in I had heard a Yellowstone Park Ranger ask visitors to drive carefully and slowly, especially at night, because of the danger of hitting animals.

Well I was impatient to get to West Yellowstone and driving too fast. At one point I slowed down and looked down briefly at the speedometer. When I looked up I was distracted for just a second by a road sign and then when my eyes were on the road, the road was full of two large elk. I uttered an oath, hit the brakes and managed to swerve around them, but boy oh boy was it close.

That really was close and it was a good thing there wasn't a car coming in the other direction. Got the heart pumping though.

Five minutes down the road there were brake lights and stopped cars in both directions and I knew what it was even before I saw the big Chevy Yukon with the caved-in front end. The right side was smashed and the hood was crumpled and the Yukon was leaking radiator fluid and it had Texas plates and there was a man walking around uttering very angry oaths as an elk breathed its last in the bush.

A very sad scene, and it could have been me. That Texas' guys car was wrecked, and he was pissed because he was now stuck in Yellowstone, a long way from Texas, with a wrecked, expensive car. And you can't sue an elk: Dead or alive.

The poor elk was still alive and it made me wish I had Mr. Walther to deliver the coup de grace and put it out of its misery. But I already learned about weapons in National Parks, so it's better that I didn't.

Sad, but I drove on and passed through the west gate of Yellowstone a few minutes later. I found George's hotel instantly and knocked on room 15. They weren't there so I drove around Yellowstone, poking my head into bars and restaurants hoping to find a TV set with the Giants on, or George and his friend.

I finally found them eating hamburgers at Bullwinkle's.

What can I say about dinner: Absolutely nothing.

6:15 CALIFORNIA TIME WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 4, 2002 ON THE STREETS OF WEST YELLOWSTONE

Uh oh. I'm up, but not Ike. I hope he didn't get Wild Kingdomed. Right across the street Yellowstone Park begins with all its critters. I let him out to run around while I ran around, but I slept with the van window open all night and he didn't show up. Not good.

He could have been picked up by someone or he walked into a room that got shut.

Damn. Stupid cat. He makes me worry.

I'm meeting the Jolly Fishermen for coffee and then we're going to gear up and git.

Stupid cat.

19:12 CALIFORNIA TIME WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2002 THE BAR AT BULLWINKEL'S

Stupid cat. Apart from giving me gray hairs all day and semi-wrecking my concentration while fishing, Ike kind of did me a favor by decided when I will be leaving Yellowstone and how I will be heading home.

I had options. George and G-Man are leaving Friday and I was considering hanging around and fishing without them, although that could have been lonely. And as for which way to go home, there were all kinds of options.

A certain shady lawyer in Santa Cruz wanted me to go by way of Springdale in Utah, to take photos of a hotel staircase that figures in one of his cases. Seems his client was walking up the stairway at night and got bit by a nasty little rattler. The guy almost died in the ambulance and now he has hired Esquire to sue the hotel. Sounds a little sketchy to me, but maybe not. If I may Johnny Cochrane here:

The stairway wasn't lit and if there's a danger of getting bit then the tort is legit.

Whatever, I won't be going home by way of Utah, because I have to leave early Friday and be in Ennis Montana by 13:00 because that's when Gidget is leaving.

Say what?

It's a long story.

This morning after waking up Ike-less I drove around and around whistling for him many times, always looking off into the west border of Yellowstone and worrying that my proud Norwegian Forest Cat had gotten tired of the hobo life and had chosen to go native. I wouldn't put it past him. He is definitely a bush cat.

Eventually I joined George and G-Man for coffee at a bicycle shop then went to the Running Bear Inn for breakfast. I ordered oatmeal and a fruit plate while Team G ordered pancakes with fried eggs on top. We talked about this and that and then George and G-Man chatted up two of the waitresses-in Russian. George is a native speaker and G-Man learned it in school and "in the field" boy howdy and both the waitresses were charmed to hear the mother tongue rattled off pretty well.

After breakfast I called mom at a decent hour to see if anyone had called about Ike. She said people had called from the bar the night before and they were worried about him, but nothing since then.

Oh well, I prowled the alleys looking for him a few times then met Team G at the Fly Shop. George told me to get some 7X tippets and an array of spinners and emergers in six 16 and 18.

Spinners are imitations of bugs that have died and blown back onto the water surface. Not sure what the others are. All the science, I don't understand.

I figured Ike was either hiding in a tree, badger breakfast or locked in an office, so I followed Team G in their rent-a-car on a long drive to the Happy Fishing ground. We passed Old Faithful and a lot of Big Bison and an awful lot of epic pastures, mountain scenery and perfect rivers.

Yellowstone is so perfect it almost seems fake, like it was laid out by a golf course designer moonlighting in fishing. Endless stretches of perfect water, but Team G just kept driving, heading for the Sulphur Hole of the Yellowstone River. I didn't have a good map and I don't know whether I would have been more or less grumpy knowing that the Sulphur Hole was 60 miles away. That's a long drive for a fishing hole, but I didn't know that at the time.

We skirted a very big lake with views off to the Misty Mountains way in the distance and it was all very breathtaking and all like that there. The Yellowstone Park radio station plays a lot of oldies so I went through various phases of heartbreak listening to The Beatles and Hold Your Head Up by Argent and they even played Seasons in the Sun again.

After a good hour the road turned off to another road that followed the Yellowstone River and holy smokes if there is a better trout river in the world I'd like to see it.

Eventually we pulled up at the Sulphur Hole, which we smelled well before we saw it. The layout looked pretty sweet. A big patch of rocky flat water leading down to a minor rapids. Lots of stumps and rocks and geography.

There were others fishing and Team G were bummed and they reminded me of Steve Guzzetta and Ernie Morgan walking with their dive gear down to Pigeon Point and getting pissed there were two other divers in the water. Well that was the day one of the divers, Omar Conger, got nailed by a whitey and killed.

(Some people in the bar from Tennessee are talking about Ennis right now, and where it is. Weird.)

Anyway, we all geared up and I looked at myself and decided I would change my name to Pat. Pat A Gonia because I had Patagonia wading boots and Patagonia waders and a Patagonia wading jacket and a Patagonia vest.

I told Team G that I was also wearing a Patagonia penis sheath but they just did not laugh at that at all. Oh well.

And then when we were all suited up we slid down the hill, past the boiling potholes and fished the Sulphur Hole.

Hard to believe, but the place reminded me of First Peak Pleasure Point. Because of the weird, yellow rock and the hot springs, the rocks actually looked like reef, which was how George described them. The rocks were covered with a grass that looked like kelp and it felt like I was stepping out at First Peak.

Really. Even the way the little sulphur bubbles came up from under the rocks, and how the rocks dropped off into deeper water made it all look oceany. I stepped out in my Patagonia wading boots expecting to slip and slide, but I didn't.

G-Man caught the first fish after about a half and hour and it was nice. A big, healthy, 15-incher.

(Team G just walked in. G-Man caught four today and George had one on for two minutes but lost it. No fish. Damn, that sounds like steelhead fishing. Trout are supposed to be a little easier than that, but these are Federal Fish, so maybe that's it. I just gave G-Man $15 and he's going to Bud Lilly's to buy some flies for tomorrow. He found one of my diskettes in the parking lot at the Sulphur Howl. Imagine me leaving something behind)

I was casting with my too-big tippet and rattley equipment and didn't have much of a chance. Even George was having trouble and turning red. There were fish rising and bumping and splashing but sometimes it was hard to tell what was a fish and what was a sulphur bubble because the river bottom was constantly farting up bubbles all over the place, including a gusher on the other side of the river that reminded me of the sewage outfall at Sewer Peak, back in the day.

Well to make a long story a little shorter I fished for a few hours trying to enjoy all the nature and not worry about Ike.

This place was like a Jungle Ride. Across the way there were a dozen bison snorting and running and bumping and drinking from the river. There was a badger over there just getting along with the bison but that badger made me worry about Ike, thinking maybe he'd bumped into a badger during the night and was either panicked in a tree or badly hurt or worse. But it was cool to see a badger just cruising fearlessly in the world surrounded by buffalo. Cool? It was weird and then a big white swan came floating by on the current, except it wasn't a swan, it was a pelican. A fresh-water pelican. I'd never seen or heard of a fresh-water pelican, but there it was, floating downstream, toward G-Man, who had moved downstream to his favorite spot. I saw him catch one more before boredom and worry got the best of me and made me drive back to West Yellowstone.

I tired to soak it all up and enjoy it and maybe catch a fish, but the Ike thing was bugging me and I wanted to check e-mail to see if maybe Hollywood had called, so around 15:00 I packed it up and threw it all in the van and drove back to West Yellowstone.

Along the way the water enticed me as all the gambling casinos had in Reno and I stopped to briefly fish the Gibbon River. No action for me, but I think Mr. Ranger Sir had popped a couple of guys downstream without license. I had a 10-day license good within Yellowstone that cost me ?? that morning.

After an hour of worried driving I made it back to West Yellowstone. I whistled for Ike a few times at the edge of the jungle, then went to the office of Al's Westward Ho, where Team G are staying. The lady behind the desk looked up and smiled when I walked in because she knew I was worried about Ike.

She said, "Your cat is in Ennis."

Ennis? I've been in Montana exactly twice but I actually know where Ennis is: It is in central Montana and a long way from here.

Ennis?

The lady behind the desk handed me a slip of paper with the name "Gidget" written on it and a phone number and then I started looking around for Rod Serling.

The lady behind the desk explained: This woman called and said she drove home from here today and was almost home when she heard something moving in here car. It was your cat. He's okay.

Ennis.

Stupid cat, but no surprise. Ike is like the Randy Quaid astronaut character who sleeps through the stress test in The Right Stuff. Ike just assumes everyone is going to love him and everything is going to work out and everything is going to be okay. If he jumps in someone's car because he's cold or scared or a dog is chasing him, the person who owns that car will be a cat lover and if the car goes somewhere it will be somewhere cool.

Well in this case, Ike was right. Ennis is a nice little town on the Madison River about halfway between here and Three Forks. I went through there last summer, following direction from Mike Locatelli that took me from the Big Hole River through Melrose and Twin Bridges then through Ennis before driving up to Three Forks to see if Fred Van Dyke. That was last summer, but I was fixing to go back by way of Three Forks anyway, if only to stop by the world famous Headwaters Restaurant, and try some more of those cowboy beans.

So I called Gidget and she said she didn't know how Ike got into her car, and she was surprised he had stayed quiet so long. She said Ike was a mellow cat and it would be okay if I didn't pick him up until Friday.

I asked her if Gidget was a nickname, but no, Gidget is her real name. Her mom is from San Diego. So it's more than a little funny and into the spooky arena that I interviewed Mickey Munoz five days ago about doubling for Sandra Dee in Gidget.

Weird.

I called mom after Gidget and explained the ironies to her, then I went looking for some internet access. The library was closed and the only Internet place in town was closed, so I went fishing again. The sun was setting and I fished a stretch of a river that was either the Madison or the Gibbon, but there was no action.

Back in West Yellowstone I left a note on the door for Team G then went to the Bullwinkle bar to start this and maybe see the giants on TV.

After about half an hour, Team G showed up. We all had buffalo burgers and chatted about this and that.

Now it is 23:55 local time. I am sitting in the van on the main street of West Yellowstone, in front of a liquor store and a Casino Bar. The Giants just lost a close one, and the A's just won their 20th consecutive game. It's weird not to have Ike in the van but also nice to not have to worry about him jumping out of the window, or pooping in my wading boots.

Earlier today I bought a copy of Cadillac Desert for Team G, and I almost bought a book about a 7.2 earthquake that caused a lot of damage here in the late fifties.

That's about it. Time to get some sleep and do some fishing tomorrow.

Glad Ike is okay.

Stupid cat.

8:27 CALIFORNIA TIME WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2002 AN INTERNET CAF° IN WEST YELLOWSTONE

Hello. I found an internet cafÚ with a phone line and I'm checking e-mail.

Nothing too urgent. Time for cafÚ and breakfast with Team G.

Wish I could go into more detail on some things but boy oh boy I cannot.