These are the Chronicles of Famous Surf Writer Ben Marcus and his trip into the Wilds of the Alaskan Frontier.
Latest Update: October 20-21, 2000

22:33-11-33 YUKON TIME ROOM 123 OF THE CARMACKS HOTEL

Shoot, I just blew a fuse. Czech Frank told me to be careful with that sketchy, alligator-clip power cord he gave me last night, and he wasn't kidding. I just used it to plug in the laptop here in Room 123 of the Carmacks Hotel, but I wasn't careful and two of the alligator clips touched and I blew a fuse. The TV and the alarm clock and the TV all turned off.

Sketchy setup.

I was afraid I had shut down power in most of the Yukon, but it turned out to be just this room. An Indian-looking guy just flipped the fuse in the fuse box, and I'm up and rolling again.

Blowing a fuse was just the capper to one of those Victim-of-Technology days. I couldn't get anything electrical to work: I can only get two channels on the TV here,and one of them is in Indian. Czech Frank's power cord blew a fuse. I could only get bingo games and faxing noises on the car radio. Both batteries for the digital camera went dead beacuse of the cold. The printer on the front seat of my car drew too much juice for the adaptor, and I don't know what was wrong with the printer in the pizza place. It was just one of those days: high tech problems in a frontier world.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I picked up the faulty power cord last night, during a hot, smoky, coffee and red wine evening at the Czech Embassy. Sometime around 19:00 last night, Trapper Pete finally came in from the cold, and there were introductions all around. Trapper Pete has been trapping full time for two years up the Dempster Highway, about 150 miles north of Dawson City. I asked some questions and got some answers. He traps marmot, wolf, fox and some animals I'd never heard of. He told me how much he makes for an average marmot pelt, but I forgot the price-I think it was around $50-although I do remember him saying he can trap as many as 400 a year.

Trapping animals for their pelts is cruel, although Trapper Pete said he used humane traps. Still, the things are dying for their skins, but I didn't bring that up. Trapper Pete had a couple of good grizzly stories, so we chatted about this and that for a few hours, as the room filled up with heat and smoke, and Czech Frank stressed about the election results.

For several hours we listened to CKRW radio in White Horse, who were announcing district election results between songs. They were focusing on White Horse, not Dawson, and Czech Frank was tearing his hair out a little, because he has only a little hair. "Ven dey gonna say what happened here in Dawson, by golly?"

While sitting around shooting the shit, I flipped through my new book on gold panning, which gave a history of gold panning in British Columbia from the past to the present. There are some pretty amazing stories of some of the gold discoveries people made back then, and the money that was made. If you got lucky and found the right part of the right creek you could sometimes pan up three to four ounces in a pan. There were photos and stories of single gold nuggets weighing as much as 70 ounces. Some of the gold-prospectors did get rich, and it wasn't all in the Yukon.

There also was a plan in the book for building a sluice box. Maybe next year, when I come up here with my Humvee I'll have that welder in Sequim custom-make me an aluminum sluice box. It would be fun to spend a summer looking for gold. The book says it's still out there. You just have to find the right part of the right creek.

It was very hot and smokey in that little cabin. Both Franks and Trapper Pete smoked one cigarette after another, and the heater was blazing at about 80 degrees. At one point I got up to go check into the Bonanza Creek Motel down the road. There was no room in the cabin for me to sleep, and I might have died of asphyxiation or lung cancer overnight. I got a room down the road, and drove back in a snowstorm. It had been snowing all day, and the roads were slicker than Bill Clinton.

When I got back to the Czech Embassy, Frank was shushing everyone and putting his ear next to the radio, as if it were an underground World War II broadcast. They were finally announcing the results for Dawson City. The announcer rattled off the winner of the mayoral election, then said the four names elected for Councillor. Czech Frank wasn't one of them. He was bummed, in a polite way, and Trapper Peter and Brother Dave tried to commiserate with him.

After a suitable period of mourning, I put on Saving Private Ryan. The computer wasn't getting any power, and I thought it might have been faulty outlets in the Czech Embassy. Turned out my power cord had come apart a little, and wasn't going to work. That bummed me out a little bit, the thought that I wouldn't be able to use the computer and bore everyone until I got back to civilization. But Czech Frank just happened to have a three-prong plug with alligator clips on the other end, and he plugged it all in with a caveat.

"Don't let those alligator clips touch, by golly, or you'll blow the fuse."

We watched Saving Private Ryan all the way through. Me for the 20th time and Czech Frank for the first time. German Frank translated more of the Nazi lines, and Czech Frank watched it, rapt. I think it took his mind off the lost election.

I finally stumbled out of there around 2:00 in the morning, out of the smoky, dry, hot air of the cabin, into the clear, freezing, fresh air of the Yukon. I played gin for a little bit back at the Bonanza Creek Motel. Jewel was singing on a late version of the Conan O'Brien Show, and I think she melted the snow for 200 yards around the hotel.

Remember that Steve Martin line about: "They asked me to sing through my diagphram!" Jewel does that, in a sense.

I'm in a bad pattern, staying up until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning playing gin or watching TV, then sleeping in until 11:00. That works okay if you have nowhere to go.

German Frank was always commenting on how much he likes relaxed American mornings.

But it doesn't work if you have somewhere to go and this morning I did.

First thing I did was drive to the Czech Embassy and say goodbye all around. All four of the men were there loading things into Brother Dave's F250 with the Ski Doo in the back. Czech Frank was still a little bummed about the election, but he was mostly over it.

After that I drove into town to take care of business. I wanted to take care of the expired ticket I hadn't taken care of so I went to the pizza place to write and print a letter and maybe print my Driver License photo.

This is the letter I composed using, as Yen Lo advised, "A little humor."

The Honorable John Doherty
Clallam County Court House
223 E. Fourth Street
Port Angeles, Washington
98362-0149

October 19, 2000

Your honor,

I turned 40 on August 28, 2000. To celebrate that milestone, I decided to take a mid-life crisis expedition from San Francisco, California up to Alaska, by way of the Pacific Northwest.

In all the excitement and joy that comes with turning 40, I forgot to renew my license before leaving California. I realized this mistake at some point while visiting my mother in Sequim, while outfitting my completely unsuitable Ford Econoline van for the expedition to Alaska.

On August 29, a day after my 40th birthday, I was driving through Sequim in the evening when a local police officer pulled in behind me. I wasn't drunk or doing anything wrong, but I didn't have my seatbelt on, and as I was reaching down to free it from the door-a recurring problem on this trip, I've found-I weaved and swerved a bit. The officer pulled me over, and I got a ticket for driving with an expired license.

It didn't bother me too much. The ticket would inspire me to do the right thing and get a new license before continuing up to Alaska, and possibly avoid hassles at the border.

What did bother me was the near $500 fine. Usually I don't argue these things and just pay them, but this one bothered me. It seemed excessive. I wasn't being reckless or endangering anyone, I just didn't get my driver's license renewed.

Before leaving Washington I did get my Driver License renewed, although I had to take the written/computerized test twice. There were a lot of Washington-centric questions on there that threw me, like how to clean a shotgun while driving, and the legal way to pass a bear.

But I did finally pass the written and driving tests, and found myself with a Washington State Driver license.

I chose to protest the fine and was given an October 16 court date. I took off for Alaska shortly after, not knowing what I was getting into and wondering if I'd be back in Washington State by the 16th.

Well, I didn't make it. I'm presently in Dawson City, Yukon, and am now heading south because my tires are all wrong, and I am indeed becoming dangerous to other drivers, and myself.

I have enclosed a copy of my Washington State Driver License. If you look at the photo closely, I am hoping you will see that as punishment enough, and will see fit to reduce or eliminate the fine.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

It is citation N2956, by the way.

Ben Marcus

That will either work or it won't, depending on the judge's sense of humor.

The printer in the pizza place didn't work, which was a little frustrating, so I drove back to the Czech Embassy to ask if I could plug in. When I pulled up those guys were all working away at something and I didn't want to bother them so I drove off.

I pulled my printer out of the back of the van, put it in the passenger's seat and tried plugging it into the adaptor, but it apparently drew too much juice and wouldn't print.

The road out of Dawson City was snowy and slick, but scenic. I drove low and slow, around 30 MPH, because I didn't want to have to use my brakes. There was no shoulder along much of the road, and a sudden stop could have been bad.

It was a lonely road, and the car felt lonely because German Frank had stayed behind. Along the way I tried to find a radio station and could only come up with 105.5 which played the sound of a telephone being dialed and a fax machine not responding. That's all that was on there. I don't know if that was supposed to be avant garde, or what.

Then I drove and drove and drove, retracing in daylight what Frank and I had passed a few days before in darkness. The Klondike River was flowing off to port, moving along but slowly icing over.

Hey look. Some idiot lost his boot by the side of the highway.

Coincidentally The Band was playing as I stopped at Crooked Creek, where German Frank and I had seen a beaver swimming the night before. This was a nice little set-up, a bridge over a nice creek which had iced up quite a bit in the last few days. Again it was very, very quiet along here, so quiet that I could hear the mini-icebergs flowing in the current, colliding with the solid ice frozen to the sides.

It was all so quiet and peaceful but this bridge had one of those "Vehicles with Lugs Prohibited" signs and I took offense. I pulled out Mr. Walther, popped a cap, and missed.

I drove on into the snow and sleet and oncoming gloom of night. I was wanting to take the Campbell Highway, the alternate route to Watson Lake, but I was pretty sure I wouldn't be doing it today, as I had gotten a late start.

I passed Stewart Crossing and Pelly Crossing and bought gas at the latter. I drove on and on, sometimes getting the CBC, but most of the time the radio was racing through the channels, picking up nothing.

At one point I did get a signal, but it turned oout to be some kind of on the air Bingo game.

"Eye sixteen. Eye one six."

That wasn't too thrilling, so I drove on, into the night, not exactly sure where I was going.

Along the way, both of the batteries in the digital camera went dead, and I began to suspect it had something to do with the cold. Fortunately, they could be charged with the adaptor.

Around 22:00 I ended up in Carmacks, which is at the crossroads of the Klondike Highway and the Campbell Highway. I checked into another semi-expensive hotel room last night, and sent an e-mail to my understand ex-wife, asking for a loan until the end of the month.

Need dough to get out of here.

Now it's around 11:24 on Saturday morning, and I need to get moving. I'm going to send this, print the letter to the judge and print a copy of my license photo, try to mail that express from Carmacks and make for the Campbell Highway.

Watson Lake by tonight, I hope, and then either back down the Cassiar Highway, or off to the east, to look for a way into Idaho.

Hope all is well.