These are the Chronicles of Famous Surf Writer Ben Marcus and his trip into the Wilds of the Alaskan Frontier.
Latest Update: November 15, 2000

16:44 WASHINGTON TIME MOM'S TRAILER IN SEQUIM

Sequim.

Shit, I'm back in Sequim.

Back at mom's house, right around two months after I left, almost to the day. It's the thick of November here, and it's nice. I saw a lot in the last couple of months, but Sequim is still a nice place to be.

I just got back from my storage locker and I am in a bad mood. I just took all my crap out of the van and put it back in, and realized that most of it was just that-crap. I didn't need 80% of it-scuba gear? A box full of video tapes?-and I realized that I took most of it because I couldn't get a big enough storage space here in Sequim. I think I would have been a lot more comfortable if the van hadn't been so jam-packed, but there's no crying over lost sleep and motel bills.

That van was all wrong, anyway. The ideal vehicle for what I just did would be a Humvee, or a Ford F 150 or F250 or maybe even an F 350, if I needed to tow a battleship. I came that close to buying an F 150 before I left, but I had an odd feeling that the swell salary wasn't going to hold up. Either the thing would fold, or I'd get fired, or they'd cut my salary. I was right on the third part, it turned out, but maybe some day I'll have money again and I'll be able to do that same journey the right way, in a Ford pickup with an insulated camper.

I wasted an awful lot of money on this trip sleeping in motels, but the truth is I am addicted to CNN and the Internet, and I got to watch a lot of history unfold: The Olympics, the World Series, the Israel/Palestine thing and this weird election. After long days pf plunging through the tundra, talking to myself, it was nice to have TV around.

I want my CNN.

This morning I woke up in a hotel room that was just above and within sight of the customs place where I got rousted on the way in. I'm tempted to go down there and confess everything and give them suggestions on how to identify dingalings who are smuggling handguns into Canada. But I don't think that would go over too well.

Last night on TV there was a weird little news story about customs officials finding a concealed weapon in the car of two women on the Port Angeles ferry. I wasn't sure if it was American or Canadian customs officials who found the gun, but it was a Seattle news station, so I figured it must have been US Customs. I guess a concealed weapon is still illegal.

So with all that in mind I took my Continental breakfast into the van and got in line for the Victoria to Port Angeles ferry. I packed Mr. Walther away all nice and tidy with the clip out and the trigger lock in and everything, just in case they found him. Carrying a weapon in a vehicle isn't illegal in the US, but carrying a loaded weapon is. You have to keep the gun and the bullets separate, and that's what I did.

The guy looked at my passport and asked me to take my sunglasses off, just like in The Year of Living Dangerously. But he just asked me a few questions and let me onto the ferry, which I did after watching an older couple from Nevada getting rousted by Canadian Customs on the other side of the fence.

The ferry ride over was quick and uneventful. There were a lot of big freighters and cargo carriers moving through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and for a minute I thought we were going to T-bone a cargo carrier near Port Angeles.

Customs didn't ask much on the other side either, so I drove back onto US soil.

First stop was the fishing shop where I had bought my fly and line reel before leaving Washington. The guy remembered me and we compared notes and I promised to come back and spend a couple thousand bucks on fishing equipment as soon as I robbed a bank. There was a Sage two-fisted spey rod on sale for only $600, marked down $200.

Then I went to moms. She was kind of glad to see me, but I left pretty quick and went to the storage locker, and spent a grumpy two hours trying to sort out all of my crap, 80% of it I didn't need.