These are the Chronicles of Famous Surf Writer Ben Marcus and his trip into the Wilds of the Alaskan Frontier.
Latest Update: November 18, 2000

10:06 to 11:45 WASHINGTON TIME MOM'S TRAILER IN SEQUIM

That was as far as I got on that dispatch, then I kind of lost interest. I just talked to the Sacklunch guy online and he suggested I write a final dispatch to sum the whole trip up: miles driven, money spent, etc. etc.

Yesterday I finished writing the first installments of South by Northwest for swell.com. I did it in four parts, with photos.

First there was an intro that explained the aborted trip to Kamchatka and why I went up to Alaska anyway.

The second part was all about Alaska and was basically an apology for why it wasn't a surf trip. I described the Turnagain Arm tidal bore and the waves I saw at Homer, but basically I said that driving through Alaska with a surfboard was like going down Highway Five with the Himalayas between the road and the surf, which is what Alaska is. There is very little open-ocean coastal access there that you can drive to, or even take a ferry to, especially out of season. Alaska is a boat trip. I've said it before and I'll say it again.

I did interview a guy named Scott Liska who is running Alaskan Surf Adventures out of Seward and Valdez harbors. For a hundred dollars a day he takes surfers out to Montague and Hinchinbrook Islands, and covers an area from Cordova to Gore Point on the Kachemak Peninsula.

He had some interesting things to say, including paddling into waves that are loaded with thousands of salmon, and surfing on beaches lined with hungry bear.

The second part was about Queen Charlotte Island and all I saw and didn't see there.

The third part was about Vancouver Island and the fourth part was about Jordan River and the Olympic Peninsula.

I asked Evan and Hawk to post it all under my nom de plume Stone Parker, because I don't want to be responsible for exposing some spots that probably shouldn't be exposed. Jordan River is the only one I'm really worried about because it's small and easily accessible and could be overrun. The others are too remote or too vast to be worrying about crowds.

So I packaged it all up and sent it with photos to Evan Slater in Hawaii, and also included the long version of the Fishing With Greg Noll story. There is one really good, beguiling image to go with that story (photo not supplied), so I hope they print it as a very long sidebar.

There was a lot of mail waiting for me at my mom's when I arrived. Most of it junk or "Past Due" notices, but there was some good news, too.

I got a copy of Martin Sugarman's H20 Magazine with an abridged version of the Greg Noll story and also a review of Matt Warshaw's Mavericks book. I'm not getting paid for it, but it's always fun to see your stuff in print.

I also got a copy of Surfer's Path, which included an interview I did with Ross Clarke-Jones about the Red Bull Tasmania Tow In contest. I still don't know why swell.com didn't run that, but I'm glad someone did. They're paying me 100 English pounds for it which is good, because I am flat, Yukon broke.

I'm not broke. I'm in debt to the tune of at least $15,000.

I have two $5000 credit cards that are tapped to beyond the limit. One of them is $1000 over limit because of that whopping AOL 800-number charge.

I owe PGE another $100. That one's about three months overdue and it's gone to a collection agency.

I owe Joanne $1000 immediately, and a hell of a lot more than that. But she's nice about it.

Swell advanced me $1000 in travel expenses for South by Northwest and I already spent that, some of it on legitimate expenses, some of it not. It's hard to tell the two apart.

I owe $400.83 on my Chevron card.

I owe $1221.91 on my Gateway Credit Card and that'll be more soon, because I have to buy a new power cord. I blew my mom's fuse today with that funky alligator clip set-up from Czech Frank. Actually I only blew the fuse on the multi-plug gang box, so it wasn't that bad.

I'm overdrawn $217.36 in my bank account.

So, add it up:

Wells Fargo Mastercard: Discover Card: PG&E: Joanne: Chevron: Gateway: Bank account: Brother Dan: Grand Total in the hole:

-$6,010.14 -$5,117.21 -93.39 -$1,000.00 plus. -$ 400.83 -$1,221.91 -$ 217.3 -$ 200.00 -$14,260.84

That, my friends, is what is known as flat broke.

Man, it's expensive to be a nomad.

The good news is, the Clallam County Courthouse must have gotten a chuckle out of my letter from Dawson City, and they decided that there were "mitigating circumstances" and reduced my expired license fine to $45. So there's a savings of around $400.

I probably should do a detailed account of all my expenses from this trip: gas, hotels, food, tow charges, ferry charges, etc. but I probably won't because it'll make me sick to my stomach.

I wasted a tremendous amount of money during my two months in the Great North.

For example: I paid a lot of extra "overheight" ferry charges because of that roof rack I installed on the van. I spent probably thousands of dollars on motels, when I should have been sleeping in the van. The truth is, that van was way too cold. It was like sleeping in a refrigerator.

With the right truck and an insulated camper and a little electric burner I could have done the whole thing for almost nothing: sleep by the side of the road like Brent the Steelhead Fiend, make my own coffee, eat my own oatmeal for breakfast instead of all the Cholesterol Cafés.

At least I know that now. A lot of the times I was stopping at hotels and bars and restaurants just to be around people. It's pretty quiet and lonely up there this time of year.

But what the hell, I just had the adventure of a lifetime. I could be back in the Bay Area, living in Concord in a big fancy house with a lovely, doting wife, taking BART into San Francisco every day, working in a office and joyously pissing away millions of dollars of Venture Capitol with all those other guys. But I'd rather be looking for lost boots outside of Fairbanks and driving into muddy ditches. It just feels better.

I did what I did, I think it all worked out okay. Money is just numbers on a computer screen. They'll make more.

So, what now? That photo of Greg Noll's house (photo not supplied) is calling to me. Eventually I am going to head that way and see if Greg Noll will let me do some steelhead sniping from his back porch. After all the getting stuck and plowing through bushes and busted equipment and hours of fruitless flailing, it will be fun-if Greg is willing-to sit on his back porch with an overview of the hole, then stroll down there with my outmoded equipment and world-class steelhead fly collection, and maybe catch one of the little bastards.

Not sure when I'm going to take off that way. I'll stick around here until my mom gets tired of me, which will probably be in a couple of hours. I'm looking forward to driving out of the Olympic Peninsula and fishing some of the rivers on the way out, and that drive down the Oregon Coast is always nice.

I'm going to continue writing South by Northwest as I go down the Washington and Oregon coasts, but I'm going to do it very carefully. I'll describe the surf situation from Sequim down to California without giving away too many names or places. It takes a clever fella to do that, but I am that clever fella.

So, I'm 40 and flat broke. In debt to around $15,000 and making $1,500 a month. I have no immediate prospects, but I'm keeping my sunny side up up up.

Right now on the CBC they're playing "Put on a Happy Face" and they're also reporting that George W. Bush is currently 900 votes ahead of Al Gore on the absentee ballots. Gore is doomed. For some reason, the Gods have just chosen to screw him. He doesn't deserve it, but there it is.

Believe it or not, I'm going to draw a little inspiration from George W. Bush. That Vanity Fair article I read on the ferry ride through the Inside Passage described him as a guy of average intelligence with low self-esteem who responds best when he's stuck in a ditch. Bush was a complete screw-up when he was 40, and now he's about to be President of these here United States.

An inspiration to us all.