Paved Road Ends

I rode to the paved end of Blimp Road on Cudjoe Key last weekend and arrived to find the ramp occupied by a bronzed man in a Speedo lounging in a recliner next to his pickup and camper, while his retriever was rooting through the mangroves, all tail, tongue, and bright shiny eyes. I stood at the ramp, in the shadow of the Air Force Blimp overhead, and looked out across the frothing waves kicked up by the continuing northeast winds. There was a small sailboat anchored to one side, bobbing on its mooring, no dinghy in sight so presumably it was just parked there for the summer by an absentee owner.

The spirit of exploration has come upon me in a bad way now that the refreshing breezes have blown away the heat and stultifying humidity, so this is the time of year a middle aged man's fancy turns to thoughts of riding. Now is the time to gird one's loins and find quiet places to roam away from the pervasive presence of the early snowbirds. I found the road to El Dorado in the mangroves of Sugarloaf Key, and I was quite surprised to find it too.

Usually the smoothly paved suburban roadways off Highway One end in a big yellow diamond and an impenetrable thicket of thorns, palmettos and mangroves. On this occasion I stumbled across the words enamoured of "dual sport" riders, pavement ends...and even though it didn't end completely it did deteriorate a great deal after I passed the last house. I bounced about a quarter of a mile and found an enormous series of pot holes, deep, filled with clay and water and lined by thorns and shrubs. It was an obstacle I could barely pass on foot, never mind on my motorcycle. I tiptoed through the mud, leaping in a most undignified manner from rock to stone as they showed above the water line. Around the corner the road stretched away to the horizon. I had to get down there, come what may.

I went back there yesterday, this time armed with a pair of garden clippers, what my step father in England used to call secateurs and with them I stood in the sun and clipped, and clipped, and clipped trying to make a pathway round the holes in the road. I'm pretty sure I'd have made it through the puddles directly easily enough on the Bonneville but I really didn't feel like smearing it in gray clay, one month and 2,000 miles into my ownership. So I ended up doing what any good owner would do, I suppose. I put the machine in gear and walked it round the pothole, of course I slipped and put one foot under water and the other into a nice cool puddle of clay. But the motorcycle was past. So far so good.
I had no idea what was to come, and my paranoia meter was ready to go into overdrive, dope fiends growing their crops, Serbian wackos lining the road, a memory of my drive to Pale recorded elsewhere in this diary, or even just pissed off neighbors wondering what this goofball was doing riding a perfectly decent road bike in this lost place.

None of the above transpired, but the road surface did manage to deteriorate turning to gravel and dried mud with the occasional mesa of raised asphalt rising out of the dirt like a toadstool, remnants of the day when this was actually a valued state road.

It was a glorious day, crisp and sunny, with a deep blue sky overhead, marked only by Fat Albert the blimp still protecting us from Cuban smugglers and illegal immigrants and who knows what else.

The white dot in the sky was a reminder, in this place of silence that I was not really alone. Even though I had managed to forget my cell phone at home, and was thus unable to summon assistance if needed. I was a long way away from anywhere because traffic on Highway One was inaudible, and the speedometer was showing almost two miles from the end of the pavement when I saw a couple of large rocks blocking the road up ahead. "Aha," I thought to myself, this is where I get to go where pick ups, whose tracks marked the mud, could not go. As it turned out I couldn't go either but I had been looking forward to arriving at the south shore of Sugarloaf Key, and not having to retrace my own tracks.

Not even my Bonneville could cross the gap created by the absent bridge, and the tide was swirling quite impressively between the cuts that were all that was left of the state road bridge.

This was clearly a place where young people come to do what young people do when they drive out to be alone. And of course the trash fairy had come by to sprinkle his particular brand of fairy dust in the wilderness.I did actually meet a young man bouncing down the road in a big 4x4 pickup. It was his first time because he asked, rather anxiously how much further. I reassured him there was a turn out just a quarter mile ahead. I kept going, wondering how I was going to get around the thorn bushes and big puddles as this time I'd be on the right side of the motorcycle if I walked it past and that is an awkward side to hold the machine up.

As it was I got the secateurs out a second time and clipped back just a few more strands of the abundant thorns and I rode by like the best dual sport riders among us. Well, sort of; at least I made it without toppling into the muck alongside.

Wasn't I the happy explorer, not quite a rival to Hernan De Soto, grinning hugely after finding something approaching the fountain of youth. Oh yes, I felt very young again, proudly licking my wounds inflicted by the unforgiving thorns, and aching damp toes encased in a mixture of mud and wattle inside my old explorers' sneakers. The Triumph purred homewards, at home on the blacktop maintained properly by the State of Florida when it's as important as the Overseas Highway.

I look forward to discovering few more roadway gems forgotten by the overburdened state- long may the Feds waste my money on Fat Albert instead.