Big Pine Key

There's trouble among the pine trees and its spelled development. The county commission is running out of money, partly because of mismanagement and spending on commissioner's pet projects ( sinking ships, buying restaurants, not maintaining reserves) and partly because state lawmakers in the middle of a massive fiscal downturn in a state that gets most of its money from the value of property insists on rolling back property taxes. Capable local government is feeling the pinch. Cretins similar to the majority of the Monroe County Board of commissioners are leading us down a terrible path.

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Anyway the majority of the board is contemplating putting a development fee on any buildable lots found within the confines of the National Key Deer refuge, which encompasses Big Pine Key and Little and Middle Torch Keys. The idea is to recoup some cash by charging owners of lots to build on them which is a not totally crazy idea. However the figure the Board has been recommended to impose is a one time go of $100,000 which as one might imagine has more than a few people up in arms. I call the majority of the Board cretins for good reason.My Vespa GTS "parked" on 16th Street. This "street" and many others like it are the target of the new development fee.

Attorneys and accountants are among those lurking in the rural fastness of the island. But most of what you see from Highway One is like this:

Open space and huge ugly buildings- welcome to downtown Big Pine Key!

The fee's going nowhere and I'm pretty sure its just another not so clever way to send a message to Tallahassee to remind state lawmakers why they continue to exercise oversight over development plans in the Keys. Local lawmakers have been deferring putting in a proper sewage system for twenty years while allowing unbridled development up and down the islands. The result is predictable- everyone is totally pissed off and nothing gets done.

Shopping in fancy footwear after some rain? No paving or landscaping here!

Big Pine key is crying out for development. This the largest island in the lower keys, hence its name- the pine trees that grow on the ten by 3 mile island are actually quite puny, but there's a ton of land here, covered in scrub, thorns, pines and palmettos, and in between the scrawny flora pop up the odd human habitations, always surrounded by "No Trespassing" signs and a general refusal to engage with one's neighbors. This island is the rural retreat for people who prefer guns dogs and trucks to subtitled films, vintage wines and far flung vacations. This is Salt of the Earth country and its under siege.I think of places like Naperville in Illinois, San Antonio in Texas and Baltimore's Inner Harbor among I'm sure many other illustrious places, as examples of communities that have made an effort to create urban order out of decay. Big Pine Key sure ain't one of those. I am conflicted as to whether it should be. On the one hand I rarely go to Big Pine unless its for a specific purpose. On the other the island seems to be doing fine without me!My wife grumbles all the time about how she would like a Publix grocery instead of the struggling Winn Dixie, or the more yuppie Walgreens chain over the chaotic CVS, but she is firmly in the camp that wants Big Pine made "nice."

And they have a point. Big Pine is a wide spot in the Overseas Highway plagued by extra low speed limits to protect Key Deer and the businesses along the highway are a mess. This is not a place the appeals to the eye and says "shop here!"

The best use of Highway facing lots along US 1 in Big Pine Key is boat storage? After Scotty's left no one else could figure what to do with this dump off US 1.This place has been a mouldy eyesore since Wilma, now possibly coming back... Hurricane proof poles may be necessary, but the decorations are a mockery.Traffic lights hint at urban agglomeration but not necessarily civilization.

There again many of the people who live in the hinterlands of this island want to keep it that way. They've got themselves a home, possibly a trailer or a ground level concrete block structure relatively inexpensive, even if flood-prone, and they've got woods, room to shoot their guns and no neighbors peering into their yards. This place is the refuge from the urban yuppiness of Key West. And yet, I look at the flea market, a huge open space filled with junk, run by a mad preacher (no, really!) who hates his neighbors and I think to myself this place would be ideal for a Publix with a Target to attract shoppers from Key West and Marathon.Maybe we could even have a decent little restaurant of which there is none currently that encourage me to leave the comfort of my home for a culinary adventure. For good eats we head south a few miles to Square Grouper or Coco's, both on Cudjoe Key; never Big Pine! BPK Restaurant's cusine stops at eggs and burgers- curb appeal? What's that?

And then I start to imagine the extra traffic, the nagging about parking, the need for expansion, blah blah blah. I must be crazy. Leave things as they are, all messy and confused and unappealing. If I want urban civilization its just 30 miles down the road and I know all about the squished up feeling people in Key West get. God knows they complain about it loudly enough!

We are our own worst enemies, sometimes, and though I pride myself on moving to the Keys not to change them the crappy environment and lack of facilities in Big Pine has stuck in my craw. I need an attitude adjustment, really I do.

Staff of Life

The weather is frightful, windy rainy and 75 degrees, the roads are puddles and the decks around the house are covered in a sheen of rainwater. This is very good as it puts more water into my cistern and keeps me away from reverting to the aqueduct's chlorinated, briny product, but its hell for a motorcyclist enjoying his first day off in four, long days of police dispatching. The Monday after a holiday weekend tends to be busy as revellers get back in the swing of complaining against their neighbors. Some occasionally have real emergencies.

I took a call from a woman giving birth to her first, premature, baby, which was a bit sweat inducing until I realised the contractions were far enough apart the new arrival would probably show up after the paramedics. Then a few hours later a child called explaining her mother had put her arm through a window and was spurting bright red blood across the room. Both calls required a fair bit of pre-arrival instructions as it took the ambulance a few minutes to get across town and take over. I had a trainee with me and I had been telling her we rarely give much in the way of pre-arrival instructions in Key West as the island's size means we rarely wait long for the responders to get on scene. Fate proved me a liar as I told the woman's daughter to apply pressure as her mother squealed loudly down the phone. The kid was great and prevented her mother from bleeding out. "There's so much blood.." I heard her mother moaning as the kid pressed the artery and kept her mother alive. Ah, life, so tenuous!

All this drama and then the carbon monoxide detector went off in a hotel where a guest was poisoned last year, putting me in mind of bread making, which gives one's nerves a much less stressful pounding. Bread gives off gas as the yeast cooks and later the loaf itself fills the house with that delicious waft when you open the oven. The perfect antidote to CO poisoning.

In the Ikea store in Fort Lauderdale a couple of weeks ago my wife and I bought a bag of ingredients to make two lingonberry loaves, a coveted Swedish delicacy I'm told. So, as my wife created a beer baked chicken masterpiece for Turkey day I turned my hand to making bread. Its not a well known fact but I am something of a past master when it comes to home made bread. My wife and I sailed to Key West in the late 1990's from California and we made the trip eating bread that I baked the whole (grain) way. I discovered during all this pioneer-ish Central American baking that creating a loaf of bread is a very inexact science and homemade bread is a product that will struggle against all the odds to come to fruition. You can screw up the proportions really badly but some indefinable yet edible lump will appear from the oven despite your worst expectations. If disdaining proportions and precise quantities is your style you are a homemade bread maker, by instinct.

The Swedes at Ikea made it fairly easy. Heat some water, add the yeast to the water, my first deviation from the printed instructions on the packet, and let the yeast limber up and start bubbling gently, creating a sweet, beery gas. Then pour on the flour and mash it all up so the flour gets wet and the active yeast gets distributed through the mixture, but don't mush it endlessly as it will resent too much handling. As will you.Cover with a cloth and let it rise for 30 minutes or as long as you can stand.

After a while cover your hand, and arm as it happens, in flour and with a little extra flour (2 cups?) thrown in to absorb the extra moisture start kneading the dough, which should be moist but not too sticky.Set in a couple of well oiled bread pans and let rise as long as you feel like. The more it rises the less solid will be the loaf if you kneaded it thoroughly, but not too much (go figure- it comes with practice). Bake for around 40 minutes (with a pan of stuffing for a side dish if you like) and stick a knife in it, when the blade comes out clean its ready to set out and cool for ten minutes before being dumped on the Thanksgiving table.Eat soon as it has no preservatives to keep it "fresh."

We buy commercial lite bread these days but I am not really sure why. I think this will have to change. Release all that stress into a big wet bowl of mush. Nothing better, I find. And it tastes pretty good too, even if it is Swedish.

Off Course

I was pinching myself as we left the border behind and bounced down the uneven road into the stark granite countryside. After all these years this was the country that had been closed to the world all my life, the place where no outsider was welcome. I was inside the mountains that ringed Zenda, or Ruritania or any fantasy land dreamed up by writers, telling stories of places too far away to be imaginable. My desire to know this place was fed by those stories, and in an unhappy childhood I read a great many, more or less uplifting tales, not least the Belgian detective known as Tintin.He had adventures all over the world including the Balkans, possibly a Ruritanian version of ... I liked to think it was Albania which to a 20th century traveler, was far beyond the horizon, as distant and unreachable as the moon. Until 2007.

Under the late Enver Hoxha, Albania was the last place on Earth anyone might want to visit, a circle of mountains backed onto the Adriatic, closed to Greece to the south and Yugolsavia to the North. Hoxha pulled his country back within itself, declining to join the United Nations, trading only with China, a country so small and forgotten no one knew it was there. Hoxha had no nuclear weapons so his people could starve in peace, protected from a well nourished world by concrete bunkers strewn through the fields facing outwards. Nowadays these little concrete bus stops serve as emergency toilets for travelers too curious to drive past without stopping to inspect their reeking interiors. I cannot imagine standing guard in one of these structures, no facilities, no electricity, no water faucet. All to insure the bloodthirsty Yugoslavs will stay on their side of the line.

The sun was setting and the light was golden as we drove away from the unusually lengthy passport inspection at the border between Montenegro and Albania. Montenegro seemed amazingly sophisticated compared to the Albanian goat herders cluttering the main road to Shkoder, 23 long slow miles inside the country. We were filled with wonder- where were we going to sleep? What currency did they use? What on Earth were we going to find round the next corner? Why in hell did we choose to come here? My wife has never harbored lunatic desires to visit Albania so this side trip was all on me.The closer we got to Shkoder the thicker the traffic became, and traffic was an absurd mixture of ox carts and Mercedes Benz cars. The only in between vehicle was our modest Ford diesel station wagon which was an entirely inadequate weapon to carve a path between the indifference of the ox cart drivers and the imbeciles in the Mercedes.God looks after drunks and idiots and once again, as the sun got close to the horizon and we got close to the center of chaos that is the heart of the provincial city of Shkoder we found paradise. No, it wasn't a palm tree but it was five star hotel rising up above the dust and swirling noise of a busy little town. The Hotel Europa, a small squat skyscraper rose up glistening in the fading sunlight. "We get a room there," my wife whispered, and later she confessed she was ready to pay $400 (300 euros) for a room up there. As it turned out we got a palatial room with hot and cold running water and Italian television programs for 60 euros or $100 with free car parking in the secure basement. I sat on the bed and watched Fawlty Towers with Albanian(?) subtitles to try to forget where we were for a short while. Driving in Albania quite takes it out of you.

We went out into the streets of Shkoder and wandered through the park, kids were running around, mothers in scarves sat placidly on blankets while the old men huddled over upturned cardboard boxes and slammed down dominoes. We watched for a while and when they asked something we said "America" the universal word and they gave us big, stubbly, gap toothed grins.

Dinner was a slice of some sort of Albanian pizza, spinach wrapped with strong cheese and wedged between slices of flaky Greek-style pastry. It was very greasy and good. The scarfed lady in the doorway took a Euro ($1.30), for we had no Leks, and the nature of our brief visit meant we likely wouldn't get to buy any local currency either. We wandered down the main street as darkness descended. The sidewalk was lumpy, the traffic endless and the little stores were filled with varieties of universal plastic gewgaws. It was entrancing.

We bought me a pair of $15 shoes, the lady clerk grinning like she was going to die of amusement at these strange creatures. My wife looked for a set of metal dominoes among the plastic and failed. We sat at a sidewalk cafe and drank crisp beer, across the street from a mosque, and the domino players sat at a neighboring table and grinned cheerily. We wanted to ask if they used family heirlooms in the park, but we lacked the Albanian to ask where they got their dominoes. We went to bed exhausted and slept like zombies, so deep was our state of unconsciousness the morning call to prayers from the neighboring mosque did nothing to pull us out of our coma.

The hotel put on a breakfast worthy of far more than the Italian engineers who shared the buffet with us in a sumptuous ballroom. We ate syrupy fruit, sweet cheese, salamis of every type, pastries with sugary jam and yogurt of some strange Balkan variety. We took a few pictures of downtown Shkoder and dropped off an English language book Layne had finished reading in a little bookstore. We also picked up a picture book about Shkoder which revealed to me that this was Scutari, famous in the Crimean War of 1855 for the arrival of nurse Florence Nightingale and the creation of the first modern military hospital. The shopkeeper, thin and aristocratic had no knowledge of this slice of Shkoder's history. We chatted in French and he told me of his life as an agronomist, skirting the realities of life in a closed country. He bought us coffee and we parted best of friends. He went back to being a bookseller, we set our sights on the Balkan fastness to the north of us.

We had a plane to catch in Vienna in four days and we had all the mountains of Montenegro, Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia ahead. No time at all to pause and linger, and check out the medieval fort or the shores of Lake Shkoder. Shame though it was, we had to leave the mysterious country whose intimacies we had barely touched. We drove out of the city of Florence Nightingale and got back on the bouncy highway to the border. By lunchtime we were well past Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro ready to climb the mountains to Bosnia. Albania we had seen and done.

Pasta, Mafia, Spaghetti

"How is it that people in this country always associate Italians with the Mafia?" It has to be a longstanding friendship when you get sideswiped by such a complicated question late at night. We were standing on the White Street Pier watching the street lights twinkle along Smathers Beach, and such a watery place would naturally lead to reflection. The fact that Giovanni, a cardiologist, was visiting for just two days on the back of a medical convention on the mainland meant we had a lot of catching up to do in a short while.

We grew up together, Giovanni's family spent most of their time in the city and I spent most of my life in exile at that age, in an English boarding school. After I left Europe Giovanni, who followed the conventional life plan laid out for the son of a doctor remained my tenuous connection with he Old World, a thread threatened by time, distance and commitments, but that has become less frayed as we grow older. We try to meet at least every couple of years alone or with family and ride a motorcycle, laze on a beach always staying up late to set history and the world to rights.

Explaining the Mafia stereotype to a forty-nine year old Italian who has never imagined hanging out with, or being intimidated by Cosa Nostra back home isn't easy. The Mafia is as far from his life as it is for any American, its a subject for the movies; Hollywood is short hand for graven images. "Well, you've seen the Godfather," I start out by saying. "Il Padrino reinforced the image first created when Italian immigrants started coming in large numbers to the US..." And his rebuttal, built around the irritation he feels when he replies, in his broken English, to strangers that he is Italian not Mexican, and they go on and on about the few things they know about Italy,The Mafia, and Italian history followed by a tour of monuments they've seen. Giovanni sighs and leads us to a discussion about the stereotypes of la dolce vita an image of Italy created in turn by Italian filmmakers.

Too often I hear about how Europeans have it easy with long vacations and lots of time off, but I remember well Giovanni's incredulity when we walked one morning into a California Starbucks and he couldn't believe all the lounging around going on during a workday. In France the 35-hour work week stands a good chance of being overturned because people are tired of the financial constraints of a short work week which yes, allows for more time off but it also severely limits incomes. The new French President is currently struggling with that problem and at the same time in Italy, pension plans, those distant rewards for a life time of 51/2 day work weeks, are being pushed back by threats of State bankruptcy.

Giovanni, who lives in a magnificent, high ceiling'ed, apartment in the heart of the Terni envies me my suburban American life. He loved to sprawl in my California backyard smoking and pretending to be house owner for a week or two. In Florida its the wide open deck we hung out on at night, me in my Keys uniform of cargo shorts and a tee shirt while Giovanni, even en deshabille, wore a crisp collared shirt and ironed Dockers, stretched out in our recliners admiring the stars and setting the world to rights.

We don't drink much alcohol together, we usually get drunk on exhaustion, talking about the past, musing about the future, wondering how we got to where we are. Giovanni doesn't see a very rosy future as he has bills to pay and many more years of hospital work and private practice to pay his bills, get his kids through college, help them buy homes, pay off his own mortgage and finally qualify for a his State pension. He drives a nice car, rides a big motorcycle, takes vacations where he likes, and rarely has time to be alone and think. Which he says, is just as well. Even when he is alone he thinks about what gifts to shop for and take home to his family.

"The big difference between us, " he said as he was struck by an epiphany between the eyes as it were." The difference between us is that you don't have children." He's right. I view the future as a series of different choices, variations on the various forks in the road that have led me to this point. It's all speculative but I wonder if perhaps I may or may not allow myself to live some of the time in Italy, riding around in Giovanni's wake... A fantasy rudely shattered by his insistence that these possibilities aren't open to him. La dolce vita promises him a life lived hard at work till the last possible minute. But always fashionably well dressed...

Over the decades I have come to appreciate the reality of Giovanni's daily life in Italy which is, for most Americans, a romantic idyll far removed from reality, a movie set inhabited by cheerfully gesturing lovers divorced from traffic jams, endless bills, and unemployment. Pretty much the same way every Italian in America is probably intimate with the inner workings of the Mafia.

I snapped this picture of Giovanni hanging with my buddy Scott at the Tropic cinema one warm sunset. I too love hanging out with Giovanni, he always makes me appreciate my life all the more.

Central America 1951

There is a need in one's life for flights of imagination, and there in my bathroom lies a well thumbed copy of a paperback book filled with pictures, photographs fit to dream on, especially if you ride a motorcycle with a big round headlamp, flat handlebars and those tight curving mudguards, so typical of the era. William Carroll's business went into bankruptcy during 1950, which crisis naturally prompted him to do the obvious thing: sell his home and take off on a motorcycle tour, more precisely a B33, a 500cc BSA single, the apotheosis of motorcycle engineering of the era. And he took off for the dangerous lands south of the Rio Grande.
Its a book of words and images that set a boy's mind to take off on flights of fancy- here today, gone tomorrow, especially when one has the modern equivalent of a B33 of one's own, lurking underneath the house. Copper Canyon, here I come!
Its the effect images have on the brain. You look and without warning you are sucked in, to a world perhaps that doesn't even interest you. And yet that image won't go away. For instance I would never want to see myself wrapped up for winter riding, dodging heaps of snow, yet the Aerostitch catalogue is utterly irresistible.

Big knobby tire, huge headlamp, scenic but not desirable, it all sets a even tropical brain to dreaming, while sitting. I can't say I care for the electronic gadgets offered in the catalogue, but Lord knows there are plenty of toys that I just know I will (would?) need on the road to Mexico... Dry bags to throw over the tank, tool rolls, and widgets and gadgets that cost less than an arm and a leg but are about as useful to my current style of riding as snow tires. Yet they make me dream, those masters of the soft sell make me dream.


So I flip the pages of Carroll's fabulous picture book and read of his detainment in Mexico at the Guatemalan border, his struggle through the ruts and rocks of the main highway to Tegucigalpa, a chance encounter with another rider on a Triumph, in the dust of Central America. He wears as illustrated here a sensible, and carefully thought out riding uniform of baseball cap, overalls and stout boots. Not a GPS in sight, and the Triumph rider he met was wearing similar ATGATT.

And after a money grubbing detour in Costa Rica to sell a few useful articles on railways and bananas, a sudden anti-climactic arrival at the Panama Canal. And all this illustrated by 175 pictures of that dreamy tour, which we currently find beyond our reach, if not beyond our motorcycles. Hell they look like twins, excepting of course a few accessories like mirrors, turn signals and front tag holders ($60 nostalgia option in the current New Bonneville catalogue!).

There is mention in the book of just how small his BSA appeared on the road to passersby. I suspect the author, who was lanky, made it look more so, as he appears positively crouched on the motorcycle in some of his pictures. One couldn't say the same of my Bonneville, until I suppose one comes across a fully dressed Harley, or a Gold Wing or some other sport tourer with all the bells and whistles. They make my 900 Triumph look similarly compact if compared across the decades to the BSA 500 of 1951.

And here I am enjoying the daily grind with all the security of a paycheck, a routine, a front door to kick my boots off in front of. A wife to soothe my fevered brow. This must be a good life, not on the road.

The long way home, not on the Pan American Highway, but on Card Sound Road, after a day riding the mainland.

To Snow Or Not

There was a question, perhaps rhetorical, about the possibility of familiarity breeding contempt when it comes to the bright colors bathed in constant sunshine that is the lot of a Florida Keys resident. The short answer is, no it never gets boring, and no, I never take it for granted. Every day is a fresh reminder of one of the chief pleasures of living at 24 degrees north latitude.Yesterday I was training a new dispatcher in the arcane science of the police intranet system that connects law enforcement agencies across the country. We spoke briefly to Nome PD where daylight is down to 9 hours a day, ("It's not that dark, we are below the Arctic Circle," their dispatcher told us slightly defensively), and I'm not sure if my trainee was more impressed by the secure law enforcement network or the notion of policing snowdrifts.
Its getting to be that time of year when it starts freezing Up North and so we have to start policing bad parking, bad public drinking and bad bums begging for money at the tops of their voices on street corners in the Southernmost City. The trick to enjoying life in the Keys is to leave behind as much baggage as you can, and to learn as fast as you can to take things as they are. especially if you come from some button down community Up North where skittles are lined up, i-s are dotted and t-s are crossed. In Key West things just don't work that way. The confrontation brews when people who are used to order and cleanliness come up against chaos and small town clubbiness.
So snowbirds flutter into town each Fall and discover that things haven't changed since last year. And they sure as hell haven't changed either, so disorganized parking, public displays of begging (beggars like warm winters too!) and apparent municipal indifference set them off. What to do? Why, call the police!

Its hard to explain to well dressed people why its okay for smelly people to occupy city parks during the day, but the Supreme Court has outlawed discrimination on the basis of hygiene so its hard to get police officers to arrest people for being dressed in cerements. Impossible in fact, and this state of affairs hasn't changed since the last time the snowbirds were cluttering up the streets and restaurants. The Citizens' Voice Column in the paper is filling up again with quality of life complaints which are rather dull compared to the throat clutching verbal wrestling that locals indulge in while the more strait jacketed winter residents are away.
These unrelated photographs illustrate the beauty of Winter in the Keys, sunlight takes on a crisp white light, and the brisk cold fronts sweep away the dusty summer particles rendering colors that much sharper. My Bonneville is running equally crisply and is a joy to point down the highway. I've passed the 25-hundred mile mark since October 10th and I'm starting to find my way with more instinct and habit than previously. The Vespa is soon to go back on the "for sale" circuit now that we have those lovely wealthy snowbirds in town, and curiously, I find myself missing the Vespa less and less. The Bonneville is proving to be an easy fun ride in the flatlands of the Keys. In some ways it takes less skill to ride the Bonneville, as the twin cylinder takes anything in its stride, head winds, moonstruck tourists, lumbering heffalumps (SUVs) and juvenile testosterone cases. And snowbirds.
Staring at the Straits of Florida south of Sugarloaf Key has its compensations, on a golden winter evening, but there are occasions when a visit to the movies makes sense too. Last Monday it was the turn of Into The Wild an adventure film about a young man taking things to extremes until they get completely out of hand. Only then does he figure out the meaning of life; when its too late. This young man, according to the movie, made a solo kayak trip down the Colorado river, through the Grand Canyon all the way to the Sea of Cortez. He hitch hiked, made friends, disappeared, regrouped, worked and lazed away sunny desert days. But he did just have to go to Alaska, the borne from which some travelers fail to return.It was a fine movie, absorbing, demanding attention and posing difficult questions about age, impetuosity and the meaning of being alive. I couldn't get over the notion that the true test of one's mettle has to be found in the snowdrifts of the frozen north. One sun's oneself in a pansy hammock under coconut palms in the tropics while heroes forge themselves in blizzards and drizzle and cold slippery roads Up North.

By those restricted standards I am glad to be a pansy. I lived for a great deal too many years in the cold confines of Northern California to enjoy the notion of rain and cold. I just don't like it, and no amount of hairpins or mountains or spectacular views across death defying valleys compensates me for the cold in my fingers, the slush on my boots, and the depressing need to take the car on exceptionally horrendous winter days. Sitting by the fire sucks when compared to stretching out on the deck under the illusory cold embrace of a winter full moon. So, no, the winter landscapes never dull or fade or crumble into rust. The moon last night was round and red as it sank into the Gulf of Mexico on my early ride in to work. Today it was cold and steely and threw out shards of ice across the ruffled lagoons in the Saddlebunch Keys. Tomorrow I hope for more crisp and clear and sun, but if not it makes no matter because sooner rather than later sub tropical nature will reassert itself and the sun will shine.

That's what all those visitors and snowbirds come here for after all, not to mention the twittering year round residents, who came for the weather and stay for it too, no matter how unwilling they may be to admit they revere it. The Weather.

Going To Paradise

I was out on the west facing deck Thanksgiving morning reading the Citizen (new employee housing at Sugarloaf School-controversy! read all about it!!) while my wife prepped breakfast (scrambled eggs, polenta and fruit salad) when I realised it was Fall once again in the Keys. Not because the tree leaves are gradually changing color, at least some of them.

Prudence is back. Prudence is an elderly single female who occupies a house across the canal, kitti-corner to my tree house. Prudence grew up in New York and carries a loud grating accent to prove it. She has lived in the Keys for decades and is a "character." Unhappily she is a character by virtue of longevity, not because she is at all quirky. Nowadays she spends much of the year away as she is elderly and lives alone when she is in her canal-side house. She stays away during summer, and spends less and less time each year in the Fall and Winter. With her return the peace of our neighborhood is shattered.

So I know its fall in Paradise not when the West Indian almond tree drops its leaves and thoughtfully trickles them across my decks. Its not when my bare feet land thoughtlessly on the West Indian almonds themselves, nuts that my avoir-du-poids cannot begin to crush, not even when smothered entirely by my tender naked foot. No, Fall hits paradise when Prudence's dulcet tones ring across the canal.

Yesterday, mercifully, there were no boats cruising the canal, and this was a mercy because local boaters spend all winter proving they are "old hands" in the neighborhood by yelling greetings to the hard of hearing Prudence, who barks back incomprehension in the stentorian tones of the Bronx. When I used to work nights (by choice, curiously enough) I was frequently dragged back from the arms of the sweet patron of the peaceful hour, as the poet has it,by Prudence carrying on a whispered conversation.

Thanksgiving morning I learned, by virtue of megaphone eavesdropping of plans put in motion for family fun far from snowdrifts. "I'm going to Paradise!" was the call across the canal from one neighbor to Prudence. One could only wish for such luck, on a less charitably inclined day, but all it actually means is that the family will be going to eat at Parrotdise, a local restaurant who's offerings are washed down by Big Pecker Parrot wines, which gives an idea of how they grill blacken and fry their fish. Non vintage, I 'm sure.

Prudence brings a smile to my lips when she bawls out a greeting or a comment on the vegetative growth in a friend's garden. She is a symbol of the village-like nature of life in the Lower Keys, of a time when people really did care about their neighbors, not just out of benevolence perhaps, but out of boredom when the news was constant and neighborliness was part of the local tree of gossip. I will miss her bawled banalties when they are silenced by the passage of time. Life in the keys makes one grateful for the weirdest things.

Read All About It!

When I travel I like to pick up the local paper to hold in my hands the daily goings on. At home where all the print is available online, I still cherish the pleasure of messing my fingers with newsprint, connecting to a 250 year tradition of formalizing gossip and word-of-mouth on a properly printed page. My face isn't online- its in the broadsheet!

As small towns go Key West has lots of papers to choose among for information. I've assembled a modest selection which I like to read each week, and though there are others, the only publication dedicated to gay goings on has gone out of business (in a flurry of predictable accusations of non payment etc among the principals. Small town scandal on the front pages).

The Key West Citizen has focused on local news and does a decent job of afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted, as the saying goes. Page Two features the Citizen's Voice, a column of anonymous call-ins from usually upset neighbors. Page Three includes my all time small town favorite feature the "Citizen of the Day," fully dressed of course. The Citizen is the only daily published locally, which is delivered in the early hours to my driveway for $102 per year. It is the paper of record and Cooke Communications, an independent publishing family, has assembled a modest empire in the Keys. They also have an interest in 104.1 US One radio in Big Pine which has a modest local news operation including interviews with local bigwigs (Very Important People Only!) at 8am with the local voice Bill Becker, an interviewer who wouldn't know a hard question if it forced itself down his throat.

The Citizen isn't a bad paper with its steady diet of local news from around the Keys. From time to time it'll avoid offending VIPs on particularly touchy issues, so sometimes its more a matter of observing what they've left out rather than included, to get an idea whats going on. The Citizen's Voice is the source of irritation among Important People, and the anonymous comments are the first place we all go after we open the paper. Each Thursday the Citizen also puts out a harmless Arts supplement called Paradise! which I find rather bland and generally goes the way I send the daily sports section- into the recycling bin. But that's just my taste.

The other outlets from Cooke Communications include a Marathon- based free weekly, the Free-Press, which comes to Lower Keys subscribers each Wednesday. Its a way to fight back against the inroads of the Miami Herald which sells and delivers all around the Keys. The Citizen does a much better job of covering local news, not least with the Friday free offering of Solares Hill.

This paper started out as an alternative weekly aimed at irritating the powers that be and sounding an irreverent voice against the all powerful Citizen. It was a paper that barely made economic sense in a town where people fished or drank as expressions of intellectual activity. When Cooke bought Solares Hill its imminent demise was widely predicted, but that never came to pass. Now under Nancy Klingener's leadership Solares Hill has flourished as a source of in depth prickly commentary and real arts news. It is the highlight of my newspaper perusal, arriving every Friday, carefully wrapped inside my Citizen delivery.

What to say about the Blue Paper? More properly known as Key West The Newspaper, the free weekly that describes itself as the home of "Journalism as a Contact Sport"? This is the critic that anybody who is somebody in Key West wants silenced, even more than the Citizens' Voice column in the daily paper.

Dennis Reeves Cooper is seen around town wearing a ragged beard, as every rebel should, accompanied by a black Labrador who rides alongside him in his silver convertible. Cooper is an old school style of yellow journalist, always criticized, though never do critics succeed in proving that he gets his facts wrong though his idle speculation often falls wide of the mark. For instance when he wrote that a past police chief had had a previous sexual liaison with a juvenile boy he was never shown to be wrong. When he publicizes the embarrassing sources of funding in election campaigns everyone involved screams blue murder but they can't show he's wrong. He exposed to all and sundry a tawdry sexual affair the mayor got invovled in, and no one could contradict him because it was true, apparently. He's not someone I'd have round to dinner, he's rather too abrasive, but his paper is a must read in Key West, and one prays never to find oneself the object of his scorn. These days the current Key West Police Chief is his target, and Cooper's attentions make life for the rest of us inside the police station a fair resemblance to hell on earth.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the good news paper, a sickly publication called Conch Color, published by one of Key West's more bizarre public characters. Tom Oosterhoudt, a plump, fussy momma's boy, who never appears in public without a thick layer of foundation on his cheeks, once managed to get elected to the City Commission in a moment of collective public amnesia. Now after electoral defeat, he wants to spread good news which generally means kow-towing to the rich and powerful and filling the broadsheet pages with lots of color pictures in the style of a social diary. Its pretty saccharine stuff, harmless were it not responsible for yet more mulched trees, and easily ignored.

I'd rather read Key West, another all color publication that comes out monthly, features excellent photographs and a decent attempt at literary journalism even though it describes itself as a lifestyle publication. Its the sort of magazine I thumb through in doctor's offices and the like, as it has lots of pictures of hip people being hip, in hip island homes. From time to time it features people I can claim a passing aquaintance with, which I find shocking.

The Miami Herald has a bureau or two in the Keys and attempts a few column inches of local news. those efforts are supplemented by the twice weekly Keynoter a paper that bulges with classifieds but is of limited interest to a Citizen subscriber, who gets updates daily, The Keynoter comes out afternoons and can sometimes publish events the same day they happen, thus scooping the Citizen. I like the Keynoter on our streets mostly because it shows that the two paper concept is struggling to stay alive in the Keys where most American cities can't claim that anymore. Its not an even struggle and as long as the Citizen stays hard on the heels of local news it remains an indispensable read to keep a finger on the pulse of local affairs- literally and figuratively.

And they are all presented on the Internet, because the modern Keys live and die online. And for some strange reason people everywhere want to know whats going on in the island chain.

I love my news when it comes in print, so many words to fuss over.

Comida Criolla

This is not a Puerto Rican barbecue pit, its a car dumped and incinerated and cluttering the amazing verdant beauty because the government, along with its lack of interest in sorting out the stray dog problem, has no interest in dealing with the heaps of cars four million islanders drive literally into the ground every year.

Cuisine, including barbecue, was on my mind after our recent hop south for the weekend where we encountered a US variant on Caribbean food, so I was moved to contrast and compare Cuban food as cooked in Key West with creole food. Creoles in the colonial era were upper class people, possibly of mixed race who were descended from white settlers. The term is in use today in New Orleans, and in Puerto Rico where restaurants advertise comida criolla as an attraction for tourists.Like so many popular foods in daily use comida criolla started out as poor people's food. Nowadays mofongo is offered as haute cuisine in haute restaurants, though we found the national dish roadside, under a tarp on the outskirts of San Juan, the island's teeming capital.Mofongo is mashed fried plantains rendered into a starchy pudding, served with meat or fish. I think it works best with some sort of ajo sauce, citrus and garlic, to render the mound less dry. We ate some with chunks of fried beef which was also dry, and an ajo chicken dish which was excellent. Mofongo streetside is not a delicate dish and if you manage to down a plate piled high with those mashed plantains you will be good to work in the fields all day.

Puerto Rico is littered with modest cafes, all of which merit a stop. We found people everywhere who could mumble some small amount of English, indeed they were happy to ignore our reasonably fluent Spanish and help us find our ingredients in stumbling English. In an industrial village south of Fajardo we found a cafe offering creole food simmering in hot plates. We pulled down the Caribbean staples of rice and Puerto Rican red beans with barbequed chops American style and Caribbean pork.

Expecting macaroni and cheese such as might be offered in English speaking Caribbean islands, my wife opted for "macaroni" and got American style pasta salad. It was good, perhaps because we are flexible travelers! Our plates also included hard fried plantains known universally as tostones. All this for $5.25, about two thirds the price in the Lower Keys.

Gas stations across the island offer snack food, much of it a replica of processed foods found in the US but shelves were also loaded with items that rated exotic, Italian chocolates imported to the Caribbean, sweet crackers and sodas based on tropical fruits like tamarind, a sweet/sour drink that is pretty harsh to a palate raised on the delights of colas. My young colleague did her shopping at four am:

Crackers and OJ to fight off breakfastless nausea from speeding, twisting roads. The further we were from fast food offerings the better off we were as usual, but some forms of processed foods one cannot avoid. I, for instance, can rarely resist Latin pastries, a delight to the eye but rather less to American taste buds. Coffee generally was fairly insipid too, lacking the Starbucks verve we mainlanders have come to expect from a cup of java.

Our journey across the back of Puerto Rico on the narrow, steep Ruta Panoramica, through the mountains brought us to the high altar of island cuisine. Where we came face to face with the national culinary obsession: lechon.Lechon is roast suckling pig, pork on a spit. The center of this cult is located in a village called Cayey. But that, as they say is another story, a story unto itself and a memory I want to savor in more leisurely style.

Going hungry in Puerto Rico's hinterlands isn't easy because the golden arches litter the landscape as much as creole cuisine does, so for those that can't stand being far from home, home on America's true caribbean island (not Key West!) is always close to hand, and they even enjoy servicarro service for tourists who miss drive thru windows. Personally I miss the lechon.

Bahia Honda

There is a park in the Keys that sits astride deep water wedged between the new Highway One and the old Overseas Highway. It boasts what some people say is the Lower Keys' best beaches, a campground close to the noise of the Highway and some splendid views.

Last year, along with annual passes to the Tropic Cinema and the Red Barn Theater and my annual newspaper subscription, I also got a year round pass to Florida State Parks. During my lunch breaks I like to ride down to Fort Zachery, the true Southernmost Point and read by the waters of Key West Harbor. At home I like to take a 20 minute ride from time to time and spend a few hours wandering Bahia Honda. When my childhood buddy Giovanni came to visit, we took the motorcycles for a spin...to Bahia Honda.

It was perfectly sunny and warm enough in the direct sunlight to get Giovanni, a tourist like any other not used to Florida winters, into the spirit of the seaside. He loves to travel and take home pictures of places.

Bahia Honda is a sliver of land straddling the Overseas Highway at one of the most picturesque of Flagler's old railroad bridges. This particular structure was so solid engineers decided in the late 30's to run the roadbed atop the girders and the whole thing is still there though unused of course. It would be too cool to keep this, and the old seven mile bridge, open to slow, one way, tourist traffic with lots of parking and viewing spaces, but Florida is not a forward looking state, so the old structures are left to rot and they are rotting very very slowly, a testament to their builders' dedication. Everything is scary and dangerous to the State.

Too many people come to the Keys for the beaches, those long silky strands they would actually find around Fort Myers or Sarasota. It makes some visitors testy to find their expectations dashed, as though its the Keys' fault the tourists fail to do their research. For those of us who choose to live here, Bahia Honda ("deep bay" in Spanish) is a refuge of the first order.

I never used to come here because dogs aren't welcome on the beaches (Rangers make it clear they don't want dogs in the park. Period!) and when Emma was alive I preferred not to waste a minute away from her. Now that I am dog-less Bahia Honda is mine to enjoy with just a quick flash of my annual pass.

El Yunque

Its a mountain peak on the northeast corner of the island of Puerto Rico that dominates the surrounding countryside. It's peak pops in and out of the cloud cover that streams overhead dropping frequent rains that give it the title of the only tropical rain forest in the US Forest Service system. Its not a National Park, so there's no fee to enter and there's no guard hut at the entrance,there's just a sign though there is also a visitor center near the entrance on the only road in. That would be Highway 191 which is barely marked at the turn off on the major Highway 3 which runs from Fajardo to San Juan through the snowbird condos of Luquillo. The southern entrance to the Forest has apparently been closed for years by landslides so you can only get in from the north, and I am guessing that in winter the place is a raging zoo. In November, even on Veterans weekend it wasn't crowded at all. This is a place of abundant flora, eg: bamboo, extra large of course, on the road in. We discovered a place that was fantastic beyond our wildest dreams. It had a magical quality that wasn't the least bit expected. The roadway is a series of undulating curves winding around the hillside, with ample pullouts to allow riders to stop and check out the waterfalls, still wet even as dry season takes over: And overgrown fantasy creeks, with my youthful colleague leaping from rock to rock for the perfect picture: and views across the mountain to the ocean

with Cayo Icacos nestled just offshore from Fajardo:

The vegetation is astonishing, fairy-tale like. Such is the abundance and size of the trees, palms and ferns, one feels transported to another planet. This is the Caribbean as it must have been 600 years ago before European development of agriculture and plantations, or the arrival of crisp white rental Toyotas, I daresay. It was, as my wife, a native Californian reluctantly put it, "more awe inspiring than the redwoods." How true.

There are some oddities about El Yunque (pronounced: Ell Jew-nk-ay, by locals), that include stray dogs abandoned roadside by people I would like to strangle were I to meet them. I'd rather not dwell on that aspect as the dogs wouldn't be lured to the car for transport to Save-A-Sato, Puerto Rico's humane society in San Juan...Another issue is locals who run knick knack shops in the forrest who oppose the organization of the Forest into a more eco-friendly and less car oriented attraction:

"Say NO to the trolleys of El Yunque" Conch trains are a bone of contention in Key West so I have some sympathy with the locals on this one. I'd have more if the store owners in the forest treated the dogs better... (gotta let it go!). And then there is the Puerto Rican penchant for just stopping wherever the urge takes you. If you see a fern you want to photograph, stop the car immediately, let the family pour out and start clicking. I got into the spirit of this craziness and we learned to do as the locals do and stop the Corolla anywhere the fancy took us. Our white rental car wasn't the fanciest vehicle in the park by a long chalk.

Naturally we barely had time to drive up and back, feed the stray (gotta let it go!), and get out of the park before dark. Next time I'd like to spend real time in El Yunque and explore the myriad trails that disappear into the jungle. Now that I know what an enchanted forest this is, complete with its own fairy tale castle drifting in and out of the clouds at the top of the hill

I would put The Caribbean National Forest of my list of places to see before I die, had I not see it already. And I will advise visitors to bring along some dog food and water for the Satos crouching, waiting hopelessly for their owners to return to collect them...Strays. I just can't let them go.

Streets of Key West

A 65 degree winter afternoon on the corner of Olivia and Windsor, with a Bonneville taking a break from fighting traffic. Its that time of year again when we have to try to figure out how the hell we're going to get in and out of old town Key West. It seems early but the snowbirds are back already. Lots of out of state tags, Ohio is well represented already, as is Pennsylvania and some of the smaller New England states. Also, at work we're starting to get more parking violation calls, sleepers on sidewalks, and all those "quality of life" complaints that out-of-towners like to complain about Key West.

What this means for someone like me is that scooter parking spaces are tending to fill up. Streets are clogged with SUV's which barely fit in the narrow streets and even a man on a Bonneville needs to plan his approaches to his favorite haunt. The Tropic cinema is on the wrong side of Duval Street, a block west on Eaton Street and that is a location that requires a well thought out approach. My trouble is that I like hanging out at home till the last possible minute and I end up leaving late and having to make up the time on the way.

Soooo, avoid North Roosevelt ("the Boulevard"), Palm Avenue and Truman. Flagler can be a drag and South Roosevelt, though four lanes, connects to Atlantic Avenue which feeds into the Higgs Beach area which is a clogging point. Problematic eh? as there are only three roads into town once you get past the Triangle at the Cow Key Bridge from Stock Island.

Hmmm. By the time Burger King on Stock Island heaves into view the fun part of the ride is pretty much over on the open road. This is where I slow down and slip into the traffic flow. Once over the Cow Key Bridge I get in the middle lane and turn left onto South Roosevelt. So far so good, the dozy car drivers haven't had a chance to get too clogged, so we turn right at the second street available, just before the lights at Flagler where cars get backed up. The second street is Eagle Avenue, wide smooth and tree lined, the best of New Town.

It's plagued with a few too many stop signs, so one has to accept that alternative routes may not be as fast as the main streets- that's why the drones line up on the Boulevard and wait in line for their turn. We, instead keep moving and enjoying the scenery.

For a quick and scenic ride into old town I like Catherine Street which runs from George Street (an easy escape from the Boulevard at Miami Subs if you get muddled and stuck in traffic at Garrison Bight). These cars are coming from Miami Subs heading towards the trolley depot on Flagler. If they need to get out of town they'll drive straight across Flagler to Atlantic and turn left following the south coast back to the Triangle.

George is one way from the Boulevard to Flagler and on to Atlantic so you can't get to Catherine from Flagler. But once you line up on Catherine you get a straight shot to Thomas, and very scenic it is too, in my opinion.This is a two way street which leaves one pondering why people insist on driving huge vehicles on this small island. Never mind, some of us get to have fun on two wheels.

Simonton and Duval tend to be a mess, with Whitehead Street not far behind. Thus we follow Catherine all the way to the Community pool where it dead ends and we sweep smoothly to the right and find ourselves on Thomas Street, in the heart of Bahama Village.

This is where Key West comes alive on the streets, where the city's black citizens try to hold on to island life. Kids play on the streets, older folks sit out on porches and sidewalks and some tourists find it picturesque, others wonder if its "safe." There's no neighborhood that isn't safe in Key West, but who am I to break down prejudice when it leaves me a cross town street less traffic'ed?

After the movie the problem is how to get out of town. I generally take Duval or Simonton south and then take a left on Olivia, a one way street that flies directly out to Eisenhower, crossing Frances and White on the way.Olivia is a narrow one way and gets clogged if too many scooters or bicycles get in the way, their riders peering at the cemetery alongside. Olivia is one of my favorite streets, typifying Old Town, narrow, picturesque with a variety of tumbledown, heavily vegetated and restored conch homes. Anyway, follow Olivia to Eisenhower, take a right at the dead end and get on Truman briefly, past the Police Station ( wave to me as you go) and take a right at Miami Subs on George all the way to South Roosevelt.

And that's the tour that I'll be taking all winter long to avoid jams and crowds and the limitations make the four mile long island even smaller than it is in the fall when crowds shrivel away and we get a few quiet weeks before Fantasy Fest starts the year all over again. There must be something about Key West, why else would everyone keeping drifting down for a visit?

Oh Lucky Man!

It looks like Paradise Lost: I could have lived among these rolling hills these past 25 years, but I chose America instead. I never wanted to confront the outcome of my choice until this past summer when I went home to Italy for the first time.
They write novels about what happens when prodigal sons go back to the place of their birth a generation or two later. These books are popular in North American literature, land of migrants and displaced people par excellence. Americans want to recreate their roots and imagine a better, more comfortable life in a world left behind. Those that know me are polite but incredulous when they discover I come from Umbria the land of hill towns, castles and a panoply of saints. There were no saints in my family, but there is a castle.

I left Italy for the last time in the Spring of 1982, I rode away one night on my motorcycle never to return, and arrived in California in the Fall of that same year after ditching the Yamaha for an airline ticket. I returned to Umbria in the summer of 2007 and found myself in a world that looked very similar even after the passage of 25 years, but was subtly different in more ways than I expected, not least because of massive alterations in my perspective. The first thing I had to get used to was seeing many faces I remembered as living people, now posted as photos in the cemetery next to my mother's own grave. My sister is an old woman now and her husband of 40 years is almost as old as his father was when I lived here. I am no longer the impetuous stranger my sister says she remembers. I am the American.

On the surface my sister and her husband were delighted to see me back in the village whence I had fled a quarter century ago. I rode out of town because life had become too painful, I was into adulthood just seven years and my future looked bleak and featureless, an unravelling of the decades in the same place doing the same thing, over and over again. We lived on the land and the cycles are unchanging, ploughing, sowing , reaping as the seasons turn. They made a movie about this syndrome called Groundhog Day, wherein the main character relives the same day over and over again without explanation. My sisters, twins and ten years older than me, relished the prospect and they grasped the rural life with a hunger that was frightening to watch. They stomped any obstacles to their desires and I was clearly not acceptable because I was miserable as the anointed figurehead, the only male in a family wedded to the land whose demands on me I loathed. Farming was not my mistress- little wonder I took to living on sailboats in California!

Such an unpromising start gave my life an urgency that can be off putting to those around me who fondly pretend that life is an endless circus.

Its not, and watching my mother make a painful transition out of this world when she was just 49, and not ready to go, has always been at the back of my mind when someone blithely says: "Oh, there's plenty of time."

In those same novels I mentioned earlier the young migrant lands on the shores of the New World filled with hope and a determination to succeed, and thus far my life agreed with the script. Where it all went very different than the script was in my definition of success. For me that came not in money accumulated in the bank, but in memories accumulated in my mind, the place that was always mine, not susceptible to moth nor rust, and eminently portable. I needed to create memories, to live more than one life within the span of however few years I had. And to be able to keep those memories wherever I ended up. A true Nomad.

On my own terms I was successful, however a Buddhist watching my progress would have had a serious case of the head shakes. This constant need to plan change, to prepare for something different, to quit and move on was the very opposite of the notion of mindfulness. My requirement was to live in the future, failing completely to appreciate the moment. I have suffered most of my life from a total incapacity to appreciate the moment, and this has forced me always to plan and project the future on the screen of my mind.

As an exercise in Buddhist serenity my life has been a failure but I have found that my frenzied formula has worked for me, inasmuch as I am learning, late in life, to settle down, to be mindful, to cherish the moment. I liken my situation to that of the fictional immigrant of literature who has accumulated a fortune and now wants to spend it buying the life he passed by on his way to racking up his financial security. I have stored up all the different phases of my life in America and this past summer was the time when i had to go to the bank and start withdrawing them to pay them down against the memories of my youth in the countryside on the banks of the Tiber River, that same river mentioned in the histories of Rome, upon whose banks Western Civilization built many of its foundations. To me, as a child, it was a muddy place to splash away the oppressive heat of summer.

There has been method to my madness because at a time when many men are going off the rails in a "mid life crisis" so called, my mid life crisis is the impelling desire to settle down in my job, not flee from it. I ride a motorcycle not because I want to appear younger or sexier or more attractive but because in a world where personal travel is a constant requirement, moving on two wheels keeps the mindfulness at maximum pitch, which is a pleasure as opposed to the dreariness of droning along in a line in a car.

Lots of motorcycle riders hold safety as the prime concern when they ride; for me mindfulness is what counts. Enjoying the moment is critical and part of the enjoyment comes from paying attention to my fellow travelers as they pass by, using their time in their cars to read phone eat talk doze or dream. Anything but focusing on the moment. Mindfulness keeps me aware that tomorrow a wreck may end or cripple the life I never take for granted. I felt that most clearly recently when I was stuck in a commercial airliner! I was riding into Fort Lauderdale airport and the plane suddenly opened up its engines and clawed back into the sky for a second attempt at the runway. Death seemed real close right then and, paradoxically, a long way from my motorcycle!

The home I grew up in, a home that was in reality a twelfth century castle, was a place I couldn't wait to escape from. Romantic for sure, but uncomfortable and unnecessarily huge, which in a world of suburban conformity makes me sound churlish and narrow. I among millions of dreamers have actually lived in a castle and have made the trade to a 700 square foot stilt house on a canal in the Keys. Palazzo Paparini in all its faded glory, no longer mine to worry about:50 rooms, seven bedrooms in my apartment alone, and only three of those spaces centrally heated. Water flooding the basement, an electrical system as medieval as the 12th century walls all covered by a leaky roof the size of three tennis courts. Not to mention a basement area huge enough to store grain for a ten year siege and wine barrels large enough to live in:That this beneficence was not enough for me caused massive ructions in and around my family, and my desire to live a fresh life made me feel ashamed. The arguments, the insults and the scorn are ignored in polite conversation now in the village, but they burned a scar on my soul. I am old enough to keep the scar covered in polite society now, and that made my return possible.

To be a prodigal from Umbria is to be cast out from one of the newly hip places on the planet, to be a refugee from Eden, to be a Displaced Person, with a cardboard suitcase and a name tag tied to one's collar. That DP is a displaced person to be pitied by fellow travelers who get to see Umbria through the rose tinted lenses of a wide eyed tourist. The story is that Adam and Eve suffered torment after their expulsion, my story is one of expulsion that led to great good fortune that could never have been replicated living alongside my sisters. Even if that life were lived in a castle.

There is a widely held belief that la dolce vita exists on the sidewalks of Italian cities, a languid lifestyle of slow food, friendship and endless witty conversations helped along by manic hand gestures. Not so. I remember vividly when my childhood buddy who grew up alongside me came to California and witnessed all the folks reading and swallowing pastries in a local coffee shop mid morning on a weekday, and he groaned in envy. " I wish I had time to live like this," he said. He doesn't even see it as a possibility for him when he retires as the Italian state pension system is running out of money and retirement age keeps getting pushed back... not very dolce at all. My sisters on the other hand, live day to day with no definition, no goals, and no sense of time, and they have learned to vegetate successfully, noblesse oblige, I suppose. My life would have driven them mad years ago, as theirs did me, and so one cannot say that life is better or worse one way or the other. But I do know this: I should have withered years ago had I remained down on the farm, and my dread-filled visit home after a quarter century absence confirmed in me the validity of my choice. I have no doubt they would not have wanted their life any other way. It was Morruzze all the way.And that is true fortune, to have confirmed by Time, the aptitude of one's youthful vision. Filmmaker Federico Fellini died wishing more people shared his vision, he wanted his weird and complex dreams to be as popular in his words as Steven Spielberg's simplistic, cheerful fairy tales. I know that is impossible because I have lived a portion of both visions and I know which one is more completely livable. I escaped from Amarcord and cracked a whip like Indiana Jones, and have had tremendous fun exploring the souks of my mind along the way.

I am a Lucky Man.

Comida Cubana

For decent Cuban food, in Key West at least, you need real Cuban bread, which looks and tastes like floppy supermarket "French bread." French bread in France is crisp and hard on the outside and heavily aerated with a rough texture inside. In the US of A, French bread is a long pale loaf with a soft spongy interior. I'm not going to elaborate on what kind of a baking blasphemy produces an "English" muffin.

A three-dollar Cuban breakfast, cafe con leche with pan con queso at Five Brothers Deli on Ramrod Key, a staple Keys breakfast easily replicated at any of a number of Cuban delis in Key West- Seven Days, Kims Kuban, Little Jon's, Five Brothers ( the original store), Jeanas Courthouse, and on and on. A con leche with as many sugars as your teeth can stand along with a slice of Cuban bread filled with American cheese (Swiss if you're a wuss), toasted, and you're good till lunch. A con leche is just an abbreviated cafe con leche and is nothing more complicated than a cafe latte, as sold in Starbucks for three times the price.

A "Cuban mix" is Cuban bread with layers of cheese, roast pork, ham and pickles wedged between mustard and mayo and then squashed in a sandwich press which makes the whole thing flat, smooth and warm. You order thusly:" A Cuban mix, all the way, and a con leche with one." All the way gets you all the ingredients on offer including a smear of mayo and mustard. On the sandwich that is; "with one" gets you the appropriate number of sugars. If you're a Conch you need at least 5, possibly 8 in your con leche.

For dinner expect pork or pork, roast or fried (!) possibly shredded (ropa vieja), ground beef with olives (picadillo), or you could deviate from the favorite Cuban meat and go with flank steak served with a ton of lightly grilled onions on top. There are of course your wussy alternatives: grilled chicken or fish for those that can't digest fried pork chunks washed down with sangria and heavily buttered chunks of Cuban bread. Accompaniment is always rice and beans, separate or mixed (moros y cristianos), and as I'm not overly fond of black beans all the time, I try to see if I can get red beans, garbanzo beans, white (navy) beans or Lima beans depending on where I am eating out. This is not your average nouvelle cuisine large plate- tiny portions fare offered up in suburban American. Eating Cuban is a robust rough and tumble, napkins at the neck and stout cutlery to fight back the waves of food.

A word about plantains. These are NOT bananas even though they look like them, and conchs like to call them bananas to confuse lily white Northerners. They are a (relatively) sugar-free starch and taste foul uncooked. Plantains can come hard fried and served sprinkled with salt (tostones), which, along with some ketchup make an excellent appetizer, or soft fried in oil and they end up looking slimy and brown and are utterly delicious, like sweetened, sticky bananas.

In my opinion a side of these things do away with the need for a dessert but if you figure how much sugar your average Cuban consumes you'll understand why you can always have flan, a cream caramel indistinguishable from the Mexican variety. Better is the natilla, a soft vanilla flavored pudding often sprinkled with a little ground cinnamon. Sometimes, if my wife isn't looking I can order a tres leches, three milk pudding layered and sticky and a heavenly reminder of imprisonment in English boarding school. Then they pour you into a wheelbarrow and roll you home, stuffed like a fois gras goose.

Do not make the mistake of assuming Cuban food (as served in the Keys and Miami- God knows what they eat on the island itself, fresh air sandwiches if the propaganda is to be believed) is anything other than a minor variant on general Caribbean rice-meat-beans, cooking. It is not Mexican, in that its not sauced or spicy. It has tons of variants with adherents to each variation, and other cultures get mixed in like this orange colored ("Spanish" style) rice made with tomato sauce at Coco's Cantina on Cudjoe Key when the daily special was $9 beef stew.

Notice the bowl of black beans, quite delicious actually, stewed with onions and served with a spoon. A Cuban or a Conch would make a hole in the rice and spoon in the beans to make their own "Christians and Moors" mixture of black and white. I just used the spoon supplied in place of the fork. The stew was so tender it didn't need a knife. And in the end you need a decent motorcycle, any motorized two wheeler, not necessarily a Triumph Bonneville, to get there, lacking a wheelbarrow to get you home.

Vespa vs Bonneville

"This is a jewel," my buddy said to me, after we stopped to stretch our legs on the way in to Key West. We swapped machines and he took off on the Bonneville this time and I plunked myself down on the GTS. Then, a dozen miles further down the road we stopped alongside the Key West "International" Airport, and took in the sea and the sun and the motorcycles we had just parked. "Ah yes," he said. "The Bonneville, what a machine..."

I am in limbo just now, holding both the outgoing GTS and the incoming Bonneville and I wonder how to value each or either. In a more ideal world, perhaps a world of air conditioned garages and time and space to ride more than one machine at a time one could consider keeping both, but in my life, in my time/space continuum there is room for one just one machine. Besides the wife insists. We have bills to pay, bills I'd rather ignore.

The Vespa, there is no doubt, has come a long way over the past 60 years. The GTS is frequently described as half a motorcycle, thanks to its top speed, near 80 mph, and its ability to accelerate there relatively fast, fast enough to force car drivers to have to try very very hard if they want to get ahead. It costs as much as a motorcycle, $6200 out the door in Miami. It carries lots of rational luggage spaces, in front, in the middle and in the back, it holds the road well, it accelerates smoothly and it looks a million dollars.

The seating is as comfortable as anything on two wheels and the ample floorboards not only offer excellent weather protection to the feet and legs, but they also allow the rider to move around and assume different stances to relieve any physical strain from sitting in one position.

The shortcomings of the Vespa as a distance rider are mostly in the mind, and in a town where scooters are popular and small, like Key West, it is, paradoxically, inconceivable that a man could use a motor scooter as a daily rider on the Highway. It gets tedious justifying an 80mph/70mpg Vespa as something more than "just an urban scooter." A 250cc Vespa GTS is neither fish nor fowl, it is a scooter but it rides like a motorcycle. Its easy to ride but presents itself as a machine for neophytes, for people who have never challenged themselves with a motorcycling stick shift; the Vespa is for people who do not dare to ride the "real thing." I remember an entry in the Scooter in the Sticks blog discussing a television icon on a motorcycle who renders visual the notion of motorcycling freedom by taking to the beach (Ocean Beach in San Francisco I rather think) and riding his grossly uncomfortable chopper with ape hangars in his hands and a wool watch cap on his head. The question posed was, roughly, can one aspire to be all that the television program implied, if one rides a Vespa? It's a good question, but the fact that it is posed, and unanswerable, leaves the Vespa in limbo.

The Triumph Bonneville is the 1960s icon of macho everything, it leaves no question unanswered if you want to wear a watch cap (in a no-helmet-law state like Florida) and be a real man. However the New Bonneville gets its grunt from an extra 200cc's on the original 650 (the original original frightened the pants off wannabe motorcyclists with just 500cc's) and it behaves impeccably from the time it starts to the time it sits cooling and ticking under the house after the ride.The Bonnie is a powerful motorcycle also capable of lumping along much more slowly without hesitation or hiccough, and with modest saddlebags and a modest top case it runs to and from work with the greatest of ease. In a nod to its heritage it uses a manual fuel tap and a manual choke (fuel injection is on the horizon) and in standard form it is not much louder than the Vespa. Chain maintenance is easier than I expected with my funny little Loobman bottle and so far the tubed tires haven't had a flat so I can't bitch about how hard a roadside temporary repair is on these "old fashioned" tubes. I wish it came with a tachometer but will be a later, $400, addition. For $7700 out the door its a nice all round motorcycle. Where it wins out over the Vespa, in my opinion is in the reduced overall maintenance schedule. The vespa needs its drive belt changed every 6,000 miles and the rear tire every 4,000 if you're lucky and it lasts that long. For someone who rides a thousand or more miles a month "Vespanomics" doesn't compute.

In the image department it is everything a rider from the 1970s could wish for. I love the rear suspension, two separate springs bolted to an obvious frame- a look that has gone out of style on modern machines. I look at the big round headlight, all 7 inches of it, and it makes me feel like I have gone back to the glories of years past. The fuel tank is rounded too as a fuel tank should be, and sits astride a "proper" frame, the carburettors sit modestly behind the air cooled engine fins doing their jobs without pumps or chips or electrons. It gives me the best of modern motorcycling function along with the visual cues that remind me where I have come from in terms of motorcycling. It satisfies. All this and it holds the road just fine, not like a modern race bike but in every way that counts for a street rider. Its a bonus for me that no one questions my choice of wheels when I putt up behind a sleepy cager led by that big headlamp on top of those huge wheels and powered by that ugly black lump of metal that clearly takes no prisoners. No explanation, no justification is needed as I slide on by, epitomizing the freedom of the open road. This is what the Intrepid Commuter on his blog calls a shifter, as opposed to a scooter. In my case it shifts traffic right out of the way.

And a lot of the pleasure of the Bonnie is image of course. A younger version of myself would ride the Street Triple by Triumph, 675ccs "only" but producing 109 horsepower to the Bonneville's 66hp (or the Vespa's 22hp). If I were 20 right now that's what I would ride. If form follows function this has to be a most superbly functional machine and it has a style that allows one to see past the ugly headlamps and the exposed "plumber's nightmare" of engine piping (more famously said of Vincents of yore) . Its purposeful, if you like an agrressive angular look. Obviously I don't.

Or if I were a long distance traveler I might have spent twice the money and bought a 1050cc Triumph Sprint with factory supplied hard travel bags.But I don't need the horsepower, I don't need the crouch and I am not yet ready for the modern look. I like my modern classic, be it a scooter or a shifter.

I have the Bonnie, and though I shall eventually miss the Vespa when its sold, I ride a motorcycle that not only fills the visual cues a middle aged man looks for in his ride, it justifies his self image as an accomplished rider, and demands enough competence to make it an object of justifiable pride.

"You know," my childhood friend said as he lit up a cigarette on the side of the road. "This thing rides just as easily as a scooter." "Thats right" I replied, remembering once again how he and I grew up together, riding together. Nowadays he rides a massive BMW 1200 that easily hauls him and his wife up the autostrada.

"This is the best of all worlds," he said, admiring the Bonneville. Who am I to disagree?

Driving The Speed Limit

So, the question for me is whether Puerto Ricans, taken as a whole, are imbeciles or mathematical geniuses, and the line between madness and greatness is a fine one. Here's the thing: get into a rental car at the airport and the whole experience is pure US. The rental agent is spiffy in her uniform, even at 3:30 am, cheerful and efficient. The car looks like a US rental, steering wheel on the proper side, speedometer in miles per hour, and the vehicle comes dent and scratch free.

On the road, signage is all American, yellow center lines and white speed limit signs in miles per hour (millas por hora, I suppose), and then you notice the mile markers- in kilometers! What the hell? Distances are in metric? Then, eventually you go to fill up and it just gets worse. The first weird thing you'll notice is that the octane rating sticker is cross hatched with a blade to make it impossible to remove so the operator can't sell you regular for premium. Like any other state Puerto Rico's office of weights and measures certify that the pumps spew gas at the indicated rate, but the pumps are calibrated in liters- actually in litres. The average price for regular was about the same as the mainland, around 75 cents ( which at 4 litres to the US gallon equals a tad under $3.00).

I'm fussy about these kinds of things and my mind is reeling. I'm measuring speed in mph, distances in kilometers and measuring my gas in liters while cars are rated at mpg. Its a system of such mind boggling complexity one can only assume that Puerto Rican drivers are geniuses at mental arithmetic, all of them, or more likely they just don't much care. This alone would make me crazy were I to live on the island. A solid decade of prosperity has changed a lot of things on the island and driving habits are among them. There are malls, sprouting to service new housing developments and traffic signals everywhere to slow traffic to a crawl. Certainly the population has increased to about 4 million and the island is still only 100 miles long (160 kilometers I suppose) and half as wide making it the highest density neighborhood in the Caribbean. However Puerto Ricans seemed more friendly and relaxed than I remembered them. Perhaps it was the time of year, which was the end of hurricane season yet not quite crazy tourist time so people were less stressed.

Most chose not to run traffic lights and very few passed on the shoulder when we were driving the expressway (autopista). Most surprising of all was the way everyone obeyed the speed limit, which was ridiculously slow, 55 or 60 mph.Motorcyclists, almost all of whom rode Suzuki Hayabusas ("the fastest production motorcycle in the world"- possibly) helped to make me feel a little less lonely at the front of the pack of slow moving cars. I developed a theory that people drove slowly because they liked to make the island feel bigger. After all one could drive from Fajardo clear across to Mayaguez on more-or-less four lane expressways in three hours, easily. On a Hayabusa in two, and at either end there is nothing but open ocean.

This was also I am proud to announce one motoring trip where I never got pulled over. This summer I was nabbed in Croatia doing 74 in a 50 (kph) and only avoided a fine by the skin of my teeth. I also got pulled over for doing 50 in a 30 (mph) on Grand Cayman and got off with a warning. However my pride at not getting stopped is tempered somewhat by the odd nature of Puerto Rican policing which for reasons known only to themselves requires police cars to drive around in the hours of darkness with their blue lights flashing. This makes concealment difficult, to say the least. And the hordes of early morning drunk drivers take full advantage. That was exciting driving.

I loved the winding twisty roads, the sort of terrain one doesn't see anywhere in Florida, least of all the Keys, and the mountains of Puerto Rico deserve an entry of their own, their beauty is staggering, but for some reason Puerto Rico has more vegetation over their roads than any place else I've driven and it makes the most mundane road delightful.The towns we passed through on the secondary roads exuded a European air that gave the drive an exotic flavor. Churches faced on squares that centered the communities in defiance of the US habit of creating urban agglomerations that are centered on sprawl. The homes were modest for the most part, but I was surprised by the civic spirit that got the Christmas decorations in place so early in the "season" as it were. Yacubo at dawn on Saturday was cheerful with festive lights twinkling overhead.

Even in broad daylight the village of Palmer, the gateway to El Yunque, is a profusion of green, some of it out of control in this overly fertilized island.Motorcycling certainly looked appealing, despite the abundance of holes, countersunk manhole covers and sudden, poorly marked road works. The twists and turns, spectacular views and abundance of destinations made Puerto Rico look like Bonneville country to this Triumph rider. I did actually spot three Vespas (Puerto Rico Vespistas I have no doubt- I am a fan of their occasional website entries) among the multitude of Chinese scooters on the roads and I have been pondering the feasibility of a road trip to Puerto Rico on my own wheels even though Harleys are for rent in San Juan. Air freight to PR anyone? Not all Puerto Rican riders looked self assured though and I always cringe when I see scooter riders in Key West pulling this stunt: Hitting your foot on the ground as you roll along is an excellent way to walk with a limp for the rest of your life. At least he was complying with the new Puerto Rico motorcycling rules (since suspended temporarily) requiring all riders to wear protective clothing with additional dorky reflective vests at night. The Puerto Rican Legislature has now decided to hear from actual motorcycle riders about the best way to reduce roadway casualties. Education would be my bet.

Driving a car was fun but riding a motorcycle... I was almost glad to get home and prep the Bonneville to resume commuting.

Oil Coral and Sewage

San Francisco Bay is still smeared with more than 40,000 gallons of ships fuel that spilled from the China Overseas Shipping Corporation ship Busan, which hit a bridge piling and split open one of its fuel tanks. I listened on NPR to frantic volunteers trying to help clean up some of the 58,000 gallons that escaped the ship's side a few days ago, and one of the bright sparks suggested something needs to be done to prevent a re-occurrence.

The last such San Francisco Bay accident occurred in 1988, an incident I can't even recall to be honest, and considering the amount of ship's traffic in the Bay its amazing this doesn't happen more often. In the 21st century I find it weird that Chevron has a massive refining plant in urban Richmond, what was once wild East Bay boondocks. The potential for catastrophe is ever present, and the fact that ships aren't crashing all the time is a testament to human ingenuity.

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Just last week federal officials at Fort Jefferson National Park were trying to figure out how much damage a Bahamian freighter had done to the corals after it chose to anchor illegally in the National Park. It struck me as odd, because a century ago that was precisely the Dry Tortugas' purpose- a safe haven in heavy weather for passing ships. The Fort overlooks a deep basin of water, more than 50 feet deep surrounded by islets and reefs. Nowadays the idea is to allow natural growth to flourish in the old shipping haven, and anchoring is not allowed to wreck the coral growth. Interestingly the Park has also become a marine nursery, a place where fish species are allowed to grow and multiply allowing them to be reintroduced to waters where they have been fished to extinction. The federally funded Park 70 miles west of Key West is a national resource though not directly a commercial one.

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The recent report stating unequivocally that human sewage is killing the coral reef in the Keys has prompted more discussion about the federal mandate (unfunded so far) to have the Keys completely sewered by 2010. Everyone knows that's not going to happen on schedule, and switching homeowners from cesspits (that filter nothing in the limestone rock they are built in) to proper sewage treatment is going to cost about $10,000 per household, so thats another source of concern. The hope is that the feds will cough up some cash, but other perhaps more resilient locals argue that we don't deserve federal funds because its our shit, as they so eloquently put it. However it is everyone's reef, and I'd be as sorry to see it destroyed, as I am to see the beaches of San Francisco Bay getting covered in oil. I'm glad my federal dollars are helping with that clean up.

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One nation, all clean and tidy.

Enchanted Island

A weekend in Puerto Rico- que rico! It wasn't so flavorful the last time I was there, fully 14 years ago, a stop over on our honey moon (spent sailing the Grenadines- She has put up with a lot). Naturally because I don't do beach vacations we rented a car and I started driving the hell out of the little island as soon as we landed on Saturday at 4am, Atlantic Time at La Mercedita Airport at Ponce ( pro: Pon-say, not "ponse" as English speakers tend to; in British English that would be suggestive). It was pitch black and my wife and I were tired, not nearly as worn out as the third member of our little troop, a colleague half our age and twice as exhausted, who had never been outside the USA. I know Puerto Rico, la colonia, is part of the US, but it isn't in any cultural terms other than shopping and currency. It was a fine place to step outside oneself, even if only for a short weekend.

In the viewing tower in the Caribbean National Forest.

It was a hallucinogenic drive after arrivng so suddenly from the order and banality of urban South Florida to find ourselves darting through villages, under spreading canopies of imposing trees, dodging drunk drivers, getting lost in picturesque towns with Spanish Colonial plazas and helpful islanders who took pity and kept re-directing our Toyota full of gringos, Spanish speaking its true, but unable to decipher the multiplicity of vague roadsigns.

We found a hotel overlooking the Caribbean, facing east down a slope of green to a deep dark sea below, the island of Vieques on the horizon and we fell asleep Saturday morning. We awoke four hours later, to a world neither my wife nor I remembered, 15 years of prosperity have created a new more self confident, Free Associated State, with cleaner streets, better roads and happier people, it seemed. Our young colleague spent the 48 hours struggling to absorb a culture that she had never even come close to encountering, never having been further from Florida than the venerable state of Oklahoma, which though a fine place in many respects is poor preparation indeed for Puerto Rico, the enchanted island.

The whole weekend was a series of wild trips, El Yunque, San Juan the capital, seen at night, la Ruta Panoramica across the mountains and roast suckling pig eaten under the pines of the highlands, in Cayey, where else? A series of wild postcards, plopped into two very full days living, and a sudden undramatic flight back to Fort Lauderdale before dawn Monday morning with reinsertion into our daily, sub tropical lives. From 90 degrees to 70 degrees in two lofty hours. Here's Cabo Rojo at the southwestern tip of the Island at sunset, as mosquitoes descended in hordes to ravage us. Quick! A Medalla Light for him and a Rum Punch for her to revive their bloodless bodies! You don't see cliffs like these in the Florida Keys.

One excellent feature of my eccentric job is long alternating weekends, one of work followed by one of freedom. This trip was an experiment to see if two red eyes connected by unplanned travel might work. It did, and I have tons of stories and pictures for my diary. Que sabroso!

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.

Bridge Fishing

Here's the thing: because I live in the Keys I am supposed to enjoy fishing: but I don't. I have fished, I have felt the wiggle of the captured critter on both hook and spear, I have whacked fish on the head, I have filleted them (inexpertly I might add) and the whole exercise fills me with horror. Beyond all the blood guts and scales I find the notion that I should spend hours of my precious life staring idiotically into the deep blue sea hoping to pit my wits against a fish to be...grotesque. Worse yet the fish might prove beyond doubt they are smarter than I. And my final argument against casting a line is that in the Keys there are numerous excellent fish shops that sell 'em fresh and raw, and even the most hopeless hole-in-the-wall has to work very hard indeed to make a hash of a plate of fish inevitably cooked by frying grilling or blackening. This enigmatic chair disappeared from the old bridge connecting Big Pine Key to the misnomered West Summerland Key, a few days after I photographed it. Damned if I know how they got it there...Just another fishing mystery, I suppose. And believe me when I say that I am very much alone in my despair at the entire culture of fishing. To live in the Keys and not to care to fish is like a priest living in a brothel, not only is it a stupid waste of time in your neighbor's eyes it is damned near immoral. And I even have a skiff at my dock, which I take out all the time! Just to go swimming? How bizarre!

Its a sad day when I have to haul the boat out of the water, but its just too cold to go swimming anymore, with air temperatures under 80 degrees and water temperatures barely holding at 75, though they both feel far lower. The boat is now on the trailer enjoying my mechanical attentions before it gets set aside for the next few months. Were I an angler I would be reduced, as it were, to fishing from a bridge; as it is I'm just going to miss wandering around the back country and swimming in the tepid, clear waters of the Keys.
Driving down the Overseas Highway if one can take one's eyes off the turquoise waters, there are simply tons of people fishing from the bridges formed by the old road which was created from Flagler's original Oversea Railroad bridges which are now approaching their one hundredth birthdays, and remain as solid as ever despite the State's fearfulness.

Monroe County works at keeping the near shore waters clean, providing containers for unneeded mono filament line which kills birds, fish and mammals when abandoned in the waters, as it usually is. There are also lots of trash cans placed everywhere a needy fisherman might want to use one. They don't prevent trash from ending up along the road, but the trucks which haul garbage from Key West to the mainland since the incinerator (that produced electricity from waste as a bonus) was shut down in favor of a sweetheart deal to a garbage hauler, let fly a whole lot more trash along the road from their inadequately covered trailers than fishermen dropping wrappers and cans.

Florida residents, as far as I can figure, don't need a license to fish saltwaters from a structure and locals do love to chase fish from these old bridges. You could call it a family sport. Some people are elaborate anglers, planting tents, hanging bright gas lanterns, sitting in chairs, sipping (sipping?) beer and reviewing the state of the world. Others head out with a bait net and lots of hope. All they need is a little help from their friends.At night their lights give them the appearance of campers huddled round the campfire,telling impossible fishing stories, possibly the best part of the whole standing around waiting for a bite thing. By day women bend over parapets revealing their lack of coverage, men prop their guts on the same concrete barriers, and families who fish together frequently, it seems, stick together. Its all terribly jolly.However the evidence of the lack of casting abilities of the many, droops from the overhead cables that carry electricity up and down the Keys.
It depends on your point of view whether these strands remind you of Spanish Moss or worse. For me it depends on my mood but I do enjoy seeing the spoons twirling in the sunset winking at me as I motorcycle by.

The sun drops on the end of another day, and aside from the few anglers out in the cold front breezes of a crystal clear night, commuters zip by on the new bridges, the odd motorcycle rumbles by and the tide comes running in bringing with it who knows what.
Only the fishers of fish know, lucky them. I wish I had it in me to be one of them.

Habemus Papam!

The white smoke this morning came in the form of a headline splashed across the top of the Citizen newspaper:

And that means Jimmy Weekly, Democrat, a long time commission member and three time mayor ran a terrible campaign, took lots of money from the wrong people and couldn't get past the fact that in his time he hired and backed the most oily, corrupt city manager that could ever be inflicted on a city. And the voters, 7,117 of the 13,000 eligible to vote in the city (I'm not one of them), declined to forget his abysmal record to avoid inflicting a buffoon on themselves again.

The hulking McPherson was"almost" speechless according to the paper when it was announced he's doubled his lead this time by winning with 56 spare votes. Yet it is well known that the mayor is in a permanent state of speechlessness, he is so inarticulate he'd be better off speaking publicly in pig Latin in Pidgin English. Furthermore his "good friend" the county Mayor came out of the shadows to greet his winning mayoral mate. The county Mayor is an uneducated neo-Fascist with about as much grasp of democratic lawmaking as a toad might have. Plus he supports a goat for county Adminstrator, a man with a record of shadowy dealings in his last job "up North" who has shown he can't administer a sock drawer without causing controversy division and massive budget deficits. What a crowd!

Arrgh! Fidel is right when he mocks our democracy and points out that elections are hopeless when the quality of candidates is so horribly low you'd rather vote for the man in the moon than either of these bozos. Oh well, I have a beard already, perhaps I'd better take up smoking cigars.

On a happier note hurricane season is over, I accidentally dipped a toe in the canal and the water is freezing, which is not surprising as a proper cold front has been basting the keys with north to northeast winds, bringing daytime highs down around 80 under crisp sunny skies and night time lows are below 75, all accompanied by fresh cooling winds. Its utterly delightful.

As long as you forget the politics.

Triumph Bonneville Review

I read something disturbing on the Triumphrat forum, a discussion of an ignition coil pick up that supposedly goes sour periodically, leading to difficult starts, stalling and eventually motor death and a trip to the dealer. Some suffer from it, others don't and those that do claim there is no known permanent cure. I found the discussion depressing, not least because owners of earlier Bonnevilles say the marque is going to seed. The moody authors make various arguments against Triumph's future including the fact that Bonnevilles are assembled in Thailand (engines still built at Hinckley, though), year '08 models are equipped with electronic fuel injection and carry plastic badges glued onto the new larger fuel tanks (built to accommodate the fuel injection pump). I've stopped reading the misery of how Triumphs are deteriorating to keep market share.

Personally I'm glad I'm riding the carburetted, air cooled 865cc Bonneville. I like the old fashioned relative simplicity of the vertical twin, and all too often EFI produces surging where the fuel injection system isn't as smooth as the older, less fuel efficient carburettors, which produce more pollution (marginally) and are thus less able to pass more stringent European "Euro 4" standards. The only issues I've had with the Vespa GTS have to do with the electronic black boxes that have been replaced under warranty. Fewer boxes on the Bonneville make this owner happy.

The Bonneville has turned out to be an excellent motorcycle, as most modern machines are. I like that it looks like a real motorcycle, that it looks the part as well as running superbly. It starts easily, assuming I remember to turn on the fuel and pull out the choke when the engine is cold. It rumbles along comfortably at 40mph in fifth gear and pulls cleanly all the way to the top, which I've tested to 95mph indicated, so far.

In commute mode I have saddlebags for my waterproofs and odds and ends, a top case for my man purse, a helmet lock on the rack, fork gaiters to protect the fork seals and sliders, a Parabellum sport shield, a Loobman to oil the chain, and a loving wife who indulges my pleasure on two wheels.

Nowadays I find my commute on Highway One has speeded up from my days of scootering...I've shaved my ride to Stock Island, 25 miles away, to 25 minutes instead of the usual 30. Passing cars on the highway is much simpler than it was with the Vespa, all I have to do is wait for the dotted yellow lines and then I wind the throttle open, no gear shifting, and I'm past.

The new windshield means I feel no air pressure on me at 70 or 75 mph which is a comfortable cruising speed on the open road. I know now that this size of engine, at 66 hp, is barely stressed running at speeds that put the Vespa 250, at 22hp, at the top end of it's scale, and it makes for a smooth, controlled ride.There is something fulfilling about the Trumpet, with its old fashioned style updated by the easy steering, the sure footed turns, smooth acceleration, absence of vibration, total lack of fuss. Its the Bonneville as it always should have been.

My Mexican Love

Ahh, the open road, the joy of riding for a goal, any goal, in the Lower Keys. I've set myself a challenge tougher perhaps than the search for the Holy Grail, and my results, after years of searching are mixed. Horchata, handmade corn tortillas, puerco, arroz y frijoles, all genuine and available for less than $8- this is definitely not Key West! Ride a little, eat a lot-and its all good stuff!
My one big regret in Key West is the lack of decent Mexican food. Now I know that the term "Mexican Food" covers a multitude of styles and cuisines and that Mexico is about as unified on the food front as any other country as large and diverse. But the fact remains that a decent plate of food typically described as "Mexican" in my former home state of California is simply not available in edible format in Key West. Chico's on Stock Island makes a decent plate of food, not cheap and not Mexican as I know it, odd combinations of ingredients that bear only a passing resemblance to food that I might call "Mexican." Old Town Mexican Cafe off Duval suffers from the same illness, and if my friends demand to eat food from this place I limit myself to a quesadilla which even I can make at home, without screwing up too badly. Theirs tastes okay but not extraordinary.
Salsa Loca also on Duval is much appreciated by locals and tourists but I find their food uninspired and their karaoke style audience participation, and "gift giveaway" lotteries to be puerile and intrusive. They may insist they are offering Mexican food but if they feel the need to say so and if they identify their iced tea as "southern" punters should be smart enough to know what they will be getting in the garishly decorated garden restaurant.

Chango Loco on Bertha Street in an architecturally uninspired building in New Town is a spin off from Salsa Loca, when the owners had a messy public divorce their chef went and started his own place (it was quite the enjoyable scandal for a while). Service is chaotic and the food as uninspired as the building which used to house a famous Cuban location that had grumpy waitresses and huge portions, mention "B's" to any old timer and their eyes will roll and they will start to salivate at the memory. Not anymore.

I've even tried the burrito at Sandy's Cafe at the M&M Laundry on White Street, which turned out bland and watery, almost as bland as the building that houses this one too. How did they do that, reduce rice beans and meat to a flavorless soup? And they are a cheerful group of actual Mexicans serving the slop.
There's more Mexican-ish food at another architectural pile, this time at Mile Marker 24, and it looks better in the sunshine under a bright blue sky.

Coco's Cantina on Cudjoe Key does make some really good Latin dishes, including a few quite excellent Mexican style "specials" from time to time. Coco's is another top rate eatery not actually in Key West at all. The fact that its quite close to my home is just a bonus for me! Coco's, Slice of Paradise and Square Grouper make the Lower Keys entirely edible, actually.

However my hands down favorite Mexican place is run by a Nicaraguan family (Somocistas unfortunately!) 105 miles north of my home, in the town of Homestead and I love to stop there on my way to and from the mainland.

Its off Krome Avenue at 2nd street, near the Police Station and the better known Toro Taco restaurant which I've heard is quite edible. My little hole in the wall has no discernible name, no particular atmosphere other than Central American cheap (fussy sorts should avoid the toilet!) and killer plates of food for less than $6 after their latest round of price hikes.
The clientele is definitely locals, field workers and the like, the juke box plays banda and narco ballads and the waitress is shy and sweet and struggles with her minuscule English. "Coca diet" is the drink of choice but I like to indulge sometimes in a big (styrofoam) cup of horchata, the genuine article, sweet rice milk. Its perfect to wash down a warm plate of puerco en salsa verde, made just like a hungry field hand would approve.

I go there often enough that I think they recognize me and on days when I'm not hungry I'll stop and buy a couple of libras of barbacoa to take home and reheat in the microwave when the hankering for real Mexican overwhelms me. Homemade Mexican, at home! How cool is that?

Parabellum Windshield

I toyed with the idea of not adding a windshield to my "roadster" but even though I have taken to wearing a full face helmet I found the wind drag at speeds over 60 mph to be tiresome, and I want to make a mainland trip or two this winter. I found many extravagant claims, increased mile per gallon principally, on the Parabellum site out of Georgia, and I liked the look of the windshield. The mpg has stayed the same so far, owing to the ease of riding faster.

So I sent them $259 plus $15 shipping and heard nothing back. I then sent them an e-mail and got a quick reply, from an annoyed desk jockey (the boss' wife perhaps?) to the effect that I was an impatient jerk and go screw myself, I'd get it when I got it.

The box showed up and I opened it and found a scribbled set of instructions to the effect that the arms are attached to the handlebar clamp and the lower part is attached to the headlamp: good luck! Well I fiddled and I faddled and cursed the people who designed this kit "specifically" for the Bonneville, and I undid a few more screws than they apparently suggested, and by adding the shield to the mounting brackets, after they were loosely bolted to the motorcycle I got the whole, home made bodge, installed. Oh, and I had to bleed the front brake after the handlebars went upside down and let air into the hydraulics. Grr! (Actually it was no big deal but I think I need more drama). This was one of those fiddly installations that saw me grovelling around on the ground constantly looking for screws and washers that got away from me.

That Parabellum? Very nice it is too. It works beautifully, with excellent wind protection, and the height (20 inches) is perfect, as it puts the top of the shield just below my eyes, so I can look over or through as I need to. It increases engine and wind noise, as I expected, but the weather protection is so good I didn't notice it had started raining the other night until I felt water dripping off my knees into my boots.

Tropical Storm Noel has been sweeping strong winds, up to gale force, across the Keys this week and riding in cross winds has been fine, no wobbling or dragging at all. I think it looks good, for all that its massive. I think I was punished because they only sent me three of four screw covers to complete the installation, and I bear one uncovered screw as a mark of pride. I rebelled against... something, I'm pretty sure... Parabellum's cold indifference to my desire for "instant gratification." Sounds rather sexual in a bad way, I think; no wonder she despises me.

Oh well.

Rain,Rain,Go Away!

I like to say that 2007 was the year we got our hurricanes in small doses, and everyone I've spoken to, outside my work place, likes it that way. Inside my workplace some officers and dispatchers (who rent homes) would quite like a nice storm- the overtime racks up some impressive numbers when you are on duty for 24 hours over several days!

My wife would like an end to the rain, not least because her arthritis gets seriously painful in these conditions. She's taken to getting up in the middle of the night (while I snore on blissfully) and having a "secret life" thanks to the pain that prevents her sleeping.

Personally I'd like more blue skies, less rain gear on the motorcycle and even though its still around 80 degrees air and water temperatures, I find the idea of going swimming in Newfound Harbor unattractive when the skies are grey and menacing overhead. Not to mention the tempestuous winds Tropical Storm Noel is sending our way as it ravages Hispaniola, Cuba and the Bahamas.

Streets in Key West flood easily, every time it rains, every time there is a high, high tide, or better yet when both combine.

When Hurricane Wilma approached the city from the Yucatan, the old timers in town warned that hurricanes coming from Mexico produce flooding, and they were right. Wilma flooded about 70 percent of the city, and created chaos that has been felt ever since. Many people left town unable to cope financially, others left after Wilma capped 8 major storms in two seasons. The emotional strain of preparing to get beaten up by winds, waves and flooding was just too much. I still see cars bearing the bumper sticker Another weekend-Another hurricane, that appeared during those endless series of storm alerts.

Today, street scenes like these bring back bad memories.

I don't like to drive in flooded streets not least because I remember the damage Wilma did to cars' electrical systems even if they temporarily survived partial submersion. Its time, I think for the rains to ease up. My rainwater cistern at home is showing almost four feet of water, and that will easily last me, even with some minor unstoppable leaks, into next year's rainy season. The aquifer in south Florida is dropping precipitously we are told, and though it seems obvious we have an unsustainable level of development, and zero conservation ethic, all this water flooding fields and streets on the mainland (where our aqueduct gets its supplies and pipes the water down to us) is going to encourage the notion that things are okay again. I wish more people had water cisterns- but they fear the "quality" of god's own rain, and are shocked when I tell then what they are drinking when they come to my house. It tastes good and apparently is filtered enough to be bacteria free.

Be that as it may, I look forward still to more sun and shadows in my neighborhood, and more water where it should be, among the mangroves. Enough is enough!

Chain Gang

Its been three weeks since I brought the Triumph Bonneville home and with 1500 miles on the clock its time to get serious about chain maintenance. I swore up and down I'd never get another motorcycle with a chain final drive, but here I am! I like belts best of all and there is an aftermarket kit built by a former Triumph dealer in Pennsylvania (Quiet Power Drive.com) which I have my eye on, but at a thousand dollars it'll have to wait till this chain is worn out. Modern chains on motorcycles are said to be good for 20,000 miles and with a fussy level of care some people claim 40,000 miles out of a set of chain and sprockets, and so it is I have set myself up to take as good care of mine as I can. That's another reason I bought a $220 "optional" center stand...

Like every other Internet discussed motorcycle operation, the care and feeding of the modern motorcycle chain is a subject of plenty of controversy. Some people clean their chains with a spray of WD40 and a wipe with a rag, others use brake cleaner ( as suggested by my dealer). Triumph recommends good old fashioned "paraffin" which, on this side of the Atlantic translates into kerosene, and that is only available at Ace Hardware stores. I bought a gallon at the excellent Ace store on Summerland Key, and my wife gave me a plastic lidded box to dip my Grunge Brush in.

First I pulled off the sprocket cover on the engine- five simple bolts.

Then I took the long brush on the end of the Grunge Buster and slopped kerosene into the sprocket area to clean all the grunge and dirt stuck in there.

Modern final drive chains have little hidden o-rings that keep lubrication inside the chain links, and I fear using modern solvents because they may break down the rubber o-rings and allow the inner lubricant to dry out. Hence the old fashioned, no aerosol kerosene and scrub brush technique. The grunge brush gets three sides of the chain.

Then I dry the chain and sprockets with a piece of oily rag, and let the chain dry. Later, when I go for a ride I will squeeze the little Loobman bottle I have installed ($36 delivered from England), which drips engine oil onto the rear sprocket and lubricates those precious o-rings. It's a typically English low tech gadget that works great, the chain is much cooler and smoother running with a gentle squeeze every tankful of premium.

And then all that's left to do is get out and ride, after cleaning one's hands to keep all that oily stuff off the grips.

So, is it better to buy a new belt every 6,000 miles for the Vespa? Or clean the chain every 1500? Beats me, I'd rather have a lifetime belt drive like the Harleys do, but that is in my future and maybe I'll miss fussing over my old fashioned chain. At my high mileage that's unlikely!