Caribbean Time Shift

What a strange and wonderful wonderful world: wake up in Fort Lauderdale and have lunch on the shores of the Bay of Samana in the Dominican Republic. It was a short two hour flight and we were picking up a rumbly, slow diesel truck for our wheels. On the way down I had looked out the airplane porthole and watched the islands of the Bahamas slide by 5 miles down, Bimini, Andros, Ragged Cays and into a cloud bank faster than I could turn the pages in my book and I thought about all those weeks spent bashing into wind and wave on our boat trying to get as far south as time allowed. A matter of weeks, not minutes!

Then we landed in another world and started driving as usual, and we were in the very Third World of dirt mountain roads, bumping my wife´s wounded arm, passing little stick houses and horses and pigs and pot holes and we reached the only beach in the Dominican Republic that isn´t really a beach, just brown frothing water a very brisk sea breeze and strange fried rissoles for lunch- pictures to follow.

Back over the mountains dodging potholes and into the lobby of our five star world, soothing music, 11 dollar (US) rum punches and all services in three languages.

Very confusing, very stimulating. All in wonderful summery 85 degrees and perpetual sunshine. Sometimes Key West just isn´t warm enough.

On The Road Again

My wife is certifiable. We have to be in Miami tomorrow to get her operated wrist a new cast and she has decided we need to take advantage of a work-free weekend to travel. So Friday morning we leave the ground at Fort Lauderdale and regain sea level two hours later in the capital of the Dominican Republic. She got a couple of cheap tickets, dusted off our passports and loaded up with cash and fresh batteries in the camera. Santo Domingo here we come!

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Meanwhile I was in Key West today and parked my Bonneville in a motorcycle lot next to another machine that has long interested me. Its the tiddly ride in the stable produced by Erik Buell, but in many respects I think it is one of the more interesting.

For somewhere south of five grand you get an ultra low maintenance 500cc single cylinder (half a Harley Davidson engine) motorcycle that has a top speed around 80 mph, shakes like jello and gets 70miles per very expensive gallon. It uses a final drive belt, the engine valves need no adjusting and the fuel and oil are carried low in the frame. Its an easy bike to ride with no chrome to polish and a modest size that makes it easy for smaller riders. The streets of our country should be flooded with these bikes. Too bad Buell doesn't offer decent luggage and a nice windshield to create the ultimate inexpensive commuter for a new century. Don't get me wrong, I love my Bonneville, but the Blast could well live up to its name for lots of riders.

Riding With Rilke

The saying" bright enough to read a book by," is sometimes used to describe a full moon and lately its been that way on my street. I'm lucky enough to live where street lights have yet to penetrate so every night is a light show, stars on no moon nights, and crisp white light bathing everything for the other ten nights a month. When we were out cruising I preferred traveling by night, partly because it was cooler, partly because the ocean is a marvelous place at night. On moonless nights I sat in the cockpit of my sailboat and watched a deeper darker sky than a city dweller could imagine possible, and the term "velvet" sprang to mind. But to be on a tropical passage under a brightly shining moon is another brand of magic altogether and even though the silver disk obscures the stars, I really do prefer a full moon. It's an event I notice even when the moon is just starting to rise over the mangroves with the sun still high enough in the sky to be able to...read a book by. I was turned on to the book in question by the Moto Philosopher, a mention of a motorcycle biography by a Canadian university professor who told the story of riding to Texas on his highly unsuitable Ducati. The notion that a 700cc standard motorcycle might be "unsuitable" for a journey of several thousand miles is a modern conceit, propagated in a consumer driven economy where every garage should house a multiplicity of cycles, one for each purpose. A huge cruiser to travel, a dirt bike for fire roads, a scooter to commute and a classic to admire and on and on and on. Ted Bishop turns his back on that theory, falls in love with a Ducati Monster in monstrous matt black and takes off across America. Except this isn't the oily reminiscences of a wrench monkey. Bishop feels like he has climbed his mechanical peak when he has checked his chain final drive tension every evening. And perhaps, that is why the book is delightful. It is about riding a motorcycle, seeing places and enjoying America in all its grotesque glory. That's because travel writers love to zoom in on the weird and the whacked, and Lord knows there's plenty of grist for their mill in these United States.The other reason this book makes a good read is because Bishop is a professor of literature and he's a part-time detective and he's on the hunt for first editions and buyer lists and all sorts of other irrelevant nonsense. Don't get me wrong I love to read but Virginia Woolf and James Joyce are not anywhere near my list of classics I need to re-read, since I last hacked them in school. Thus Ted Bishop's orgasmic research in the ivory halls of Austin's academe don't do much for me, but I appreciate his well written fervor.

On the other hand, T.E. Lawrence and Richard Burton (the explorer, not the actor) are writers of a different and much more interesting caliber, so they, and the Ducati keep me going between chiffon waves of Woolf and Joyce and their drawing room dramas. I am having a blast with this story; everybody should.

Merry Christmas Mr Smith

I found out another thing from my wife this Holiday Season as we got ready to bag some wine and chocolates and head out to a festive Christmas Dinner in town. "Today's the day Jews look forward to eating out Chinese," she told me, much to my surprise. Who knew? And I've been married to her for nearly 15 years. Apparently her family tradition was to go to Lake Tahoe and take a splendid day on the slopes when the gentiles were all giving thanks for the arrival of their savior. Jews are still waiting for theirs and Confucians are pretty much on the fence about the whole mystical savior thing, as far as I can gather, so one lot goes round and orders food from the other lot. We did the Christian thing this year and stuffed our communal faces.The family gathering involved as it often does in Key West, out-of-towners, pasty white and excited to be under hazy skies in 75 degree temperatures filling themselves with good cheer and alcohol. The family in question, of a colleague of my wife, is an extraordinarily jolly family of seven siblings, their parents and 6 grandchildren. We spent Christmas afternoon laughing and telling stories and generally being silly. They exchanged home made stockings,and were so kind to each other it positively made an observer wish he was part of such an extended family. The true meaning of Christmas, enhanced by a splendid tree, and of course the great fortune of renting a home with a canal front for fishing and a pool to swim in.Rather them than me in such chilly conditions, but I saw nary a goose pimple before the lights went out. It was a delightfully Key West moment, as we plunged into darkness and the party carried on regardless. We went home in darkness, Highway One a ribbon of taillights winding through darkened mangroves and moonlit lagoons. It was delightful, especially as the lights came back minutes after we got home, and restored everything to normal.

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The Conch part of the program was executed a couple of days ahead of the Day, under the stars in the candle-lit backyard of a colleague of mine who put on another magnificent spread. This time we shared a groaning table with a large bunch of off-duty police officers, which is a state of affairs that can be quite startling until you get used to it. I rather enjoy it these days, sharing stories of good police cheer and a few occasionally macabre laughs along the way.

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So among the good cheer was the entirely sober and very funny police chaplain and his partner, an officer with the State Police office in Key West. The chaplain, who I shall call Steve, because that's his name, is a police officer endowed with a mischievous sense of humor, very dry, and a worldliness that may be part of his nature but is enhanced by working the beat in a world wide destination town like Key West. Not to mention taking care of the souls and states of mind of men and women who deal daily with more than their share of human misery.

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He and my wife, who teaches at the Juvenile Jail have a history and they were talking about this and that and juveniles, and in the Christmas spirit the success stories that make them cheerful, the straight and narrow regained, etc... when Steve points out that as a cop and a chaplain he ends up getting kwnown in the oddest places.

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"I was on Oahu this year, on vacation with John, minding my own business and this kid comes up to me and is all over me, shaking my hand and being real friendly." The story goes on about this small world Key West-in-the-wilderness encounter, "cheerful probably because I didn't arrest him for something or other," Steve went on between forkfuls of roast pork. "I have no idea, can't remember him a bit, but he remembers me. Doesn't matter where I go in the world I meet Key Westers." It's at this point a tired looking detective at the end of the table takes a pause from bottle feeding his infant and says: "Does he have spiky blond hair?" And Steve nods through a mouthful of rice, and between them they checked the descriptors, which is cop-talk for what he looked like, and it may well be him. "Yeah," the detective says laconically. "Got a ton of warrants out for him and I heard a rumor he ran to the Islands."

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"Hey!" Steve shrugs cheerfully,"they weren't my warrants! No wonder he was laughing when he met me!" and he dug back in to his plate.

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Merry Christmas Mr Smith wherever you are, and perhaps its time to go straight or turn yourself in. All in the spirit of the season you understand.

Port Pine Heights

Well, even the most devoted nurse needs to take a little time off, so a quick run to the video store to return 92 In The Shade, say, can lead to something more... like a ride straight up Key Deer Boulevard, just before sunset in a crisp 70 degree evening. Perfect. A motorcyclist looking for twisties will have a hard time in the Keys, as will a commuter expecting alternative routes to work, but for a middle aged man with years of riding alternative roads stacked in his memory, all it takes to have a nice ride is a thundering putt through the pines of Big Pine Key. On a dead straight road, even. Key Deer Boulevard is the left-hand road heading north form the traffic light on Highway One and it runs dead straight to a dead end about five miles into the pine forest. Along the way it passes three churches, the Blue Hole and a Trail Head, part of the wilderness area that is most of the pine forest. The wilderness area tends to butt up a bit against homeowners. Co-existence can be a bit tricky where people resent wildlife, and they choose to live in the would-be-hinterlands of BPK, the island home of those in the Lower Keys that want to be Left Alone. These are not people that want National Wildlife in their backyards.I mean really, who do they think they are kidding with "unauthorized entry?" Key Deer wander at will and local gardeners are always in a tizz about deer ravaged plants. Personally I'd love a few endangered Key Deer on my Key, as they make development extra complicated and restricted but those that have them, tend to hate the deer. I might start hating them if I actually hit one. They are small, but not that small and could easily wreck a 30mph motorcycle. I saw a couple on my expedition but they stood on the roadside and made no false moves.

So the anti-tree-huggers trying to get away from it all live alongside the canals of Port Pine Heights, a place that I rate as less than scenic in many respects, not that inexpensive, as even these depressed days you'll be facing an asking price of at least $600,000 for a 1500 square foot run down stilt house on a canal. And the canal may not be so scenic, but it gives a boater easy access to Bogie Channel, where, rumor has it, is to be found excellent fishing, with easy access to the Content Keys and the Gulf of Mexico. The best part of this back country for a two wheeled rider with a yen to explore is the number of odd streets, most unpaved that wind mysteriously into the mangroves, pine trees and scrub. I make a mental note as I rumble by, and I shall return with my camera and stout walking shoes. I've checked quite a few back roads around here (on the Vespa) but there are always more. The trick is to check for a) Street Names and b) a mailbox. A dirt road with a mailbox and no street name is probably a driveway, and boy! Won't they be surprised to see a stranger on a Bonneville show up in their yard uninvited. The biggest handicap I've noted on the Bonneville is the Ducati-style, minuscule steering angle. Its fine on the open road but turning at walking speed is a protracted and tiresome business as the steering lock is tiny. Not the best feature for a high speed u-turn and getaway from an irate homeowner in his narrow driveway.

One nice thing about the Bonneville is it lends itself, without protest to some weird pictures which pop into the viewfinder as the owner stands back and admires his hunky ride. Or stands back to admire the open water views at the end of Key Deer Boulevard,

while carefully avoiding the angry No Trespassing and Trespassers will be Shot signs hemming in the view. I must be a simpleton, I had a great ride, mostly at 30mph or less because the Sheriff's Deputies positively love to lurk in the 30mph zone on the dead straight road. I got no tickets, I got fresh air and my wife was happily zoned out on pain pills and Netflix when I got home.

My Bonneville: my panacea. And there's another of those bloody "Unauthorized Entry" signs in the background. I feel an upswelling of rebellion, one day I will just force my way into the scrub thorns and palmettos to prove a point. Bloody but unbowed, that will be me.

92 In The Shade

A sunny afternoon at home with one's feet up.

" I guess I've had an adventure. At least I moved to Key West. I thought I was leaving the real world behind." So says Peter Fonda's father William Hickey, in the movie 92 In The Shade, as he tries to dispense fatherly advice in the face of a threat against the life of his son. The film was made in 1975 on location in Key West, which is probably its greatest claim to fame. The plot is simple, the pacing languid and the characters not too complex, which happens to work well enough for the setting. Some parts of the film are depressingly true to 21st century life in Key West, and the old saying about the more things change the more they stay the same comes ringing through. I noticed the Pirate Torture Museum of Key West as a backdrop in one night scene, so I guess the Pirates in Key West myth has been propagated for some considerable time, and visitors have been bamboozled by that one for decades apparently. The waters, the fishing the beaches are all in place as they always have been. The streets are similar, the houses and greenery lining them are there and the essential quality of other worldliness that attracts people to Key West is in evidence. Old bars, long gone will cheer the hearts of old timers, but my brief visit in 1981 wasn't stamped strongly enough to enable me to remember much. I think the other side of Key West, the drab, hard scrabble, know-nothing booziness is clearly portrayed in a way that looks cool on film but reminds one that life in Key West has long been nasty and tough. The plot is simple enough. Tom Skelton is a talented flats fisherman and gets hazed by the old timers on the dock who are threatened by his potential. Warren Oates plays Nichol Dance, Fishing Guide and all around nasty guy. Tom doesn't take kindly to the practical joke Nichol plays on him, and overreacts to establish his turf and the retaliation spirals down from there. Throw in Burgess Meredith as his weird old monied grandfather, a bra-less girlfriend, Elizabeth Ashley and a crusty Greek Chorus played by Harry Dean Stanton and all Key West needs to be is a pretty backdrop.The video has apparently not made it to DVD, not on Netflix at least. I found an old VHS tape at the Big Pine Video Store in the "Keys" Rental Section. That's what its about really, its just a B movie set in the Fabulous Florida Keys, and the locations are real even if moved around a little. A good film for an enforced afternoon at home, post-op, with an arm in a cast and a large supply of pain pills.

4,000 Mile Bonneville

I got a call a couple of days ago from someone who lifted my heart. he is interested in buying the Vespa, and I don't know if I shall see him again after he takes a trip to do the relatives-at-Christmas thing, but I enjoyed talking to someone who finally undertsood a Vespa; the call came after about 4 dozen inquiries from people looking for a cheap scooter. The thing is I've started to slip into the Bonneville habit. I'm molding to my motorcycle. The handlebar grips slip into my gloved palms, my feet find the footpegs without hunting, and the clutch slides in and out with no effort or conscious thought at all. I am at one with my Bonneville. The Vespa, sitting low on that extraordinarily comfortable seat, seems alien. I like the image of the Bonneville, raw and mechanical where the Vespa, still beautiful, flows around its bodywork.The other benefit of enjoying the ride as an exension of habit is that I can take whatever the road has to offer, whether its the all too rare open stretch or the more common clustered clumps of slow moving cars. These days, with an ice storm ravaging the Great White North, the number and variation of out-of-state tags is spreading all around us. This means Highway One is slowing down and its not getting to be worthwhile to even bother passing when the line of cars and trucks extends half a mile in front of me.

Plus I'm not feeling myself these days. I picked up a head cold while we were in Miami and I've been sneezing and snuffling and head-achy and feeling morose. Yesterday the ride to Marathon, 30 miles each way, wore me out. I came home, unloaded the groceries from my saddlebags ("How did you pack so much stuff?"my astonished wife asked from her handicapped throne on the leather couch), and I passed out on the bed, tossing turning and waking up coughing. Thinking about the sun on the flat waters, twinkling with the promise of a warm ice free winter, feeling the 79 dgeree breeze blowing across my face, it feels good to be living here in the flats of Florida. A California friend came visiting and as she reminisced about the crumbling path from her Aptos house to the rumbling Pacific Ocean, I could picture the cold and the damp and the fog and I know where I want to call home.

And the sooner I stop feeling bluesy and morose and snuffly the better all this will become.

Marathon Memorial

Today was the day the Monroe County Sheriff's Office remembered Deputy Robyn Tanner, a deputy assigned to the City of Marathon substation. She died last week when her patrol car crashed on her way to a medical assist. The spot where she died at 90th Street is marked by a broken stairway, a pile of flowers and teddy bears and votive candles wavering in the winter breeze. This was the day after we got back from Miami and I left my wife propped up in bed, her arm in a cast, surrounded by hot coffee newspaper and reading glasses. I took the Bonneville out for my first ride since last weekend and I have to confess I missed it.

It was a glorious day to be alive, bright sunshine, gentle north breezes blowing across the Gulf of Mexico bringing humidity down to desert-like proportions and temperatures close to 70 degrees. The liner in my armored jacket kept me warm enough and my heart was warmed in extra measure by the sunshine on the flat waters either side of the Highway.

The memorial was held at the sheriff's Aviation Hangar, where they keep the medical helicopter. The field alongside was packed with law enforcement vehicles, state agencies, police departments all over Florida and our own blue and white KWPD cars scattered amongst the strangers. Outside the hangar the honor guard lined up alongside the motorcycle cops ready for the ceremony. I took my place inside the hangar next to a Highway Patrol Corporal I've talked to from time on the phone, behind a row of anonymous State Marine Patrol Officers.

Deputy Tanner's family sat in the front row, a youthful mother of the 53 year-old deputy, her father coiled tight in pain, her brothers, police officers themselves with tears streaming down their faces. The tribute went on, a mixture of oddly inappropriate humor, bathos and platitudes. But in between the remarks made by a huge group of mixed acquaintances, there shone the character of the dead deputy. Her smile , her cheerfulness, her joy at the job. Her cats, her sidearm handed over reverently to one brother, her badge to the other, pictures of Deputy tanner on the job and my worst moment the Final Radio Call, Central calling 4-1-1-7 who was never able to respond, and so was reported out of service for the last time. And so it went, the sun shone, the breeze kept the flags flapping gently and the helicopters flew by in formation.

Thus, home we variously went to our own unhappinesses and joys, certain that today was a great day to be alive and saddened by the reason that pulled us all together. The greatest tribute of all was also the most modest, made a day earlier away from the all the uniforms and dignitaries. It came from a local homeless man who donated his five dollars to Toys for Tots in Deputy Tanner's name. Because, he told her Lieutenant, she always showed me kindness and respect. No greater tribute can a deputy have than this, from the least among us.

Slaughterhouse 7

When I was seven years of age my step father sent me to boarding school. It seemed normal enough, though painful, and I took the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as they came; that's what children do. I look back on my decade in English boarding schools and wonder: what were they thinking? The schools grew up in response to the need for colonial administrators in public service around the world, polishing the sun as it refused to set on the British Empire. Their children were herded in institutions of greater or lesser nastiness while their parents suppressed natives and sent home the products of all that far flung administration. Heart of Darkness wasn't in it.What these schools are doing in the 21st century I can hardly imagine, in a world where science has convinced me, childless though I am, that a solid close knit family upbringing is the best way to encourage level headed future citizens. Instead these places continue to adapt and create the background for Harry Potter and the benefits of magic. That they serve the scions of the wealthiest just makes their existence even weirder- they're not meant to be prisons they are supposed to release the inner fully rounded man (and woman in these enlightened days). Downside School in southeast England specializes in producing young Christian gentlemen, which it would, as the 600 pupils are attached to the Benedictine Abbey which operates the school.In the summer of 1973 my mother finally succumbed to the cancer that had been eating her brain and I returned to school to find consolation as best I could. My trombone classes were my escape and I would retire to the men's toilet at the school Theater and blat away at the Marine Corps anthem and "Silent Night" in B flat. The music school lacked rehearsal space and we used any and every available room to practice our dismal trade.

And then Kevin Byrne crashed the Music School like a Greenpeace protester at a whaler's convention. He rounded up the first few musicians he encountered and luckily for me he need to pee that morning and found me practicing assiduously in my hidey hole. So I became the second trombonist in a new experiment that was intended to make musicians of us and give us the appreciation of jazz we had so far never been exposed to.

We'd never been exposed to anyone like Chuff either- so called for his love of steam engines. He drank Real Ale, ran toy trains, ran everywhere with a limp ( I may be wrong but I think it was a motorcycle accident that gave him a scar on his shin). He could listen to a piece of music, throw it down on a few pages of handwritten scrawl, transpose it for harmonium and perform it on any musical instrument you'd care to name. He loved music and he loved teaching and he made life worth living for this accidental tuba player.

As second trombonist I was a fairly obscure sound, in a room full of eager players but when the sainted Bernie left school I was promoted to fill his shoes. Bernie broke his arm and spent his musical season playing the sousaphone left handed, expertly, and I had to fill impossible shoes with my minuscule musical talents. My struggles to learn to support the band playing jazz and religious hymns, not to mention theater work and military music, kept me hard at it, and in a school where nothing much seemed to make sense, music gave me my my place in school and I earned modest renown as the man with the silver coil round his neck.

My role in all that stuff was very modest and just how modest was amply illustrated for me recently when the USPS dropped a package off at my house containing a printed summary of 34 years of musical tradition at Downside School.

It turns out the school is edging Chuff aside after decades of making music and thousands of miles traveled. "Internationally Renowned" is no exaggeration. When I played with the Slaughterhouse 7 we traveled no further afield than Wiltshire, but in the decades since, Chuff's energy has taken the musicians to Malta, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, South Africa, Chicago in 1987:Fiji and a performance st Sydney's Opera House. And raised millions for charity.

It was always a vague plan to go back to Downside and pay a visit to the Band Room, the place where I can fairly say I got a leg up on the rest of my life, but now it's all gone. Progress has swept away the traditional jazz refuge that Chuff gave us, the breath of clean fresh air is drowned by a stuffy need for test scores and scholarships up the educational ladder, and so Downside goes back to the stultifying world Chuff saved me from so many years ago, in the boys loo at the School Theater. The sounds of the iPod have drowned the squawks of the students' horns and learning ain't what it used to be. And I never did take the time to wander down memory lane. Too late! No matter how hard I try I still manage to miss the bus from time to time in Life's unravelling of Time.Lo! A thought! Now at last, my wife knows exactly how it is that I occasionally manage to surprise her by knowing the words to traditional jazz standards and why New Orleans, pre-Katrina, always appealed so much to me.

Chuff left his mark, and I doubt he has any idea how profound it is.

Miami Surgery

Sitting on a motel bed with 40 television channels at my beck and call I find myself amazed, like a Martian first encountering life on earth as filtered through the lense of the T.V. Worse than a Martian I feel like a peasant, a quasi-local, trying to understand my fellow humans. I don't understand why anyone would want this intrusion in their homes; worse yet why did I ever have it in mine? Why did I wonder if I would miss it? Then I gawp at frenzied advertising and fail to imagine how it can even be so effective. It looks crazy to me, smiling people sucking down drugs (legal ones) and driving cars that are clearly powered beyond their abilities, and acting crazy cheerful in ways that in real life would frighten shoppers away. Buy buy buy.Then the delightful "news" programs which were like advertising only worse. Most "news" is thinly disguised advertising and the highbrow stories come and go rapidly and without explanation or rational discussion. Historical perspective? What's that? Why does one even need that? Middle East leaders, looking ponderous and serious were filmed walking seven times around a rock, an effort to bring Peace, they say. Which behavior must explain why Peace is so unattainable. Perhaps if leaders talked to each other instead of engaging in empty gestures, something might change. Case in point: Paris. We were treated to the US Secretary of State kissing the leader of half of Palestine, Abu Mazen, on not one but both cheeks. Wow! So European! Talking? No, kissing! I think its past time we killed our televisions and instead the people in charge want us to spend even more money buying new improved high definition televisions. And people will, amazingly enough people will line up to buy HD TV.I went to buy a couple of bagels for lunch after the post-op doctor's visit and the clerk (team member? associate?) in Einstein's sighed when I couldn't figure out how I wanted the turkey and cheese bagel. There are hundreds of possible variants it seems. I knew I wanted the whatever flavored bagel toasted but that never happened. And the other barrista got flustered when it turns out my Visa card (I was out of cash what can I say?) doesn't have a chip and still needs to be swiped. I personally can't wait for the day I have a chip under my skin and we can dispense with all this plastic nonsense. Don't laugh its coming. Out on the streets of Miami people reflect their leaders and are crazy. Drivers push and shove even in places where shoving accomplishes nothing. On stretches of open road they slow down. Changing lanes is a life altering, or ending experience. One black man with gold teeth got out at a traffic light and threatened me for changing lanes. He got back in when I smiled and licked my lips at him. Never take on a loony who actually appears to enjoy physical violence. Had he called my bluff I might be the second member of my family with a broken wrist. My aching wife got vaguely annoyed at my confrontational behavior but those drugs are keeping her quite comatose, luckily for me.

The longer I live in the Keys the less capable I am of functioning in mainstream America. I dislike not making eye contact, I dislike walking among people who are hunched and afraid ( with reason as my little confrontation proves), I dislike the thoughtless nastiness of modern urban life. Its a pretty short sliver of land I live on, the rest of the continent (with all its marvelous medical facilities!) weighs heavily on my island and on my mind.

Normal cheerful programming will be resumed when I get over all this ridiculous surgery stress. She seems less stressed than I am. I need my Bonneville.

Construction Zone South

When people talk about "South Beach" in South Florida they usually mean a glamorous Art Deco neighborhood in Miami, but at the end of the road, south beach is the bottom end of Duval Street, more or less. Perhaps its the top end of Duval, because in upside-down-land, Upper Duval is the part of Duval furthest from the action. Lower Duval is where the action is, where the cruise ship passengers land, where people get drunk and look at naked women in city Commissioner Rossi's Red Garter strip club. At the Atlantic end of Duval then, lies south beach. The Duval Beach Club and the Southernmost Everything crowd the ends of Duval and Simonton Streets. Nowadays there are lots of holes. And the construction is promising a better future, bigger hotels, nicer facilities means more expensive and so it goes. But the old Key West, not the ancient run down Key West, the middling Old Key West, the one that came as part of the first wave of gay oriented re-development, is getting knocked down. At the southern end of the city that piece of history is long gone. Atlantic Shores was a place that offered rooms in motel-like rows heavily vegetated and really quite pretty. There was a diner for post-orgy breakfasts and Thursdays was al fresco movie nights where we took over the parking lot and lounged with free popcorn and cans of Heineken and my Labrador snored in my lap while I sank into the magic of the silver screen under the silver star-studded night sky. All gone. Even the pool where clothes were optional and men and women sun bathed, if they so chose. I doubt the new Southernmost extension will offer any of that. And who will miss Atlantic Shores?

The back end of the old Atlantic Shores was a place my wife and I still talk about. City Commissioner Rossi owned The Sands beach club, a place that offered decent food and outdoor casual seating on an actual sand beach. It really was a cool spot, and we enjoyed it. Our peripatetic yellow Lab Emma used to be able to sit alongside us in the sand and that was a bonus. The Sands is gone and a white construction fence is there instead. Across the street the old Reach Resort has been rebuilt and looks just as massive and solid as it did before Wilma trashed it in October 2005. The Santa Maria resort, a cute 1950's art deco motel has been transformed into minuscule condos selling for over a million bucks for each 400 square feet. I don't suppose the new occupants of the rabbit hutches will miss the ability to fling off their clothes around a public pool. They get tiny balconies to watch traffic whizzing by on South Street though.

I can't really say what I think about all this. Lots of people spend a great deal of time bitching about change and threaten to leave the Keys for a better, more expansive life Up North. What they don't investigate is that Up North is convulsing with change also, and for the price of a small residential condo in a converted Key West Victorian they can buy a tract house, twice as large with garage and a clean, bum-less street outside. But what makes the keys worth living in and struggling in isn't on offer in suburbia, at any price. Change is inevitable and it isn't usually a real improvement, but at least in Key West it is still a subject of debate and we all try to hang on and remember what's gone on ahead.

The 1990's was a decade of great wealth everywhere, in the Conch Republic as much as Up North and development was set in motion, but there was lots of good stuff that cheered people up in that decade. Much of it is gone or going as money dries up and people spend less. PT's a second rate restaurant where people liked to hang out is an actual parking lot. Dennis Pharmacy a cheesy but cheerful diner whose success was predicated on nostalgia is now a bland bank and so forth.

I wonder if one day we will wax nostalgic about the good old Santa Maria. Personally I never stayed at the old one and I sure as hell won't at the new one. As for my role in the poolside shenanigans at the Atlantic Shores? Why on earth would I miss them...?

Vignettes IV

The Bat Tower.

There is more to the Keys than many might surmise from a quick run down the island chain. I've covered many miles it turns out, to find them. It happened that the wife and I were out at a benefit event on Sugarloaf Key and after we had paid our benefits and eaten our (hot) dogs we wondered if it was time to end the happy afternoon. But no! I was among those present and with my inexhaustible desire for adventure and obscure knowledge I stunned Scott by the simple expedient of asking him if he had ever seen the Bat Tower.
"Why no!" he replied, agog.
The bat tower was built nearly a century ago by a land developer who hoped to make a fortune turning the wilds of Sugarloaf Key into tract homes. The Mosquito Control Board hadn't yet been invented so he turned to Nature to give him a hand. however the bats, famously voracious mosquito snackers, did not much fancy the home he built for them, from plans sent from Up North. The bats left, the humans never came. This is their monument. (Hint: Near the Sugarload Airstrip). I promised Scott and Heather a return trip some day, to see the Giant Sugarloaf Mansion (Not near the Airstrip).


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Volunteer Life Savers.


It remains true that most homes in the Keys are protected from fire by volunteers, a fact that does not appear to surprise anyone who owns a home down the Keys. The City of Key West has a paid fire department and has had for decades, which is not surprising as the city is packed with tightly packed wooden homes that burn like packed wooden torches.
People whose homes catch fire on say, Big Pine Key, need to hope their firefighters are close to their phones and are not far from the fire station while their homes burn. It seems terribly old fashioned to me, but I'm probably the only home owner within hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles who wouldn't be too offended to pay a tax to hire full time firefighters. An ounce of prevention...

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High Speed Weed Whacker.

I've seen this combination around town for several years, which means business, in a notoriously fickle corporate environment, must be good for this high speed entrepreneur in Key West. It's hard, impossible really, to find reliable tradesmen in the Keys so if your gardener shows up driving a Formula One you don't dare raise an eyebrow. Just be happy he's there. Unhappily he only has room for one helper in his Corvette, but they must spend very little time traveling between jobs.

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$3:60/Gallon.

I am grateful that more people don't use Shell gasoline cards and thus leave the pumps free for me to take my gas and my discount. I enjoy getting the Shell 5% rebate at the pumps and now that premium has hit all time highs, five percent is starting to equal real money, even riding a 43mpg Bonneville. People bitch at the cost of gas but apparently prices have yet to get high enough to force changes in the way we do things, not least grab a small discount where available. The cost of gas in the Keys is high by Florida standards, $3:40 for regular, and today I filled my tank with 3 1/2 US gallons of premium for $12. It wasn't so long ago that $8 would have been an ample sufficency. I don't ride to increase my mileage(I'd still be using the 70mpg Vespa 250), but I'm glad I take my traveling pleasure on a motorbike, and don't require a 15mpg SUV to make me whole. Even among these restricted highways and the few byways I have run up 3600miles since the Bonneville came home with me in mid October. Thats a few gallons under the bridge.

Wrist Surgery

Monday is the day my wife gets her wrist cut open at Miami Baptist, and as this is a mirror image of surgery she had on the right wrist last year we know exactly what is in store, and it ain't pretty, not even when she is pumped full of brain-dulling drugs. She'll murder me when she sees this post-op picture taken last year. I crushed my thumb years ago and learned to my cost that doctors have a really hard time numbing extremities, and even though my wife, like many women, is tough when it comes to pain management this coming week will be brutal. We've done the pre-op, we've met the surgeon, we've got the paperwork under control, and we're braced for our share of the cost, not covered by insurance, which last year amounted to something over $6,000. Gotta love free medical enterprise, pity we couldn't have surgeons bidding for the job, but there it is. The week upcoming doesn't look great for me either but I'm just the care giver so I will fade into the background, dispatch style, while all her friends gather round and cluck with her over her misfortune. Its a great thing to be a woman sometimes.

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On a better note there was some sad news for Santa Claus this week. He was scheduled to land by seaplane at some gathering of young people in the Upper Keys and the float plane crash landed and sank just off the beach. A rather soggy Santa waded ashore to do the job and the pilot rather ruefully told the Citizen reporter he doubted he'd been good enough lately to merit a new plane. Apparently the kids thought differently- they figured he'd rescued Santa from a watery fate. No word on the fate of the reindeer.

Last week there was a picture of a hard working Santa at Bayview Park, the portly retired KWPD Sgt Bittinger, heavily disguised. So heavily disguised in fact he was in danger of passing out in the eighty-one degree heat. The picture showed Santa panting in the blast of a small portable fan.

Let no one says life's just a beach at 24 degrees north.

Paving Paradise

Key West continues, inexorably to change. The changes aren't sudden and God knows they are planned far enough in advance, but the paving of paradise continues apace, like it or not. Its Old Town that takes the brunt of the cement attacks, focused on two stretches of waterfront. The old Atlantic Shores resort at the southern tip of Simonton Street is a large hole in the ground at the moment. It used to be a pretty cool place, straight friendly, dog friendly offering open air movies every Thursday night with free popcorn. Next door the old Sands beach resort is also gone, paving the way for some new monstrosity. That's the bad news on South Beach, and more on that later.

The focus of controversy I rode by earlier this week is around Waterfront Market an overpriced food store offering key West's widest selection of organics (Publix is in close second place). The owner of the Waterfront wants to quit but locals want the institution to remain so there is a move afoot to sell shares and keep the place going as a coop. Buco Pantelis was notorious for low low wages and its hard to imagine a coop will be able to pay the sort of money that will keep experienced staff.

Just next door to the Waterfront Market is an older Key West institution that may also survive as a public entity. Historic Tours of America abruptly fired the crew and put the schooner Western Union up for sale last summer. With hurricane season over (notwithstanding Caribbean islands getting a drenching from Hurricane Olga this week), some civic minded citizens popped up and decided to try to sell shares for the Western Onion and raise 1.5 million to keep it on the Key West waterfront. So far so good. But I did think it odd when organisers showed Deep Water as a fundraiser to save the boat. The film is about the suicidal Donald Crowhurst and his doomed attempt to sail around the world in the 1968 Golden Globe race. But I went to the Tropic Cinema anyway and yielded my $25 to watch one boat flounder to save the other.

These public minded attempts at preservation are bookended by two major housing developments that bode little good for the mostly city owned waterfront. To the north is the old Steam Plant, the electrical generating station that spewed its effluent into the harbor at the "toxic triangle" off Trumbo Road. That thing sat unused for decades, a brooding castle of Transylvanian proportions, that has now been reborn as 3 million dollar exclusive apartments (one left!) with a dozen affordable units built in its shadow (none left!).

Once Ed Swift, owner of Historic Tours of America, is done with the Steam Plant we will shortly thereafter witness the birth of another set of condos popping up on top of the old Jabors RV park which sat across the street from the Waterfront Market. This development is being created by another development company that is convinced this is the best way to make Key West a hot tourist destination. Despite the glut of condos in south Florida these ultra expensive units, also on offer at around $3 million, are selling briskly. Everyone wants a slice of "Old Key West" even if they kill it in the process of buying it. The Watermark took a lot of effort to permit as the developers wanted to violate just about every zoning regulation but steady citizen opposition got it within city zoning requirements and now construction has begun.
Watermark, a name discredited by the zoning fiasco is known as Harbor Condominiums in its latest incarnation, and will soon tower over the little bar that likes to call itself "the last little piece of old Key West," Schooner Wharf Bar. Bar aficionados are sounding the death knell of the funky, musically off beat and always loud joint, even though current plans call for the Schooner Wharf to be treated as a charming attraction, for the multi gazillionaires who plan to live next door. I doubt that will last. All new residents bitch when they start to reside here, about the funky charm that attracted them here in the first place.

And this has been going on for decades in the Keys. Errare humanum est, perseverare diabolicum, and we just can't find any decent local leaders to elect who will change our headlong course into middle class mediocrity.

Fallen Officer

A 47 year old Monroe County Sheriff's deputy died this morning, crashing en route to a medical emergency in the City of Marathon. She had been with the Sheriff's department for a couple of decades and she is the sixth South Florida law enforcement officer (by my count) to die in the line of duty this year. It casts a pall over the work place, not least because one always hears how police officers "put their lives on the line every day" and this sort of incident brings it home.
I came into work at Key West PD Dispatch yesterday all flustered owing to the crappy commute heretofore described, and when I sat down I found we were already dealing with a crazy man off his meds attacking officers with a knife before he threw himself into a canal and dared them to save his life. They did. Then the City Manager told us at briefing how the budget is shrinking but what a great job we are doing, even those of us tucked up in dispatch. I wish they had some real understanding of what "putting your life on the line every day" really means.

Flying Dreidels

I was rushing up the stairwell at work, the ends of my motorcycle jacket flying, my hands encumbered variously by my man purse and my lunch box. I was minutes away from being late for work, the first time in a couple of years and blam! Who should I bump into on the stairs but the Great Gawd Almighty City Manager himself. He's smiling cheerfully and its 4 minutes to six in the am. I am not smiling, I'm gasping, and with a brief "goo..mo..ning" I'm gone down the corridor motorcycle boots thumping on the carpet as I skid into the doorway of the 9-1-1 call center. What the bloody hell is he doing in the police station at this hour of the a.m.?

"I'm never usually this late," I wanted to shout over my shoulder, "but I was nearly knocked off my motorcycle by a flying dreidel!" As if he would have believed me. An excuse worthy of Reginald Iolanthe Perrin indeed. The manager was cruising down to the briefing room to meet the troops, who were no doubt equally enthusiastic as I was to meet him for the first time.

The morning had started off well enough, with a brisk alarm ring at four minutes past four, followed by an instant leap out of bed and into my t shirt and shorts cycling gear. A pair of crocs on my feet and the bicycle is downstairs illuminated by the harsh glare of the outside lights. I am properly awake.

The ride was excellent, a half hour whizzing through the mangroves, past the dormant Cuban Deli, under the harsh orange glare of the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority pumping station's street lights, and so back home in a tingling lather. I am an unfit suburban rider far from the world of spandex, tour de France and racing ten speeds. I pedal sedately upright on my three speed automatic. Very refreshing.

My commute started less well after I pointed the Bonneville south on Highway One. Four smooth gear shifts and we were purring along at 60mph on an empty highway (speed limit: 45mph). Up over the 40ft Nile Channel Bridge things got sticky, stuck behind a 50mph truck with a Proud to be American sticker (I'd like one that reads Cheerfully American, or Grateful to be American on my Triumph) and a large flag decal on the tailgate.

We purr through Summerland Key under the streetlights (45mph zone continues) at a respectable if timid 55 and in the glow of the street lights I can just make out the time: 5:25am. I'm on target if not ahead of myself. It's on Cudjoe Key that things become unglued. Were I not wearing heavy gloves (its 74 degrees) and a full face helmet (its 74 degrees I say) I'd rub my eyes in disbelief for the Proud American in the full size pick up in front of me has slowed to 38mph (45 zone continues) and peering round him I see a car with a stalk on the roof and a red light on top of that. Absurd, I think to myself, that can't be right.

Can it? Anything's possible in the Keys. But why so slow? Argh!

Sure enough, we take the wide sweeping corner at Square Grouper and there in front of the car I see two more cars also equipped with red light poles on the roof and a slow work truck towing what appears to be an elaborate outhouse. By now I can barely bring myself to wonder what the hell is going on so slow is the parade. Further up ahead I can see more illuminated masts riding on cars and an RV and some sort of machine between them with what appears to be a billboard on the roof.

Then the penny drops -it's Christmas! This must be some peculiar traveling circus of strange religiosity coming to Key West to offer season's greetings to the southernmost hedonists. I've never found eternal salvation to mix very well with 20th century advertising razzmatazz.

And to make things worse, they are driving slowly and by the light of the lamp over the Sheriff's substation I see its gone 5:30am. Time's a-wasting as the red lights wobble on the carefully proceeding cars.

Finally we crawl past the traffic light at Sugarloaf School and just as I am about to open it up (45mph zone continues) and zip past the Proudly American truck and the illuminated mobile roof ornaments a car crests the bridge ahead and I have to wait. Then, past the bridge, Mile Marker 20 opens up a long sweeping stretch of roadway with a gentle curve to the right, it takes a flick of the wrist I'm hitting 75 (45mph zone continues) putting me past the truck, the three cars and the rolling outhouse. Up ahead the billboard is illuminated and visible beyond the other three cars with lighted poles on their roofs.

The outhouse was weird. It had writing celebrating Hanukkah on it and the walls were painted like faux New England brick work. This is a Jewish caravan? Curiouser and curiouser muttered the motorcyclist into his helmet. Especially as New England brickwork, I'm pretty sure never was seen in pre-Christian Palestine. But what's a little historical inaccuracy between believers?

The cars up ahead met their fate when finally we were all free of the 45 mph constraints and entered the highway beyond Sugarloaf Lodge. Here the limit rises to 55mph and I jerked the Bonneville out and beyond the illuminated poles tucking in behind the billboard to avoid oncoming cars.

It was a dreidel, illuminated from within and twirling gently from one side to the other in the slipstream of the car beneath. It looked delicate like rice paper and fragile enough to flip backwards, cutting its bonds to the automobile and toppling onto the Bonneville behind. I throttled back.

After a decade of pootling through the Saddlebunch Keys we finally trooped through Big Coppitt where a few startled dog walkers paused to check out the mobile-museum-cum-illuminated-RV trailed by a flying dreidel and a motorcycle outrider. I was aware the time was 5:45am and I was at Mile Marker 10 with eight long miles to go and a current speed set at a divinely inspired 37mph. Soon though we crossed the bridge to Rockland Key (Mile Marker 9) and the Highway turns gloriously to four lanes (55mph zone) and a straight shot to Key West and the police station.

The final insult as we dropped off the causeway onto the four lane was when the dreidel meister and his cohorts, instead of slipping politely into the right lane took up station in the overtaking lane. Argh!

I like to think the Jewish God is a forgiving sort (my wife assures me He is) because I was ripping His devoted followers all sorts of unmentionable orifices as I dropped two gears and gunned the Bonneville to an embarrassingly high speed in order to pull past before they spread like locusts across all available lanes at a stately 37 mph. I'm pretty sure my rapid fire swearing combined with the slipstream of my angry passing wobbled that dreidel worse than it had wobbled all the way from wherever it originally came.

And that is how I nearly mowed down the City Manager on my to work. Not quite late, but entirely out of breath cursing a group of sweet defenseless Hanukkah lovers out to spread the light of good cheer across the land.

I am a brute and I am sorry. I could have just left the house five minutes earlier and avoided putting my immortal soul and the spirit of the season at risk. I am humbled.

A Midnight Clear

Once upon a time on an island long, long, ago a crisp clear night fell across the land and the residents trembled. For they had no heat; there was no heat upon the scraps of land and over the water neither was there heat. And the residents trembled for they saw temperatures had dropped to an all time recorded low of 41 degrees, and across the islands there was bugger-all heat. That was the coldest low ever recorded and the residents noted it, and it was not good. Absolutely no good at all.The Christmas Season in the Florida Keys is different. Obviously there isn't any snow on the ground and never will be, but there's more to it than that. Christmas comes not with attitude, like there comes across the rest of the land as normally level headed people become ravening shoppers, but these islands enjoy a leavening of humor. The three homes on Sugarloaf Key ho ho ho'ing always make me smile as I ride past Mile Marker 16 on my way home in the dark of evening.

I don't much care for Christmas and I never have. When I was a child Christmas was a time of extra family tension and when I left home all that got left behind as well. Then when I got married I told my wife I had an aversion to Christmas and she replied by pointing that she was a Jew, so that solved that. And then we moved to the Keys nearly a decade ago.

The first few years one lives in the Keys it is a constant source of amazement to see people dressing warmly for winter- long pants, boots, fall fashions are everywhere, and then slowly one acclimates and a sudden plunge to 72 degrees finds oneself also covered in long sleeves and long pants, Just like the Conchs. Luckily the temperature plunges don't last and one can tentatively resume short sleeves and short pants when out and about. And those warm winter nights between cold fronts are perfect for wandering the neighborhoods looking for: It surprises me but I like Christmas in the Keys, not least because there is, against the odds, a community down here and holidays are holidays and if your's is Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, its all the same thing. Key West is the first place I've lived where tolerance and diversity make halfway decent bedfellows, so if someone else's Christmas tree is my wife's Hanukkah bush that's okay too. Of course this is America so the consumer frenzy that is modern Christmas is in full swing, catalogues worn thin by thumbing, UPS desperately looking for fill-in help, all the usual high stress rubbish. For some of us its a great time to have a second childhood, and make it a really good one this time around. Happy Holidays to the mainland under snow ice and drizzle, but I've got to go ride my Bonneville.

Duck Key

The Socialists are coming! The Socialists are coming...on a Triumph Bonneville? Its a terrible thing but places like Duck Key make me crazy, so naturally on a beautiful Fall day like today with 85 degrees of sunshine and a cooling southeasterly breeze it was a perfect day to drive myself crazy. Duck Key sits south of Highway One at Mile marker 61, across a short causeway decorated with columns and signs that don't actually say Keep Out but that's the theme. You can't keep a good Bonneville out.Duck Key was the creation of Pritam Singh, the hobo turned Sikh developer born in Boston and settled in Key West who famously drove himself broke buying the Navy Base that became Truman Annex. He made a fortune ultimately and turned his hand to making Duck Key just north of Marathon, Paradise in the Middle Keys, as it were. This wide spot in the Highway is a shared paradise, half occupied by a mixture of elderly cement homes, in the raised style of the sixties. These are being taken over by Money and turned into Palm Beach by the Keys. I love these massively expensive homes tiled with Mediterranean roof tiles that'll blow halfway to Tampa in a hurricane. Actually these objects of conspicuous consumption irk me to death. I see no value in making expensive exurbia of a Florida Key, a place traditionally reserved for scrounging a living, not lounging a living. I suppose a traditionally inclined Conch sponge fisherman might sneer equally at my level of indulgent living, a weatherproof home equipped to excess with air conditioning, running water and a low flush water closet. The height of bourgeois excess no doubt. My little island has no Mickey Mouse bridges across the canals. On the other hand Duck Key, the half that isn't Singh's exclusive Hawk Cay Resort, could never be described as plebeian. I mean, one has to wonder a little bit about this opulence doesn't one? Especially considering that most of these homes are unoccupied. These are the homes of people who show up a week or four every year, and the rest of the time they are the domain of electricians and plumbers, gardeners and Mexican weed whackers. Some idle people fish off the canals, for fun: but that's too close to life in the rest of the Keys, I think. So the anglers are a lone breed far from the majority of elderly housebound millionaires, yet hardly close to the world of commercial fishing.

Duck Key is not a serene place, the few empty lots are lined with Realtors' signs looking almost disdainful that someone might want, or worse need, to profit from these small squares of open spaces wedged between the homes and pools and canals. The air is redolent with the sounds of small motors buzzing as the industrious Mexicans clear away leaves, whack impudent weeds and apply coats of paint to slightly worn exteriors. I ride through this world and wonder why people feel the need to own more than they can use. Its a terribly European sentiment, I admit and I try to shake it. But I cannot be like my American neighbors who feel only a warm glow of satisfaction when they see people who have managed to make vast fortunes and can think of nothing better to do than to add to them. I think its a very American sense that its possible for anyone to accomplish given industry and luck in the proper proportions. Europeans have a nasty sense that to be successful demands a hook between the shoulder blades and a sharp tug back into the mire of ordinary living.

And then I ride home and revel in my quiet neighborhood of small houses, unadorned canals and empty snowbird nests. Just like Duck Key, only less so. We have met the enemy and he is us. My kind of Socialism I suppose.

Gridlock

"I can't believe it!." Noel was flummoxed and outraged by a new disaster in his young life. He threw himself down into his chair at his console and dragged his headset on. he spent the rest of the workday grumbling about "some people," and one got the impression his co-workers at the Key West PD were part of his problem. His brand new black Nissan Altima had just received its first scratch, a jagged white stripe across his bumper. "Ruined!" he declaimed, a tad melodramatically. "My car will never be the same again!" I empathised with him, because owning a brand new car in Key West is a trial.

During the multiple evacuations caused by eight hurricane threats in 2004 and 2005 authorities in key West came to the conclusion that there were about 8,000 of 25,00 people in the city who had no cars. Municipal evacuation plans now call for a constant stream of buses stopping at the High School during an evacuation to ferry thousands of people to Miami. One of the things that people love about living in Key West is the lifestyle that allows them to get around by bicycle or at most by 50cc scooter. The horrors of car ownership are not for some of them. The majority though have a death grip on their automobiles despite all drawbacks on a small island. This is a town with narrow streets and way too many cars already so for up to 8 months out of the year finding parking is a drag and people shove and squeeze their cars into excessively small spaces in an effort to create a space where one might reasonably be assumed not to exist. In New Town, the more expansive outer two thirds of the island, parking spaces are more reasonably proportioned by collective madness seems to take over local drivers and they ding and bang each other's cars as though they were in the narrow confines of Old Town. The net result of all this mainland attitude meeting the island reality of limited space means that there just isn't a really good reason to own a cage unless you have off street parking and like to drive to the mainland from time to time (I qualify in both categories). Nevertheless when seventy percent of the cars on the island drowned following the Wilma inundations of 2005, almost everyone I can think off went out and bought new SUVs to replace their lost transport. The net result is crowded streets, as badly clogged as ever.

Then we get a city employee questionnaire asking about our driving habits. The City of key West, under a new manager is trying to join the 21st century with a recycling program (at last!) and suggestions to help make commuting less carbon intensive. However the questionnaire was prepared by a zombie who wasn't paying attention to Key West. Nowhere in all the exhaustive questioning was there room to admit to commuting by moped or motorcycle. Bicycles, cars, SUVs of course get a mention but the option of two motorized wheels isn't on the radar. Still scooters and motorcycles make sense on the streets where we ride. My mainland vehicle is a 5 year old Nissan Maxima and it has its share of scratches and scrapes, though it runs perfectly and is a fine 3.5 liter machine for passing slow pokes on Highway One. My wife is girding her loins to replace it, as it approaches the 100,000 mile mark, with a convertible. She's hesitant partly because she hates spending the money (she doesn't mind buying me a motorcycle though- women!) and partly because she knows that if she gets a glossy Sebring or a Solara it stands an excellent chance of getting dinged- bright clean cars attract scratches in Key West's Old Town. By contrast our "Conch cruiser" a ten year old scarlet Geo Metro is crisp and clean and completely scratch free. I figure its just too modest a car to attract the attention of the sociopaths who feel compelled to put scratches on strangers' cars. I guess if I lived in the city I would not bother with a car, its easy enough to rent one, and off street parking is rare as hen's teeth in Old Town. Even in New Town, land of suburban styled American homes, garages are usually converted to living space, so cars end up where kids can egg them, drunk drivers can sideswipe them and disgruntled pedestrians can key them. But you can't separate most Americans, even emigres to island living from their cars. Its a tribute I suppose that around one third of city residents have chosen to deprive themselves of their cars.

Panama 1999

We transited the Panama Canal on our sailboat Miki G in the Fall of the year the US finally pulled out of that operation.I doubt the Autoridad in charge these days would be too impressed were we to return and expect a transit for our 34-foot catamaran through the canal. These days its a self funding operation and every transit has to pay for itself and sailboats are very low on the totem pole. Our buddy Anna rode through with us to check out how she and her husband Ian were going to cope with their boat Joss. We had a minor crash later when the tug we tied up to left us in the lurch and we were slightly beaten up as we were dragged through the lock sideways by the currents. Damage was minor but we stared death in the face for a few awful minutes.Days later Joss made it through fine, though I was always worrying about what had happened to us as we locked through on their trip. Ian confided in me later that he couldn't get the image out of his mind of Miki G swirling helplessly through the lock like a leaf down a drain.

We were weeks ahead of the hand-over to full Panamanian control of the Canal, but years later I did meet the skipper of the last boat to be issued a US transit permit as the seconds ticked up to the noon hour December 30th 1999. Ghost, a suitably elderly wooden sailboat that I believe was shipped back from Marathon here in the Keys, to the owner's home in Marin County California.

When people find out we sailed our Gemini catamaran from California to Florida they are always fascinated by our transit ($500, two days, and the dogs behaved impeccably!), but we remain fascinated by the country of Panama at large.Miki G moored for several weeks at the now defunct Pedro Miguel Boat Club, next to the Pedro Miguel locks on Lake Miraflores. The marina used to be a Canal Zone perk, but during the US Administration it was also an excellent place to tie upto make repairs and rest from the culturally arduous business of cruising Latin America. Pedro Miguel was an English speaking, boater friendly, oasis even in the years after the Zone was ended and Americans only stayed on to help transition to Panamanian Administration. However the Autoridad del Canal de Panama has shut the place down after a long legal battle and pictures such as this can no longer be taken because the club is gone (plus we sold the boat to a friend in Key West who isn't interested in cruising right now!). One of these days I'm going to write an entry about all the place I've been that no longer exist. A depressingly long list, indicating an excessively long and well traveled life I think, even though the places themselves weren't that great; the USSR and East Germany high on the lackluster destinations I Have Known.

Panama started for us when we rounded the cape separating Costa Rica from Panama one dark and windy night. We blew into Panama full tilt and never got over how much we wanted to be there. The river trip to the second largest city in the country David ("Dah" with the emphasis on the "i" ) was an amazing maze to navigate. Non sailors often think rivers are refuges but we found that jungle river to be a pain in the ass with massive tides, floating debris and low overhanging branches, not to mention sandbars and few places to anchor.I keep this picture framed in my office to remind me of our mad cap adventures trying to find places to walk the dogs away from the prying eyes of the officious Customs agent who was determined to enforce Panama's 'no pets ashore' rule. Emma, our Labrador stuck close to me while Debs, our Husky dived into the bushes like the little explorer he always was. Everyone in the rest of the country ignored the quarantine rule and we took the dogs everywhere with us, into Panama City, into Darien by rental car, and up into the mountains in the middle of the country.

We really got to enjoy Panama among the Pacific Islands that dot the uninhabited coast. There are beaches, palm trees and crystal clear waters in an immense 300 mile playground where sailors can play Adam and Eve for months and not see the same place twice. We washed up on Isla Contadora in the Perlas Islands, which has an airstrip, hotels, some stores and fuel supplies. A walk was de rigeur through the ritzy neighborhoods where rich Panamanians keep weekend homes. I like this picture, it inverts the usual stereotype of Latin Americans being the gardeners for wealthy white Americans. "Mow yer lawn, guv?" After we got through the Canal we spent several more idylic weeks in the more famous San Blas islands on the Caribbean side of Panama. These Kuna indian islanders practice a low tech medieval lifestyle in their own autonomous province known to them as their Kuna Yala, with their own system of justice and social pecking order, similar to, but more idylic than, a US Indian Reservation. These islands resembled the Keys somewhat, in as much as they had coconuts, narrow sandy beaches and lots of scrub vegetation. We sailors gathered in calm anchorages and hung out barbequing under the stars, telling stories, swimming and playing cards until our supplies ran out and we had a private plane fly us out the fixings for a massive Thanksgiving dinner in November 1999. Believe me, we were absolutely bulging with thanks that memorable desert island holiday.Teaching kids to pet the dogs (with treats of course!) on the Rio Diablo/Corazon de Jesus footbridge in the Kuna Yala. Kids are kids in the most remote places and Labradors do like their treats.

Panama was a hell of a place, far more varied and interesting than Costa Rica with a greater percentage of land given over to parks and all the benefits iof a money laundering economy with excellent banking (they use the US dollar for their currency) and superb medical facilities. Retirement? Who knows!

1421

Bob agreed to wander through the bookstore with me, which came as a surprise. Bob had been retired for a while and he prided himself on being a doer not a reader. We had met while sailing the coast of Mexico en route, in our respective sailboats, to the Caribbean. Bob was a good friend and he and his wife Barb were excellent company, inveterate card players and excellent hosts. A retired electronics engineer he loved to fix things, and found my love of reading amusing but impractical. He told me he read perhaps one book a year. In this California bookstore Bob prodded me towards the shelves and started telling me I should read this and that. I nodded dumbly, astonished by his fervor. "This," he said. "You have to read this, it will blow your mind."

Well, I have to admit I was a bit dubious. He had previously recommended to me a book and in my opinion he got the thesis all wrong on that one. It was a good book, though, titled "Guns, Germs, and Steel," which posited that Indo-Europeans had received environmental advantages that helped put them ahead of rival cultures. Bob wasn't at all sure that other ethnicities could have profited from the advantages that Europeans used to get ahead. Europeans were the greatest, he said at the time. Not any more, nowadays Bob was reading voraciously and his world view was expanding, and he wanted mine to do the same.

The author of 1421, a retired Royal Navy Captain, spent 17 years researching a detective story about who actually traveled round the world first. The author's conclusions, beautifully detailed and meticulously researched, are absolutely devastating. He claims China sent fleets to all corners of the world where many of them crashed and sank and left behind colonies of Chinese sailors and concubines who created outposts of Chinese culture, genes and agriculture everywhere including Australia, South and Central America, Africa and of course to us most astonishingly, the United States.

The author is levelheaded, thoughtful and precise. His story is unimpeachable as far as I'm concerned and reminds me once again how little we can believe the stories told us by our elders and betters. Everyone believes in self preservation first and truth second. So while his theories are scoffed at by professional academics, the author employs common sense and an understanding of sailing more complete than a land based historian or archaeologist could bring to the subject. I have sailed some of the seas he discusses and everything he says about them makes perfect sense to me.

I found his explanation of the famous Bimini Road, a strip of carefully placed underwater stones off the beach on North Bimini, obvious and simple once explained. Others have concluded the stones were placed by aliens or were part of the myth of Atlantis or some other rubbish. Menzies figures, with lots of research that the Bimini Road was a pair of slipways to haul the Chinese Admiral's junks damaged in a recent hurricane.

His explanation to a sailor is obvious and simple. I believe his other explanations for anomalies in the history of exploration merit serious consideration. This book has turned my world upside down. There are 500 closely reasoned pages, a superb read, a fantastic detective story simply told and easily understood and packed with details. I recommend it highly to anyone with a mind open enough to accept that perhaps Columbus sailed West with a Chinese map in his hand, after lying to the Spanish monarchs about his plans in order to get money out of them for a chance at adventure, fame and fortune.

This is not history as one learns it but it makes the extraordinary a matter of common sense. My mind is reeling.

Vignettes III

When I was a sailboat captain taking cruise ship passengers sailing in Key West Harbor they used to ask me anxiously "What about hurricanes?" There we were sailing small catamarans around Tank Island and Christmas Tree Island, beautiful blue winter skies, crystalline waters flashing by only inches from their bums and all they could ask about was storms. Everybody wants drama. As far as I can tell since the Annus Horribilis of 2005 there have been monster floods in the Mid West, killer tornadoes in Tornado Alley, power outages in the North East, hellfires in California and outlying satellite states, and epic mudslides in Hawaii. Don't cry for the Keys, America, we're doing fine down here in balmy 80 degree days. Our biggest problem I predict is the Canadian loony at better than par with the US dollar and we probably are going to drown in (non-tipping) economically smug Canadian snowbirds all winter long. Luckily for us they have to go home every spring to validate their Free National Health Service cards.

_______

Boot Key has been formally cut off from the United States this week, making it a minor outlying island in the tradition of Conch Republic craziness. Boot Key is a small lump of scrub and mangroves on the Atlantic side of the city of Marathon (Marathon "Key" despite the best efforts of tourism promoters does not exist), and its partially occupied by a road, some commercial fishing docks leased to the fishermen by the owner of the radio station that operates out of Boot Key. The State of Florida in all its majesty this week ordered the City to shut down the drawbridge because it isn't able to support it's own weight let alone cars and humans. The radio station is now having its personnel ferried to the island courtesy of the City, which has to scrounge up at least $10 million dollars to fix the bridge to nowhere, or $1 million ( estimated) for the Corps of Engineers to dismantle the bridge's opening span. Which by the way still requires an operator to open the bridge to allow masted boats to get into Boot Key Harbor. The theory is that if the span is left open it might blow over in strong winds. As one might surmise there is a good deal of heated debate going on about what to do with this problem. After the parties involved solve this issue, they promise to head to Jerusalem and bring peace to the Middle East.

_______________

This was the summer that I never made it out to Tarpon Belly Key, a place where I can put out a recliner on the beach and take a quiet read. Even though the beach is more rocks than sand, this can be viewed as an advantage as it attracts fewer visitors. I can't remember a time when I found someone else sunning themselves on the pebbles when I wanted to be there. Indeed I read in the paper this week that Tarpon Belly had a visitor who really would rather have been elsewhere. Silly man. He took off from the ramp at Blimp Road on Cudjoe and paddled his kayak out into the wind blown waters. It doesn't look far but he was apparently stuck. The brisk breezes dragged him out and washed him up on Tarpon Belly. There's not much there for a castaway but he was apparently in good health when the Marine Patrol found him the next day. Having failed to make the 40 minute boat ride even once this summer, through flat waters, I rather envy him his stay on my island.

_________



Gratuitous motorcycle picture.

Because I like the picture and its my blog.

The Big Smoke

Miami 2007 is not London 1850 (which used to be known thanks to its coal generated smog as "The Big Smoke" to country bumpkins), but after a few blissful weeks without having to go up to the big city, today was the day. The wife had to visit the surgeon for a pre-operative check up as she is scheduled (thanks to the succesful check-up!) to get her wrist sliced and diced and repaired in ten days. She had the same surgery last year on her other wrist as her arthritis is causing bone spurs to threaten the tendons that control her hands.

Its a form of Hanukkah gift to herself at this time of year, combining some sick leave along with pre-Christmas school closure so she gets three weeks off to recover. It also means that for the six weeks she's in a cast she won't miss swimming as the waters are too cold for us for the rest of winter. She knows the awful pain she will be in starting December 17th which makes her a bit jittery. I drove to and from, as per usual and I tried to find some joy.

The traffic up was reasonably light and speedy on Highway One and the Maxima was in fine fettle though I didn't need to do much passing as even the slow pokes managed to hold 60mph in the 55mph sections of the Overseas Highway. The bummer was that our regular pit stop in Marathon, 30 minutes from home was shut down, and permanently by the look of things. Its a Pepto-Bismol pink hut by the south side of the Highway serving cheap and cheerful Cuban food, slowly its true, but hot and delicious cheese toast in a huge wedge. perhaps the wedges were too big or the curvy Cuban babe who operated the espresso machine got whisked off her feet by one of the burly construction workers that lurked around the place every time I stopped there. nevertheless we had to hold out to Denny's Latin Diner in Islamorada for con leche and cheese toast.

There's another weird thing, Starbucks, which has had an outlet on Duval street for about three years, now has a store in Islamorada, right next to Denny's Latin Cafe, the only decent coffee shop in 80 miles, and Starbucks has to stick another location right next door to try to drive them out of business. I like Starbucks drinks but their predatory construction practices suck.

It was our last stop before the mainland madness, 90 mph on the turnpike, crowded traffic lights and lots of hurry-up-and-wait at Baptist Hospital at the University of Miami. So we sat at Denny's table, listened to loud salsa music over the speakers and indulged in the 78 degree sunny morning.

The hospital, buried near the tip of the lush Coral Gables Golf course was where the pre-op check was done, but the surgeon operates out of a gruesome clinic in North Miami, a stark cold place with angry staff and cruddy facilities, so we had to cross the entire city on the turnpike to get there. Not without reason are Miami drivers rated among the most aggressive in the nation- all those Cuban, Colombian and Venezuelan exiles drive like they are back home. But in a powerful car the stream of urgent traffic gets you there in a hurry!

Coral Gables by contrast is one of those leafy cities, a suburb within the boundaries of the larger metropolitan area, Atherton in Northern California might be comparable or Lake Forest north of Chicago where one of my wife's aunts lives, all trees, large urban homes, in Coral Gables on Spanish named Avenues (Granada, Pilarcito etc...) with huge ficus trees, sweeping driveways and pink tiled roofs, the sort that spew tiles like chaff in a hurricane.

Finally we got to go shopping after all the doctoring and my wife had time only for a short tour of the huge South Miami Target with its vast multi-storey parking lot such as doesn't exist in the Keys. Target is the store she most misses in the lonely fastness of Key West, and of course Costco, where we went later, for those essential huge boxes of bananas and 144 count tubs of sponges and barrels of liquid aminos and I don't know what.

.

Once again I felt like a country bumpkin, admiring the huge rows of clean orderly shelves in Target, the vast acres of al fresco parking at Costco:

We came home, a quick three hour drive, to the sounds of the NPR Presidential Debate from Iowa on the Sirius satellite radio with a bundle of white roses we bought from a street vendor, too late to light the evening candle for the first night of Hanukkah. The light burns bright inside, now that we are home amidst the stillness of life in the Lower Keys.

TINA

Driving a car has become such a requirement for daily living, that one is astonished when one comes across a fully formed adult who does not drive, perhaps has never driven, and may not even posses a licence to drive. One can hardly imagine the limitations imposed on a life lived outside Manhattan for anyone unable or unwilling to drive. Thus it is we find ourselves sharing our roads with people who have an equivalent interest in driving to any other vital daily function, brushing their teeth perhaps or mixing a salad. Never mind the need for a license to test one's skill if not one's aptitude for driving. Our neighbors thus climb in their cars not the least enthused by the desire to drive, not looking forward to the challenges of the road,not cheered by the propect of using their skills and experience to get where they are going smoothly efficiently and courteously. Driving is a chore and it shows in the way they lump down the road.

Furthermore the vehicles people select to get themselves from place to place reflect these limitations. Nowadays as gas gets up around $3:50 a gallon smaller less powerful cars are becoming more acceptable if not actually accepted, especially where people have longer distances to and from work. Around Key West mileage is minuscule so the high cost of gasoline is virtually irrelevant. In any event driving a small car is believed to be inherently dangerous in North America, and so people drive big vehicles, SUVs, vans and pick-ups, safe platforms in which they can safely put on make up and chatter safely and endlessly on wireless telephony. They dawdle on the road, perhaps fondly imagining they are safe drivers, but I can't think of someone fiddling with a telephone, or a car radio, or opening a sandwich as a safe driver, slow perhaps but not safe.

So you have underpowered small cars,and large cars driven mindlessly because they are safe shells, all filled with the multiple distractions of radios, phones, tracking devices, televisions and on and on,combined with a culture of not bothering to drive well, and drivers possibly relaxing with alcohol and into this crazy mix you throw a mustard keen motorcyclist. Like me, out there enjoying the commute, focused on the road, not eating, not phoning, not even sharing the magnificent views with a passenger, just riding, paying attention to the road.

I was glad to move out of Key West and buy a house 25 miles up the overseas Highway. The step away from the town with all its urban noise exacerbated by its limited size was welcome to me. I love being away from chickens, children, aircraft flight paths, traffic and sirens. I sit at home surrounded by waving palm fronds dappling the sunlight, filtering deep blue skies, and I am in my castle. Which I might add includes ample off street parking, and because mine is a dead end street like so many off Highway One, there is negligible traffic passing by.

Against all this sybaritic delight one has to balance a 40 minute commute and the possibility of death and dismemberment by motorcycle. 50,000 Americans die each year on US highways in their cars. A further 4,000 die on their motorcycles. There are far more cars than bikes so it would seem the odds are worse for two wheelers in proprotion to their numbers. But as is so often the case statistics tell only a part of the picture. Youth and inexperience on two wheels or four makes a severe accident much more likely. Alcohol messes things up badly too, though not paying attention generally is a widespread cause of automotive disaster.

The thing that gets me is that even though this information is widely available one doesn't attend gatherings of worried car drivers rubbing their hands anxiously wondering what to do. No, they keep on driving, being distracted drunk or disoriented and hoping for the best. Motorcyclists on the other hand spend altogether too much time online equating this gentle hobby with climbing the north face of Mount Everest, or wrestling alligators or facing off naked against bullets. Motorcycles carry risks possibly in proportion to the rewards, and if the proportion isn't there then I suggest not riding.

I have grown disenchanted with online forums and the compulsive desire to find faults with the machines we ride. The sheer joy of riding is lost in blathering discussions of arcane engine modifications to waste dollars on, and to squeeze some extra unneeded power out of the engine. Said mods lead to unreliability and that in turn leads to more bitching online about the poor motorcycle caught in the trap of the owner's ego. Of riding there is nothing to read, just requests for technical information which questions get windbag tedious responses.

I prefer to read of other's experiences in blogs though sometimes I find myself reading exquisite laundry lists of colors of clothing, the prevailing theory being that wearing bright colors will save a motorcyclist from being struck. I suppose anything is possible but I prefer to rely on my own wits when it comes to people not paying attention. A driver tslking on the phone won't notice a flaying saucer hovering overhead, never mind a lime green dot on the side road. Lately Scooter in the Sticks has grown silent and not it turns out because the weather has grown harsh in Pennsylvania. He has been admiring the medical work being used in most gory fashion to restore a friend's leg destroyed by hitting a garbage truck with a BMW airhead, more accurately it was the leg that did the hitting while riding the BMW.

These sorts of things give one pause, and reinforce the need to tell one's wife one loves her last thing in the morning and first thing in the evening. But then I wonder do car drivers calculate thir odds when they get in their cars? If one gives up riding as "too dangerous" what's the alternative? To drive a car, I suppose, which is just "less dangerous" and in my opinion zero fun on a commute. Oh and much more polluting (not that anyone cares about emissions when they feel their safety is at stake!). I resist with all my might becoming just another boared box on the road to old age. I also, I might add resist equally fervently becoming a squashed fly on the wrong lane of Highway One.

Perhaps one day reading these words from a hospital bed I might rue my desire to ride, but like the woman Thatcher said when ordering her controversial social reforms: There Is No Alternative. Not for me there isn't, if I am to enjoy my daily pursuit of a pension. If I were to give up riding (with a sidecar when I get too old!) I'd rather go back to living on a boat and sailing. Life is a play from which there is only one exit, stage left into oblivion, no matter what hopes and promises are offered on the altar of Hope. If there is more after the final crash I shall try to approach whatever life is available with the same cheerful tolerance I attempt to assume in this life. But so far as I am sure this is the only life there is.

Might as well enjoy it.

Atosha in Paradise

The building was clean and bright and new inside, the wood floor smooth and shiny, and yellow was the theme. The owners and employees of the new fitness center wore yellow t-shirts, the walls were painted bright yellow and the paper napkins and plates were yellow as well, in case we missed the point. Key West's new gym and massage center is all yellow, bright and sunny and new. For those of us invited to inspect the new place, there was an abundance of food and alcohol, the fitness theme notwithstanding, because in Key West free booze guarantees a good turnout, no matter what. We mingled, sipped soda and scarfed sushi.

David Horan was mingling with the best of them and bumped into me. We met a while back in his offices on Whitehead Street as I was exploring business options for my sailboat, and he is a well known Admiralty lawyer in Key West. He's rich as Croesus too as he was a major side kick in the crew that discovered the Atosha galleon loaded down with hundreds of millions in gold and silver. It turns out he's a tad bit deaf, which is awkward in a noisy gathering.

"Fitch?" he asked me quizzically. "Why do I plan to get fitch?" He started a conversation with me with that wary look a man gets when he knows you from somewhere but can't quite place where. I had asked innocently if he planned on getting fit. He does not carry himself like a man who indulges in rigorous exercise.

"Oh," he roared over the background chatter, as the penny dropped. "Fit?" he looked at me as though I were mad. "I'm here for the booze," he announced. "It's free." Obvious ain't it? Like I said everyone in Key West will show up to anything if there's free Bud Light no matter how unlikely the event may seem. Later I saw him tentatively prancing on one of those treadmills where you walk up and down on the spot. His wife stood to one side looking bored, as though tending a wayward infant.

We got back on the Bonneville and rumbled off to take a tour of the south side of the Island en route to the next Big Event of a culture packed weekend. Never mind the gathering of women Thursday for Comedy Night at the Red Barn Theater, or the Christmas parade Saturday down Truman and Duval, the kiddies Fantasy Fest with all bodies thoroughly covered and Tootsie rolls flung instead of beads; Friday Night was Nutcracker Night.

Ugh! I hate cultural pastiches and I wouldn't be seen dead at a Christmas performance of the Nutcracker any place. I'm sick of Tchaikovsky's divine music ending up as elevator dreck in department stores, I hate toy soldiers and crap performances oooh'ed and aaaah'ed at by doting parents. So imagine my surprise when I found myself actually looking forward to three hours of treacle and saccharine at the Tennessee Williams Theater at the Junior College, a palace renovated recently in green and blue.

It was a night to revel in the pleasure of living in Key West, of being local. I care not a lot that I have the determination required to live here, nor that my wife's arthritis makes living this far south pretty much a requirement, I enjoy living in a small town with large world attitude. And when I get to see something like the submarine Nutcracker Joyce Stahl put on for Key West I hug myself in pleasure that I get to be one of the chosen few that calls this place home. The Nutcracker we few, we happy few got to see was a divinely inspired Key West creation. The first act was set in the back of the Mayor of Key West's Conch cottage, a garden filled with palm trees luxuriating under a dark tropic sky, aquamarine waters shining through the foliage. The mangroves that descended as Clara slumbered represented true understanding of the vegetation one comes to love when one lives surrounded by water.

The dance especially in the second act looked superb to my untutored eye, and when I spoke of it the next night at the Christmas parade a professional former dancer assured me they were world class performers leading the troupe. We were treated to a submarine garden of brain and elk horn corals, the hull of the Atosha (copyrighted to read "Atoshu") spilling jewels with Clara and Drosselmayer's nephew observing the proceedings from a diving bell suspended over the stage.

My wife and I had reserved seats at the front of the mezzanine far enough to enjoy the superb costumes as they were meant to be seen but close enough that we could enjoy the expressions on the little chickens faces as they did battle with the toy sailors marching 'neath the Flag of the Conch Republic.

Our seating also allowed us to observe the passage of patrons eagerly seeking a refreshing glass of wine to bring back to their seats after the intermission. My neighbor, a text messaging moron during the first act brought back two glasses to restore her for the second act. In passing I saw my former employer wandering by with three glasses, which I was glad to see he distributed to his two friends. On the way he nodded vaguely at me, a la Horan, and I was glad to see he, like me, never forgets a face even if he can't quite place it's provenance...

Alcohol and Art in Key West, when combined are quite enough to lead to blissful oblivion. In my case, however, I shan't soon forget our evening of ballet, a performance that took me out of myself so far that I forgot completely I was even watching the long despised Nutcracker. Even when the cracked hull of the Atoshu hove into view shimmering amid the corals on the ocean floor at Tennessee Williams. This wasn't the Nutcracker, this was Key West.