I find that from time to time my brain wanders and the journey is triggered by almost nothing, a scent, a noise or a view be it ever so brief. When I was out wandering Solares Hill a while back I discovered all sorts of illuminated angles under the street lights. This shot of a cement path took me back to a visit I made to the Bay Islands of Honduras when I was sailing the Western Caribbean a decade ago. My, how time flies.
The Bay Islands sit off the North Coast of Honduras just out of sight of the mainland, and out of mind for most people. They are steep hilly lumps of rock surrounded by reefs, their major claim to fame. Divers love to visit these islands as development is limited and the waters are relatively pristine. For sailors the islands are a comfortable stop on the route to and from Panama and its always useful Canal. Another weird attribute is that they were settled by English speakers and now the islands are in a death struggle between native English speakers and Spanish speaking migrants from the impoverished mainland. The smallest of the three main Bay Islands is a place given over to diving, with a small town and a couple of cement roads. The town of Utila is crossed by cement paths, just like the one in the picture. And for one second I was back in Utila, walking the dogs before we went back out to the boat for night.
It happened that I found this strangely decorated house, a place I had not previously come across that shone with a particular light under the street lamps. I thought the car sticking out of the house gave the place an odd look, like a car parked in an art gallery.
I wanted to go in the garden and sit at the tile topped table, but I figured if someone looked out they'd throw eight different kinds of fit so I limited myself to picture taking and moved on.
It is fashionable to hang one's laundry out to dry, in an effort to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, or to reduce the chances of burning the planet to a crisp, take your pick of the cause du jour. Hanging clothes out to dry in the Florida Keys is one of those things that are so eminently sensible it is a wonder they even have to be mentioned, but like solar water heaters and recycling hanging out laundry is one of those activities that are still much in the minority. The Keys recycle one quarter of the waste stream that mainland Florida manages. Solar water heaters are a rarity, and putting solar panels into the grid is such an eccentric idea no one can bear to speak of it- yet. I offered to be a guinea pig to keys Energy and they failed to respond. Still, I operate my house on my rain catchment system and I turn out unnecessary lights (I like a gloomy pool of light in a darkened room when I'm reading, what can I say?) and yes I hang my laundry up to dry under the house. So does this Key Wester, in what I thought was an evocative photo:
I like the feel of air dried clothes and I hope the fabric will last a bit longer and get less shrivelled in the process. Plus its a green thing to do. I am nothing if not in the avantgarde. Very cool, that's me.
I have been having difficulty walking for the past couple of days. I think I was a little over zealous in the exercise department and my knee swelled up like a rather hot throbbing grapefruit, a most disagreeable sensation. There's nothing like hobbling to restore one's sens e of what is valuable and important in life. Old folk used to chide me when I was a kid by telling me that if one had good health one had everything. Well, I believe them now. And what's more my Triumph got another flat tire after I parked near the marine engineering lab on the last day of classes at the college. I suspect a fastener scattered by some careless students got me my flat tire. I maintain my equanimity through it all, especially as my wife loves to fuss over me with ice for my knee, hot tea and sympathy for the rest of me. And I get to look forward to some more motorcycle explorations not least because the great City of Key West is sending me to Tampa this weekend to learn how to be a better dispatch trainer. My horizons are expanding, more training for me and lots more roads to roam to get there.
On the subject of staying green one has to wonder why at sometime after four o'clock in the morning people leave their lights blazing. Me? I have an excuse for wandering at that hour, I am on a most virtuous lunch break, but most people are horizontal sawing logs. Which is not a time they need lights on around the house. But luckily for me they leave 'em on anyway.
These restored wooden homes look just lovely in the middle of the night.
Summer is moving in, a time when people grumble about the heat and humidity and when I hear them I wonder why they live here. I read about snow melting and the end of winter for people cooped in Up North. One of the best things about living in the Keys is not dreading winter. Even when I lived in California, a warm state for many people I found myself hating the prospect of winter. Santa Cruz is a place of heavy rains, bone chilling cold and the temperatures rarely get down to freezing. Mud mud everywhere and cold feet every morning. Summer in the Keys is rainy season- just one more advantage, in that when it rains its positively hot. I don't even dread hurricane season, words I shall doubtless live to regret. Be that as it may there are many people Up North who have had to survive their own weather catastrophes and they don't get turquoise water to accompany their disasters.
It's based on a play by Tennessee Williams, a writer who did actually spend a fair bit of time in Key West and the movie though not set in Key West was shot partially in the city. This is described as Front Street (actually Duncan Street in Key West, apparently) by the taxi driver of the unnamed Gulf Coast city (in Mississippi) where the action takes place:
There's a lot of indoor action though I should point out there is a car chase and a shoot out so there's something for everyone. Anna Magnani got best actress Oscar for her role in the 1955 film, playing a wild Sicilian emigrant who gets widowed and has to get her life back on track. Aside from the fact she bears a striking resemblance to my mother who's been dead these 35 years she plays a "pleasantly plump" (not my description) housewife who goes to pieces in a rather public and humiliating way. And she learned to speak English for the role.
Along comes a man, "the body of my husband with the head of a clown" played by Burt Lancaster who literally jumps for joy at their first date, which scene alone is worth the price of admission:
Its a movie filled with drama and shouting and misunderstandings, young love, old love and lots of banana trees and a couple of street scenes from Key West in the good old days. I was surprised by how little St Paul's Cathedral has changed since 1955 (in the film it became a Catholic church!) and I quite enjoyed the exotic dancers in a downtown bar wobbling gently and seen only from the waist down, their antics rapidly overshadowed by the mother of all cat fights. there was a lot about this movie I had forgotten. Not least the clown up a mast:
The young truck driver has to overcome not a few obstacles to hunt down his Sicilian flame the Baronessa Serafina delle Rose but her daughter played by the 30 year old (!) Marisa Pavan has a tough row to hoe too. Lots of tears.
It was a great romp and being as how Tennessee Williams wrote it there's no certainty how it will all end up, tears before bedtime or not. The chorus of Italian crones was the best touch of color of all, not least because they were real Italian speakers and let rip in their native tongue from time to time:
Rose Tattoo has been released in a new digital version which has to be good news as I understand video cassette players are getting as old and out of date as I am. I just wish there was a real crowd like this to enliven a hot summer afternoon in Old Town. I guess the cinematic version will just have to do.
It's not often in daily living one gets to see a real live human being wrapping themselves in the flag but there was a cool breeze wafting across the lawn at Florida keys Community College this weekend, and a flag might do as well as a blanket to keep warm under those circumstances (in this case they were sitting on the flag but the image doesn't work quite as well). It was that time of year, and the Keys Chorale was assembled once more to bid "the season" adieu and so we gathered, those of us that are year round residents and the few snowbirds still unwilling to go home to their grandchildren and we picnicked and sat on the crab grass that passes for a lawn in the sub tropics and my wife made with friends with the neighbors.
She has this annoying habit of striking up conversations with strangers just about anywhere. Sometimes I have to pretend not to know her in places like airport waiting areas if I want to get any reading done. As it was I had got through barely half a Citizen's Voice when she had found out who these two nice ladies were (one from Seattle the other Oklahoma) and that they were down for a week. They weren't lesbians at all, forgive me for assuming but two women out at the Concert under the Stars kind of makes you think that if you live in Key West. They were actually quite friendly to a male of the species so I had to drop the paper for a bit. Then Tom Oosterhoudt came out and simpered on stage while taking pictures for Conch Color his weekly good news paper (just thrilled the new police Chief is gay. It's nice to see someone thrilled about the police for a change):
How he ever got elected to the city commission I'll never know. His mother's influence perhaps, but he had a horrid habit of agreeing with the last person he spoke to on every single issue. God, I sound catty. He has found his calling photographing happy events and being a cheerful cheerleader, a voice of niceness in a town that likes to pick people apart. Moving on. El Presidente Jill Landesberg-Boyle, welcoming the crowds to the first Concert under the Stars on the college campus that she has taken over:
Here's a woman who took over as leader of a fossilised campus filled with instructors who did not take kindly to being asked to innovate and actually go out and teach their students. She has held to the course, raised money and brought a breath of delicious fresh air to the moribund college. And she hasn't even named a building after herself unlike the loathsome Dr Seeker (what an ironic name for a man who sought nothing intellectual and didn't know a standard if he tripped over it). I like Dr Boyle, though I've never met her, and the more bad things I hear about her the more good I know she is doing. Oh and the music wasn't bad either:
Dean Walters has taken over the Keys Chorale of Florida Keys Community College, as they are formally known. He took over from a much beloved community figure who led the singers since Methuselah was knee high to a grasshopper so he has had his work cut out for him. He didn't seem intimidated giving himself and the audience a very good time, offering quotations on the subject of love between musical numbers on the same subject:
One reason we were there was to egg on my wife's friend Cathy who used to teach sex education to scholars in the school district until her position was cut. She compensated for her career uncertainty by hamming it up to loud cheers from her fan clubs in the crowd.
We listened to a whole range of songs and choruses from Italian opera to Cole Porter and every shade of Broadway musical. It was a polite person's night out, relatively sedate, (except for the very gay and very loud and very funny tippling picnickers stage right who cheered their favorites with gay abandon). Our Cuban neighbors to the south would have been writhing all over and the black gospel choirs of the south (to our north) would have swayed the stage off its temporary foundations. The Chorale sang beautifully, highlighting the wealth of talent in small town America and it was a fine place to spend a Saturday evening. The small orchestra was forgotten pretty much in the adulation of the singers "It was a good time," their George Lucas look alike leader said to me as he loaded his pick up after the show:
It was too. Love Conch'rs All read the banner they lifted at the end of the show as they, 
and alumni of the chorale joined together and sang their song, Homeward Bound (the one by Marta Keen, not the one by Someone and Garfunkel). "Set me free to find my calling. and I'll return to you somehow." Poignant but not sentimental. Well, perhaps a little bit. 
...and you think to yourself "Whoa! Totally not getting the concept." He's pushing 
Getting ahead of him isn't hard; it's ninety degrees and even though 
What is wrong with people? Run for office and keep your pants zipped please. This isn't France you know, else we'd have crusty bread and decent cheese instead of cheesecake for dessert. And candidates could bonk all sorts of inappropriate people.Actually this isn't the worst of its kind. A few years ago the Blue Paper reported the then Key West police chief had allegedly had an affair years previously with a 17-year-old boy, while he worked for the Sheriff's department. It must be something in the water. 
And yet apparently still used. Re-use, reduce, recycle. Green living Key West style.
It seemed funny at the time but perhaps you needed to be there. The fact is I am training again and its extra-boring waiting for something to happen when there's not much going on. "9-1-1 where is your emergency?" "Help, I taped my nose and now it's stuck!" Where's my camera?
Then I went from the sublime to the ridiculous and found a bunch of electric rental cars parked off Greene Street in the early hours of the morning. I liked the picture but it didn't fit with the Old City hall essay:
Continuing the automotive theme I went down Caroline Street earlier this week looking for the red hummer parked in the 600 block, but it wasn't there. My Bonneville was though:
Ironically I was riding down Caroline a couple of days later, alongside my wife on her 
The colors are a bit pale but I like the suggestion of evening and sunset and the onset of the cool of dusk. It's getting dark after eight at night, though I do wish we enjoyed those long drawn out 
Its funny to me because this place reeks of Old key West to visitors, though many residents (count me among them) prefer a nice clean indoor environment. You know, air conditioning in summer and less of the baubles and stuff. Jaded I think is the term. perhaps I'm just allergic to fish floats.
And this cat snoozing in the flower bed at the Lighthouse rates as a dude in my book. Cute no? 
The thing is, when a human does the same thing most people react with revulsion. This guy down below could argue he's every bit as cute and deserving as the cat, but he got short shrift from passersby on Eaton Street near 
It doesn't even look that comfortable to me, scrunched up on the inadequate buttress of the garden wall. Not like this next cat spotted during a nocturnal perambulation of 
I was experimenting with the hated flash on my little Nikon and for once the stars aligned and everything got properly, if starkly, lit up in this picture. The cat didn't seem to mind the bright light flooding its spacious cushion. I guess the human residents didn't mind as they had left everything wide open.
I don't miss her so much day-to-day because I work nights and she was in charge of the second floor during business hours rushing around with sheaves of paper in her capable hands. I do know the next time we lock down for a hurricane I will wonder where the Cuban whirlwind will be. She used to round up the Cuban support staff and the three fierce women who ran the department from behind the scenes would take over the kitchen and churn out hot Cuban meals and lay them out on tables in the corridors for everyone to dig in. Bags of rice and piles of pork and oily rich plantains made everything seem a little less creepy as the storm barrelled down on us, we happy few skeleton staff in the police station. The entrance board has been revised at last and is a lot less cluttered now. Sparser as it were, with no mention of emergency supplies:
I wonder who will be mother this coming hurricane season?
I liked it well enough, I just forgot to download it. "Tall ships" (square riggers really) at the Bight. Go sailing, go often.
Taken amid the pines at the submarine pens where I stopped one day for a nap. I was sleepy after my class at the college and i wanted to lay down for an hour before I went to work. It was very refreshing, even if i got my shirt covered in pine needles.
Yesterday Boondoocks was holding a MG car show, which was pretty enough:
I'm thinking it was a secret plot to decimate the population of elderly MGs in the southeastern United States. How else do you explain the offer of free beer for their owners:
The negative about living in the 'burbs is that one's friends who live in the Big City 25 miles away tend to be reluctant to get in their cars and drive out to visit and tipple and find themselves subsequently unable to drive home. I enjoy the commute, not least because it gives me a reason to ride the Bonneville. When I lived in Key West I got rock fever, with nary an excuse to get out and see the bridges and the waters alongside Highway One. Besides Ramrod Has most of what one needs day to day. Plants:
...quiet back streets, with my bicycle substituting ably for my Triumph:
Not forgetting the best deli north of Key West for a good long ways. It's part of the Five Brothers empire, an "empire" of two stores, the other being the deli on Southard Street in Key West. This one is named rather unimaginatively, Five Brothers Two:
For those without docks of their own the Looe Key Resort will provide a bed waterside overlooking the motel's own docks. Or better yet for those seeking a snorkeling experience Looe Key has a boat, what captain's call a head boat:
I don't pay a lot of attention to all this stuff, seeing as how I live here (not at the dive shop) but there;s plenty going on, on Ramrod Key:
And if Boondocks isn't enough bikers (and cage drivers) can stop in here for live music from time to time:
And booze in the other World Famous Tiki Bar:
And, in between pouring the beer they advocate paying attention to motorcyclists, because we are everywhere, sometimes on pedal bikes too:
When I decided to settle in the Keys it seemed obvious that one would want to live in Key West, in Old Town of course, caught up in the romance and beauty of the narrow streets, greenery and cute houses and all that. The reality is that Key west is noisy and cramped and crowded and romantic but I like riding my motorcycle, I like the peace and quiet of my neighborhood and I like having lots of shaded parking for my Bonneville, even if underneath my stilt house isn't a proper garage:
Gas is around $3:75 for a gallon of regular, pretty much the same as elsewhere and living in Old Town within cycling distance makes sense if your only alternative is a cage. For a lot of people that convenience, and the excitement of urban life is enough. For everyone else God knows, there's lots of real estate for sale, on every street:
Prices aren't dropping though which is a little weird. Sellers still expect to get more than half a million for a two bedroom twelve hundred square foot house. I don't see many of them getting sold. Any of them, anywhere. 
There's a bench on my street where the drunk hung out for a while but the neighbor across the way was raking it up recently, reordering the plants so we can ride by and admire the symmetry, not that I've ever see anyone else actually use it. It looks nice.
Which should be enough for all of us. 
The first thing people remark on about the lighthouse is how far it lies from the beach. There is method to the madness because the original wooden structure was washed off the beach in 1847 so they then decided to build the brick one a little bit inland. And here it is at the corner of Whitehead and Truman in the middle of Old Town. The tower is supposedly somewhere near 90 feet tall and the light inside still works, powered by a solar panel, but it is a tourist attraction these days:
Its a ten dollar admission fee (10%off for local ID) and with that you get a chance to go shopping for gee-gaws:
You get to peer at the old Fresnel lense that sits inside the admissions building looking very glassy and fierce:
The lighthouse museum complex is quite the little compound, a grassy, tree-covered complex of buildings which includes an 1887 lighthouse keeper's house:
Its a wooden home with luscious honey colored tongue and groove paneling all round inside:
There's the usual audio-visual presentation along with a ton of knick-knacks from the period, including clothing, household items and the like to illustrate the life and times of 19th century residents. The dark interior contrasts nicely with the sunburned exterior:
There are 88 steps to the viewing balcony at the top of he lighthouse, and it comes as something of a surprise to me that the place is wide open and anyone can stumble all the way up to the top. There is a sign advising children under 16 need an adult in tow, which isn't a prospect I would relish, what with all those steps winding their way up the tower, keeping up with a youthful bundle of energy:
The copper hose next to the stairway was installed when the light converted from kerosene to acetylene which must have seemed like an improvement to all concerned. I took the steps by storm, and happily didn't meet anyone half way up. There is no room to pass, it would be an intimate affair and these people are tourists so they have no clue how to alleviate social discomfort with small talk in awkward situations...But in the fullness of time one reaches the top and there one finds a fresh breeze and safety wires strung everywhere:
I lucked out on the day I chose to climb the tower as there was a fresh westerly breeze blowing and the air was cool and invigorating. It was on the west side where one can see the lump of La Concha Hotel rising about the little houses of the city. I took a picture of a cute Conch cottage...
...a church (with La Concha bigger in the background)...
...the roof of the Hemingway House...
There is a fair bit of greenery all around the city even after the heavy hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005 wiped out a number of trees, but there are spots that show a lot less trees:
And in the distance always the beautiful blue waters around the city:
Back on Earth after a harrowing enough descent even without meeting anyone down below, there was shade to enjoy in the grounds:
And a little traffic watching on Whitehead Street:
We're not quite there but we are definitely getting close. Last week I put the boat in the water and tied it up at the dock behind my house. Having a house on a canal is a wonderful thing, and sea waters are close enough to 80 degrees now that swimming will be an almost daily activity till the second cold front of the Fall. Choosing between the motorcycle and the boat for recreation will cause me some severe indecision between now and November.
My house lies about a quarter mile from the open waters of Newfound Harbor along a canal that is bordered by quite a few homes and mangrove bushes. It seems crowded but it's quite wide enough for the snorkeling boat that leaves from Looe Key Resort each day and takes a few dozen people out to the reef 7 miles south of Newfound Harbor. My neighbors keep some pretty impressive boats at their docks:
When we bought the house my wife and I decided we wanted to scale back and get something small and simple to tie up at our dock, a boat that we could use with very little effort or preparation each day. We ended up with a 14-foot used Dusky self bailing center console, and it has no lights or electronics. We have a 25 horsepower Yamaha that can push the boat up to 23 miles per hour, as I have measured it. For a sailor used to lumbering along at 6 mph such speeds still seem astronomical. The Yamaha also uses very little fuel which these days makes casual boating very easy to enjoy:
In addition to not enjoying getting blind drunk every day I dislike fishing which puts me in the minority camp in the Keys as far as recreation goes! I love to swim though and having the ability to jump in the boat and go for a quick swim any day of the week is a big part of the pleasure of summer for me. My wife gets home at say 3, we get in the boat and go swim till 4:30 and I have time to shower off the salt water and get to work by 6 pm. That's another great reason to work nights, the afternoons are still mine to go swimming... On my days off it stays light till past 8pm this time of year so we can be out on the water for a long time in the evenings. This is the corner of the canal as it turns out into the open waters:
That's Newfound Harbor beyond the channel markers, an almost circular body of water whose shores give wave protection from any direction the wind blows. Our neighborhood association planted a bunch of official looking channel markers after Hurricane Wilma trashed the old ones. The channel is cut from coral rock and is only wide enough for one boat at a time:
But once out there is an abundance of places to drop the anchor and enjoy the water:
In the distance here is Little Palm Resort, at the entrance to Newfound Harbor, where they charge up to $1200 for one night in one of their cabins. It's a resort where wealthy famous people sometimes commandeer the whole island all for themselves to live for a week in privacy the way I live all the time...You can see a big white blob which is a boat tied up to their docks:
Little Palm is actually a very cool spot, much nicer than I imagined it would be before I went there. And for $125 a person you too can take a ride out on their launches (only overnight guests can use their docks) and have a bang up brunch on a Sunday morning. Its sounds grossly extravagant and it is, but once a year we treat ourselves (with a locals discount. Hey my wife is an absolute bulldog when it comes to sniffing out those discounts!). You get the usual buffet choices and the chef cooks up as many sampler breakfasts as you can order and eat. Unlimited gluttony, as it were.
Ten minutes away from my house. 
I worked the weekend, Saturday night, Sunday night and Monday night and my afternoon hours on the weekend I spent at home with my wife before I came into work. 
Old City Hall is a church-like brick building facing Greene Street with wide sweeping stairs, a clock tower and windows and doors of institutional proportions. This was never built as a home but as a place where important decisions are taken, a place where communities gather and hear their leaders. Which is lucky because that is precisely what it is. Upstairs there is a typical formal chamber with the city commission's seats set in the classic oval on a dais, and we the people sit below in orderly rows of chairs. Old City Hall was replaced by City Hall on Angela Street (a collection of buildings that have become ramshackle and are scheduled for replacement), but the commission itself still meets here on a couple of Tuesdays a month, as there is no meeting room at New City Hall on Angela Street. 
The side doors open to offices underneath the meeting chamber upstairs. This used to be the offices of the marine Sanctuary until the Eco center was built on the waterfront a couple of years ago. I find the handicap parking stickers on the doors to look rather odd, and I wonder why they couldn't have stuck them on their own poles. The exterior is imposing but 
I circled the block, walking down Ann Street to Caroline Street and form there down to 
Back on Caroline Street I paused to snatch a picture of the home of Florida's first millionaire, the house that carries his name, Curry Mansion Inn. Wrecking and trade were good businesses for Key West's 19
They rent out 22 rooms by the night and offer tours all day long for the curious. The blue ceilings on the 
Back at Old City Hall I had time to take a gratuitous motorcycle picture just to prove I rode there I suppose, as though that makes a difference:
I think this was an 
I am not a collector, except perhaps of stories. 
What a mysterious looking city!
So, tell the truth: you want it all, you want a home in Key West within walking distance of the bars, you want your own pool, an indoor/outdoor breakfast nook and porch, lots of tropical greenery and a two car garage to keep your Vespas and Bonnevilles out of the corrosive climate. Well its all there readily available. If you have say three million to spend. US dollars; less if they are Canadian Loonies, even fewer if they're Euros and just one and a half million British pounds. Have at it and you might get lucky these days and find something for a third that.
It surprises some people to discover Key West has distinct neighborhoods, quarters as they might say in foreign parts. I like The Meadows best, then there's Bahama Village ("the Village"), some people prefer the modern homes on larger lots in New Town, other wouldn't consider living outside Old Town, and Realtors have invented a new area called Mid Town, but if you can claim an abode in Casa Marina, why that is something to boast about. Not really, but some people drop their quartier into conversations like you or I might be impressed.
Casa Marina is on the south side of the city, and its boundaries may be a little vague but you'll know when you are there. Look for nice lawns, lots of plants (for some reason all the wealthiest neighborhoods everywhere have the most greenery, as though hoi-polloi don't deserve trees). The heart of the neighborhood is here:
What Henry Flagler did as he built railroads down the east coast of Florida, was he put up destinations for his trains, a series of luxury hotels for people to spend the winters in. His extension to Key West ended at Trumbo Point, which his engineers built from landfill to accommodate the ships that went to Havana. But many of his passengers wanted to spend the winter in Key West, and this is where the well heeled did just that, at Reynolds and Seminole Streets:
And across the street there are some people getting a good deal on a pricey neighborhood. Key West is rarely all of a piece and even amidst expensive homes, rentals lurk:
And check this one out, campy Hawaiian anyone?
I envy this home its rather cool brickwork which I'd like to see covering my gruesome pea rock some day when I care enough to pay to get it done. Looks nice to me though (the bricks not just the Bonneville): 
Others have big walls, this one with the ventilation slats (for want of a better term) are quite popular:
Others have big hedges, really big hedges:
Or big roofs:
What a difference a couple of minutes makes. There was no traffic left going in my direction, north on Highway One. I was alone on my stretch of highway, passing through Big Coppitt, alone heading out into the wilderness of the Saddlebunch Keys, the clouds were still heading south across the sky pushed by the north winds, the remnants of the week's cold front. I wasn't overly warm, but I was enjoying the ride. I stopped at a wide spot near a bridge and yanked out my camera. 
It wasn't too terribly long ago I was down at Boca Chica Beach at dawn taking pictures of the Bonneville and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. This recent cold front put the mossies to bed and made the beach safe for humans for a short while. That and the fact I covered myself in poison to keep them away maybe. I took advantage to pay a daytime visit to the beach and go for a walk.
Boca Chica (small mouth in Spanish) is actually a large island, large enough to hold a Naval Air Station and a good bit of land beyond that. Its southernmost coastline is open to the public and makes for a pleasant recreational area for those so inclined. To get to the beach one turns south at the Shell gas station on Big Coppitt Key, near Mile Marker 10. The road to the beach is several miles long and passes through Tamarac Park, a sub division on Geiger Key, before dead ending at the cement barriers in the photograph above. Beyond the barricade lies the rest of the roadway:
This was all open to cars in 2005, with a line of small trees throwing shade across the two lane roadway. Hurricane Wilma put paid to the greenery and washed out part of the roadway, that which is left is being overrun by vines, and there is little more than a footpath to show the way to the back country. The beach itself isn't much to write home about if you expect a beach to have sand, and lots of it. 
This place is more like a seaweed factory:
Which helps to give the waters their unusually tannin brown complexion. All very unsavory, especially when you consider the waters aren't even very deep. You can wade out a quarter of a mile and still not drown, assuming a wader of average height. So why come to this cruddy beach at all? Well, these are the keys and if you want decent sand beaches you'll have to go elsewhere, like Sarasota...but locals come to Boca Chica because the views are pretty enough:
And there is still a stretch of roadway with vegetation:
And a picnic table to contemplate the joy of it all:
I used to walk my dog here and after she grew old and died I was reluctant to come back, as I had too many memories of Emma stumping along and throwing herself in the water to cool off.
I wasn't ready to do the same but the water beyond the seaweed looked inviting. These days Monroe County is busy sticking up signs along the beach advising free range dogs are no longer allowed. 
I was glad to see one couple,and their small dog, ignoring the strictures to no one's apparent detriment:
It really is a pleasant spot for a picnic if one felt so inclined, or to watch passing boats:
I felt inclined to walk especially as I was a bit short of time- my wife expected me to be home when she got there. I got walking down the roadway. Two youngsters on skateboards ignored me completely, so engrossed in their private dramas were they:
Then a young mother approached pushing her offspring. I felt like I was in a busy city park:
I don't think the pavement lasted half a mile before it ended in the spot where, pre-Wilma, cars had to turn around and the dirt track begins:
The path follows the old roadway more or less, which at this point is washed out on one side and runs close alongside the boundary fence of the Naval Air Station on the other. The path meanders for a while and then rejoins the paved segment of the road further along. Some people bring bicycles, and I have cycled this place in the past. The roadway ends at the remnants of a wooden bridge that is gone leaving a rather large crevasse as the final obstacle. I may be wrong but I seem to think that traffic into Key West came this way in the old days before the new Highway was built in 1982. These days this area sees other kinds of travelers landing:
This hovel craft looks like a Cuban escape raft, one of the more sophisticated efforts, showing signs of an inboard engine removed, and flotation jackets still alongside the hull, which is metal sheathed in fiberglass. USCG Okay is painted in white spray on the side of the boat, presumably to show it had been checked, but the cost of removal of dead boats is prohibitive so I suppose it will stay here ignominiously destined to become a garbage scow, a process already underway. I have to admire people who would put to sea in a craft like this to take on the mighty Gulf Stream. I arrived in the U S courtesy of Boeing Corporation, a much saner way to travel. Talking of rubbish, someone took it upon themselves to decorate the Navy's fence with footwear flotsam:
The fence actually runs out at one point and turns inland cutting across the mangroves towards the Navy's traffic control tower :
These areas of Boca Chica beach open up to lots of little coves along the water, several notorious as gay nude (nude gay?) hang outs. Also young people like to gather and be uncomfortable around camp fires and the like. I met a few loaded with supplies headed out towards a rather loud gathering along the beach:
They had their faces painted white like Japanese Kabuki performers which gave them a grotesque ethereal air. Sprites on their way to a piss up. Which rather made me feel glad to be old and en route to a proper dinner with a proper wife in a comfortable home. I took the opposite path to Oberon and his fairies...
So I'm not going to deny the onset of middle age or anything but while the youth were getting drunk and even louder I was finding my lost youth with the help of two wheels and sixty horsepower:
Quite the best way to arrive at Boca Chica beach. And to leave also, in a cloud of mosquito repellent and exhaust.
The transformation of Key West Bight is close to complete. A couple of decades ago this area was a working waterfront, the place where shrimpers came to load up with ice and supplies after off loading their catch. I remember this area the first time I came to Key West. filled with those commercial boats. Nowadays the smelly noisy metal hulled fishing boats are long gone, replaced by an assortment of wooden docks, home to Key West's recreational, mostly fiberglass fleet. There are also a bunch of assorted sailboats that offer sunset cruises, known to landlubbers as "tall ships" and to sailors as "square riggers:"
The work in the old days involved chasing shrimp and fish, these days it takes trolling for tourists to catch the fish:
In the bad old days people chased and killed turtles, hundreds of them, and there are photographs to prove it. They laid the creatures on their backs on the dock to render them helpless and took pictures. There is a museum of uncertain opening hours devoted to the subject and a noted bar and restaurant nearby devoted to more epicurean pursuits:
The restaurant called Turtle Kraals is named after the pens, the "corrals" the turtles were kept in, though why they adopted the South African version of the name I don't know. They sell beers from around the world in a gloomy room shaded from the burning sun:
And one can get a rather decent breakfast outside under that very sun on Turtle Kraals' waterfront deck, though it does put the diners rather in the face of passers-by who cruise the boardwalk, ambling aimlessly for the most part, and who thus get a chance to inspect one's breakfast plate as they go:
Not a stone's throw from Turtle Kraals lies the other well known drinking hole in these parts, the Half Shell Raw bar, under the same ownership:
One measure of how many people are still in town is to check the parking situation and in front of Half Shell it was looking good, which was just as well as I had to haul the boat into town for a service and as a a result I was driving the car (again- it's been a constant lately). I had my pick of places to park and naturally chose a jammed meter which technically one is not allowed to park at by city rules. However I got back to the car seconds before the parking control officer showed up. That whole hassle made me miss my motorbike even more as there is tons of free two wheel parking by the Half Shell.
The city of Key West owns the "Historic Bight" and the waterfront and the businesses all along the water around to the Galleon Resort are city tenants. The idea was to preserve the historic structures and the feel of Key West as a harbor. Maybe or maybe not, but there are boats out there, small ones too (the little black dot in front of the helmsman is his dog):
There is a working fuel dock, which doubles as the custom dock for boats checking in from foreign countries. Most people just stop here to get fuel or to pump out their holding tanks:
And in the rear one can sit in the shade next to the Harbormaster's floating office and watch the water world go by:
The old ice house, a crumbling structure for decades, now appears to be getting renovated. However if it is renovation, rather than demolition, they are sparing no expense, half tearing the place down before rebuilding it:
The dinghy dock is located right in front of Turtle Kraals also. There are many people who choose to live afloat, anchored doff Fleming Key or Christmas Tree Island in the harbor. personally I found no decent anchorages in the area, as there are no good spots for all round weather protection . On top of that there are strong currents and lots of boat traffic that kicks up huge wakes in every direction. It's hell I tell you, pure hell, but young people do like their adventures, and they park here when they come to town:
Wandering the Boardwalk on a crisp sunny Monday morning I saw bunches of people, some hanging around chatting with coffee in their hands:
Others shopping at the Waterfront Market:
It's a much loved institution, and it recently faced extinction as the owner, the curiously named Buco Pantelis announced his exhaustion with the victuals trade, and his inability to negotiate an advantageous lease with the City, thus forcing him to close. Well, you might as well have suggested the the earth spin in reverse on its axis. Immediately people started to froth at the mouth and demand the store stay open. And apparently some smaller Florida based natural foods chain is interested:
The fat lady has yet to trill but the change over to new management seems likely at this point. And everyone expects Wyland's muriel will stay as well which as it occupies the entire building isn't surprising.
The Boardwalk offers all sorts of excitement to visitors, this is the place you can book a trip to the Dry Tortugas, or a simple snorkel trip to the reef. There are sailboats, fishing boats, excursion boats and there are free offers too:
Though why anyone would offer free genuine Spanish treasure is hard to fathom, and yet some believe the inducement may be worth while. Call me skeptical but I'm not much of a shopper.
The fact is you won't find one of these on the mainland, complete with dogs, dust and total decorative chaos. I took this picture at 10:54am last Monday and there they are, enjoying Paradise at least for their week's vacation. Personally I'd rather be riding my motorbike. 
Across the street from Schooner Wharf development is moving forward. The former Watermark condo project got crapped on by all the neighbors as too huge and after a bitter legal battle the developers, claiming to be locals cut back the dimensions, and the new Harbor House is supposed to be built to more human proportions:
I feel as though I should frequent Schooner Wharf more often as there is an uneasy feeling in town that pretty soon the genteel occupants of these condos will start complaining about the noise and the smell and the untidiness etc.. and money will talk loudest no doubt...But for now all is light happiness and joy on lazy Way Lane. And the Harbor House developers are advertising their neighborliness:
Back at the parking lot a bunch of visitors was enjoying a fine example of Key West funk, in front of Mac's Sea Garden. They got a kick out of the gently decomposing old truck:
Of course one could twist one's wrist if one were so inclined and reach a top speed, easily enough of say 85 miles per hour which would be horribly illegal and entirely exhilarating if one were feeling naughty and one happened to have a 900cc motorcycle capable of such speeds especially if one happened not to have "upgraded" the exhausts, like mine which are entirely stock and relatively quiet. But of course sensible motorcyclists pootle along at a proper 35 miles per (5mph over the limit is allowed in Florida on penalty only of a written warning; this is a weird state). The corners here are a bit tricky, not only because they are right angles but because they also enjoy scatterings of pea rock:
Those little white balls look innocuous enough but they play merry hell with a motorcycle tire's grip when the tire runs over them at an angle; it's like riding on marbles and the subsequent heaving and sliding plays hell with a middle aged man's heart rhythms. In between the sharp turns which put my cornering skills to the test (I needed the practice) there were lots of those long straightaways, blasted by the cold north winds:
I am really enjoying the power curve of the Bonneville, lots of pull from slow speeds, a smooth gearbox and light clutch. The riding positions, feet hips and shoulders in a vertical line gives excellent control when taking the corners too. This road is one of my preferred locations to practice u-turns as well because I can see traffic coming from a long way and there aren't many houses around to be bothered by the sounds of my (factory stock) exhausts. There are a few houses along the way:
And the houses are clustered along a canal:
It's not immediately apparent but these homes appear to all have cisterns for water collection though they do have electricity. 
And here we have, I believe an egret judging by the long curved beak, but as usual I can't be sure. Whatever it was, it was swooping and riding the strong winds aloft:
Close to the end of the road there are a couple of houses and these are entirely off the grid, no electricity poles anywhere near them. This pole is just supporting a box for an osprey nest:
The road ends in a barrier and a bunch of graffiti and a turn around, apparently in the middle of nowhere. In fact the island runs out altogether in a wad of mangroves and mud just beyond the barrier:
This is where I parked the Bonneville, and crawled off the bike. I was cold, truly cold. I was lightly dressed for the short 3-mile hop to the barber's and my ride out into the Torches got me quite chilled. I know it was 70 degrees and sunny but in my defense I was under dressed and my blood is thin. I got busy walking down the trail:
The trail looks like an ancient road, slightly raised above the rest of the dirt and about wide enough for a vehicle. However officious persons have made sure no vehicle will desecrate this piece of land:
It was less than half a mile out into the bushes and I was soon warmed up. The shrubs provided perfect cover from the wind and I could open my jacket and feel almost spring like. There were insects buzzing and the sun was warm on my head. The trail opened up into a sort of clearing:
Which got wide enough that I could see across the scrub to one of the last two houses on the road looking a bit like Rapunzel's hangout:
It's been fairly dry lately and this cold snap was what had inspired me to make the trip out here. I was hoping for low water levels and not too many mosquitoes to allow me to walk deeper into the mangroves than I had previously gone before. I was right on both counts though I met the tidal waters well before I got the shoreline:
The walking was easy along here, the mangrove roots were considerately far apart and the ground between offered sure footing on smooth limestone rocks:
It was just a matter of another eight miles of straights and sharp turns back to the highway. Which showed up in the fullness of time, a line across the horizon and suddenly there was traffic and cars and people and all the other stuff that zips by and misses out on the side streets of the Lower Keys:
The whole trip took an hour out of my day and was an excellent break, snatched between chores.
There are people that delight in thinking Florida is flat which in point of fact is not true at all. Solares Hill, a couple of blocks east of Duval Street is variously reported to be between 14 and 18 feet above sea level. I take the middle ground and call it sixteen feet (about five meters in new money) which is, I think, a good height for a hill to be. For instance if you were planning a fishing trip on your bicycle and came this way, west on Angela Street, you could free wheel a block:
There is another hill in Key West, on Elizabeth Street near Eaton, and it, though unnamed is labeled by the presence of the Hilltop Laundry. But Solares Hill takes pride of place, by virtue of the fact that this is Key West's own Mount Everest, the top, the highest peak of all. You may even see people climbing the hill without the aid of supplemental oxygen. These hardy souls looked like visitors staying at Courtney's Place located on the South Col, just off the Hill itself:
Solares Hill isn't a straight climb. The road dips on its way up from City Hall at the corner of Simonton Street:
What makes this place odd is that in a town notorious for labelling every little non event in its tumultuous history, the highest point gets no marker. Here there is no souvenir stand, seashell vendor or tout with postcards. For the ardent labeller it is a do-it-yourself spot, and in that spirit I label this Key West's tallest house, the home with the front porch highest above the lapping waters of the Straits of Florida, one short mile to the south:
It could as easily be this imposing home across the street:
But I prefer the more modest Conch proportions of the little white house with it's sky blue trim and every time I pass I salute it as Key West's highest foundation. 
It becomes, momentarily, a modest little plaza that is actually an intersection where four roads join. At night the pink house with the drooping cantilevered extension looks quite a bit different, more imposing perhaps and a lurid shade of yellow in my viewfinder:
The lights in the distance mark Angela and Simonton Streets, the bright lights of downtown, but up here on the hill where every breath costs a climber effort, the lay of the land is much more peaceful, by day...
...and by night:
In that last picture I caught the trifecta of Key West wheels; the convertible, the scooter, and the shopping cart, something for everyone. From the intersection one can turn left onto Elizabeth and head towards the Fleming/Southard corridor, or keep going straight, down the hill towards the cemetery:
Or, if turning right one gets to freewheel a little bit back towards Truman Avenue and the main street out of Key West:
Or you could be like me and wander the hill at 4:30 in the morning and find a bunch of little alleyways, evocative and secret that I shall have to come back to check out in the cold light of day. I keep thinking I know this town and then there is a fifty yard strip of cement lined with laundry, sleeping cats and tile decorations that make a liar out of me. How provoking.
My wife is finally able to ride her Vespa after wrist surgery in mid-December and even though I've taken the ET4 for the occasional spin it has essentially been sitting for the past several months. Thus it was I decided the Vespa needed a proper tune up, and I chose Vespa Sarasota because Vespa Miami screwed up the repair of my GTS's fuel injection so badly that my wife no longer trusted them. Luckily I don't mind driving but getting out of bed at midnight cost me a bit. The ET4 was already loaded in the trailer, the Sirius receiver was in the car with a pillow, a blanket and directions to the store:The drive out the Keys was pleasant enough but I wasn't making great progress because I was babying my trailer and sticking to about 60 miles per hour on the cruise control. Then I heard a loud thump and shortly thereafter a rear tire started flapping ominously. I am not fond of those ridiculous doughnuts they offer as a spare tires but they actually make good sense and take up less room in the trunk. I change a car wheel like I was born to it. I kept on pressing on but it was no good, by 4:15 I was knackered and I pulled over into a rest stop.
I was out like a light, stretched out in the passenger seat snoring like a grampus. It was cool outside about 67 degrees and I was snug under my blanket but the alarm went off all too soon. By six I was back behind the wheel hammering out more darkened miles. It was no good, even though the sun started to come up I was still tired out and my imagination was playing tricks on me. Fog was wreathing the highway and I felt like i was floating a ball of cotton wool. I pulled off again and took another nap.When I woke up it was daylight and gray and the freeway was still there looking endless:
I was wishing I was there but the last miles of this 350 mile jaunt were proving to be the longest of all. I got there at dead on ten o'clock when Darren opened up his store:
I parked the car and took another nap while he started disemboweling the Vespa. Then I woke up and found a tire shop which happened to be across the street from IHOP and that solved two issues at once. Then I found a motorcycle shop and bought a new inner tube for my Bonneville. It's quite amazing how much you can accomplish on the mainland. It's like everything is on the shelf. Then I went back to the Vespa shop and...took a nap. By 1pm the ET4 was ready, cables lubricated, changed belt, rollers, air filter, spark plug, oils and a new maintenance free battery. Darren also changed the fuel hose and vacuum hose and changed the front brake fluid and adjusted both brakes. Phew! All for $600. "Take her for a test ride" he said. So I did.
The ET4 was buzzing along merrily, the brakes were perfect and I was remembering the joy of a nicely tuned Vespa. I stopped on the causeway to St Armand's Key and took a picture of Sarasota Bay, all cloudy and summery:
I have vivid memories of sailing the bay on my way somewhere and getting caught by the mother of all thunderstorms. I threw out the anchor and dived into the cabin to wait it out. Southwest Florida has the worst summer storms, but I was riding in glorious sunshine. I zipped through downtown St Armand's Key with all its Romanesque statuary and neat flower beds:
And got to the beach finally:
A mish mash of notice boards signs and prohibitions:
If you need waves crashing on the sand for visual effect or body surfing you'd be better off on Florida's East Coast, but you might be surprised how many miles of deserted beaches you can find between Anclote Key and Naples. Sarasota does have a few waterfront condos but its not that crowded really:
And the condos themselves had a largely old fashioned air to them, smaller than the canyons of the East Coast, perhaps less impersonal:
Spot the Vespa in the crush of beachfront parking? No parking hassles for me.
The hot spots downtown were quite surprising, beautifully landscaped of course but full of pedestrians. people were out and about on their own two feet all over the place. Sarasota may be today what critics fear Key West may become tomorrow:
I think Hemingway would have run a mile had anyone suggested this piece of faux Key West architecture could have constituted a retreat for him. On the other hand he was pretty fed up with tourists in Key West in 1938 so the Southernmost City in the 21st century wouldn't have done much for him either. Looking carefully at these street scenes two thing stick out one is , how clean and tidy it is and...
...how few residentially challenged citizens there are. More accurately there are none. I wonder what they did with them? They do have public transportation and these signs put me in my mind of Seattle's SLUT system as another acronym with attitude:
It was I admit a short tour of a pretty mainland seaside town. I had hours of freeway to get under my belt if I wanted any hope of dinner with my wife. Back across the causeway, with downtown Sarasota laid out before me:
There was some public Art I couldn't figure out downtown. There was a pile of rusty car hulks planted nose down in the ground in a circle, looking a bit like an average parking afternoon in Key West and across the street I saw this giant tooth in a park:
And no one setting up house underneath it, always a surprise. I paid my bill, said goodbye to the smart little Vespa shop with a promise to return,
and back out into the nightmare of mainland traffic:
Ease of shopping yes; but this stuff I don't miss at all. Every time I go North I wonder how it is that people aren't screaming wrecks after being squished up like this. Oh wait a minute they are, aren't they?
I had business to take care of Up North which didn't really count as a recreational trip, and I wasn't even riding two wheels, but I took some pictures as I rolled the Nissan along I-75, known as Alligator Alley, to remind myself how much I enjoy these views. This two wheeler was why I was there:
My "business trip" was getting the wife's ET4 tuned up and owing to my recent contretemps with Vespa Miami/Ft Lauderdale she nixed having them work on her Vespa 150. So instead of a 6 hour round trip I had a 22 hour round trip to get to Vespa Sarasota and back. More on that in another essay, but these pictures, which have nothing to do with Key West are here to illustrate superficially a little of what one would see when crossing Florida on the Southernmost...Interstate. 
It's not technically a freeway, there are toll booths at each end and the charge is $2.50 for two axles and $5.00 for three. But you do get 100 miles of almost dead straight road in each direction for your money.
Alligator Alley used to be State Road 84 and opened in 1969 according to the history books. Then the powers that be took it upon themselves to widen the road and finished that job in 1992, which I remember as a mess of mud and rocks. Nowadays its a short cut from Fort Lauderdale to Naples, and very efficient it is too, with a 70 mph speed limit and all. But I still prefer the slower pace of the old, two lane Tamiami (TAMpa-MIami) Trail, which gives a much more intimate and historical view of the Everglades. I took this picture on my trip last year:
And yes, the Tamiami Trail, Highway 41, is also straight as a die for much of its way. I guess for some two wheeled users the freeway makes sense, and I saw a fair number on the Interstate. These two were between Naples and the toll booth:
What interested me is the footwear on the dude nearest my car, blue crocs on the freeway...
But he is wearing a helmet. Which made him luckier than me because he was riding while I was snugged down behind the air conditioner of the Maxima. He didn't wave as he went by.
But the brown sign behind the exit sign beckons the traveler towards more bucolic delights, the parks south of the interstate:
Between Highway 29 and Fort Lauderdale these curiosities start popping up:
I've traveled a few miles of Interstate in my time and I've never seen a sign quite like this. Or to be more accurate I've seen the signs pointing to recreation areas off Interstates, but I've never seen just a recreation area right off a freeway, a recreation area as a freeway destination in itself as it were. It's actually a boat ramp too:
Drive the Alley, launch your boat, and they have floating docks to cope with the rising and dropping water levels (mostly dropping overall as the 'glades are rather distressed these days):
The Everglades are threaded by all sorts of waterways and canals, filled no doubt with alligators and fish because you will see people lining the canal banks with rods. Others launch their boats here and take off for a day's sport among the reeds. The recreation areas also have a few modern variations on the Miccosukee Indian chickee huts for people to come out to the Interstate and enjoy a roadside picnic:
And its not just people recreating in these areas:
I recreated by taking a thirty minute nap. It had been a long day and I was completely worn out, continuing the theme of my life lately. It was a perfect afternoon, a brisk cooling breeze was blowing out of the north and there wasn't any humidity in the air. I slept like a baby with the windows down, in the vastness of the Everglades, with the car parked under the sole scrap of shade:
Lots of people use the freeway as a quick drive across the southern end of the state but there are paths and trails that head off into the back country from some of these recreation areas, and I've only explored a few of them. With rainy season upon us I may have left it too late for a return visit this spring.
Oh well, at least I got to see the big skies of south Florida once this winter. Rest and recreation after a fashion.
Grrr! One thing I wish were different on the motorbike was that the tires were tubeless as they are easier to repair than the current tires with tubes. New tubeless rims are on my wish list now, before a rev counter and a belt drive! The Nissan Maxima is a fine car but...
I got up off the table, a bit groggy, and thought to myself how pretty it looked under the street lights and what a shame I didn't have my camera with me. Oh but I did, I remembered suddenly, and with most of my lunch break snoozed away I got to work. The lense came out fogged it was damp and i got the rather nice halo effect as though mist was laying over the Key West, but the reality was rather more prosaic: I was thinking to myself that summer is finally here. On the afternoon ride into work the summer rain clouds had piled up all over the flats, big white puffy balls of cotton reflected off the turquoise waters. They deserved a picture of their own but I was late for work and busy working the throttle rather than the camera. I like the Higgs Beach/Rest Beach area not least because its close to the police station and Sandy's all-night Cuban Cafe is on the way so I can sip con leche and watch the waves, and the distant horizon while reflecting on my life.
"I'm giving you a verbal warning..." he said. I had my papers, I admitted my stupidity and I was wearing proper clothing (and I did use my signals properly, perhaps that helped) and wasn't drunk. If you think people don't drive drunk at 6am in the Lower Keys you might be surprised...
I left work last week right after we got a call about a young man who had fallen unconscious. It soon became apparent that he was in a serious way, the call taker could hear screaming and sobbing in the background as we tried to help bring him back with CPR over the phone. The day shift came in and we packed our stuff and left. As I pulled out the Bonneville onto the Boulevard the ambulance appeared from downtown, all lights and noise. I fell in behind Rescue and ambled along behind them, they headed to the hospital, me headed to the Highway and home. The ambulance was running slowly, keeping up a steady 30 miles per hour and I knew why. A firefighter was driving and keeping it steady while the paramedics attempted to revive him in the truck. It felt like a funeral cortege, as traffic bunched behind the flashing lights and I imagined him so young and so definitely dying right there in front of me, hidden only by the curtain of the ambulance door. The ambulance turned left to the hospital on Stock Island, I revved it up and took to the open road, exercising all due diligence as I wanted neither an ambulance nor another Monroe County Sheriff's Deputy in attendance on my commute that morning.
The Weather Gods did a nice job of fooling me yesterday. I stepped out of the police station after yet another night of blather on the radio ready to wallow in some more of the delicious, lubricating humidity and instead we had received (may the Lord make us truly grateful) a surprise little cold front and the wind was honking out of the north and there were sprinkles of rain in the air and temperatures had plummeted to 67 degrees. I pulled on my waterproofs, which naturally chased the rain away almost immediately but I rode home in blusterous crosswinds and pitch dark. It was entirely exhilarating and being the weekend there was almost no other traffic out at six in the morning. I was actually slightly chilled in the cold north wind, but even in the strongest gusts,estimated above 30mph by the weather service, the Bonneville tracked straight. I was riding a motorcycle that had its mind on one thing and that was finding its way to its stable. We flew (not that fast officer!) and the sensation of flight was increased by the powerful gusts that hit us as we came out of the cover of bushes and buildings into the open windswept reaches of the bridges.
Another day another dollar as they say, though the frequency of my appearance at work is getting a little much. The good news is I get to do that much more riding with all this commuting and this week I blew past the 9100 mile mark. I calculated while showering this afternoon that I have ridden 42,000 miles in the past three years since we moved into the tree house, variously on the Suzuki, the Stella (ugh!) the Vespa and the Bonneville. So many miles for such small amounts of roadway. I dread to think how many would have accumulated had there been real motorcycling destinations!
Small town America is loaded with repositories of local arcana and culture, and Key West has it's own Museum of Art and History too, and of course I think its the best small town museum around. Certainly its in a splendid building, an all-brick genuine US Custom House, designed with snowfall in mind and built to a standard specification.
The Art and History Museum has several permanent exhibits on offer and rotates several of its rooms for visiting shows. Seward Johnson a sculptor backed by the Johnson and Johnson family fortune has been a favorite for some time. He likes to make mind bending sculptures rendering three dimensional that which we consider familiar in the world of Art. American Gothic, the grumpy farmer, his pitchfork and his daughter is an icon. So naturally the sculptor needs to mess with people's heads:
They are enormous, the statues:
But Johnson also has some more life sized statues for people to play with, possibly familiar from art class:
The Art and History Museum has its own display chronicling its long era of neglect but the place has been brought back from near destruction and has become a lovely Victorian to wander around in, unusual in Key West, brick and wood and everything:
It's ten bucks to get in, with a whole ten percent discount for local ID, better than nothing I suppose, and there he is, at it again, Seward Johnson:
It looks like nothing more than a copy of the Mona Lisa, the enigmatic smile and all, but walking along side the picture it becomes apparent this sculpture has its own story to tell. Playing on the obscure origin of this painting Johnson made a sculpture following the theory that La Gioconda (as she is known in Italy) was actually a version of the artist's male lover and "her" legs have been sculpted to reflect that notion:
Elsewhere in the room we have women with pearl earrings and skirts flying, all familiar images rendered in three dimensions. Last year Johnson had an exhibit of impressionist art in similar style and it had quite an unexpected effect on me walking among the life sized diners I'd seen for years and taken for granted in two dimensions.
The History part of the museum is preoccupied with one incident in particular, the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898. The battleship blew up in spectacular fashion and the US took this as a sign of Spanish hostile intentions and promptly went to the assistance of Cuban rebels, ending up in possession of Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.
Speculation is that possibly the coal in the Maine's bunkers got wet and produced explosive gases, as coal will, and the less gullible take it upon themselves to suggest the US may have been responsible for the explosion that took the lives of US sailors. Rather in the manner of people nowadays who suggest the US government was behind the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Be that as it may the killed and injured were transported to Key West, the dead buried in a plot of land famous in photographs of the city cemetery, the injured cared for at the Navy hospital. The museum got a bunch of artifacts after it was all over:
The other big deal in Key West history was the arrival of Ernest Hemingway and there is a fair bit of him in here:
Killing fish, slaying babes...
...drinking, traveling and killing more animals. Fighting in World War One, as well:
He wrote a few books in Key West and one about Key West, he drank with Sloppy Joe Russell, at Captain Tony's, and was fairly miserable at home by all accounts. In the above photograph there are souvenirs of his time in Italy and a picture of his first and (they say) only love. All terribly romantic but from what I can figure he fled Key West when the highway arrived and spent many years at his favorite home which was in Cuba, Finca Vigia ("Lookout Farm") which from what I have heard has been perfectly preserved by the general fossilization that has taken place in Cuba over the past 50 years.
And he got his own portrait painted too, by Paul Collins:
His intaglios are much prized these days and he made quite a name for himself. I happen to know reproductions are on sale on Duval and I think its about time my wife got me one for my birthday.
The originals that are on show at the Museum tend to leap out at you:
The Museum celebrates the history of wrecking and Porter's anti-piracy squadron, which cleared out all pirates in less than a decade after the city was founded (much to the discomfort I'm sure of all the irritating pirate lovers who want to make out the keys were all about pirates). Porter didn't think much of Key West and left as soon as the job was done. But wrecking was quite the business for decades:
And it was legitimate too. It made fortunes for it's practitioners, and brought a level of sophistication to Key West which was decorated by ship's cargoes from all over the world. Then came the lighthouses and that put paid to much of that. The museum has a couple of large maps of 19th century Key West on display. This one show Fort Zachary Taylor as a separate island, before the harbor was filled in around it:
Alongside that is a rather corny but cool diorama for Key West's waterfront at the same period.
Key West really was isolated back then, and its population of 12,000 stayed pretty steady over the years. Nowadays we have double the numbers but we also have double the area as the city has spread over the whole island. What was scrub lands is now New Town. History appeals to me because it gives depth and meaning to the present. It gives me perspective when people moan about modern day changes. And there are news paper reports about the arrival of the railroad that express the fears and reluctance of many about how the island would be irrevocably changed. I ask people now about the notion that perhaps we should cut the bridge link and they look horrified. Change isn't always good but sometimes it has its good points! 
"Your most honest..." ? No worse than today at least.
I have resolved a mystery, and herewith the answer to a question that has plagued me for a while. I found the answer in two different places almost simultaneously and I was not actually seeking the answer-it just popped out at me. My favorite Keys guidebook is by Joy Williams, a dense mixture of history anecdote and information, all offered with a rather dry acerbic wit. In it she mentions that canals were dug in the Lower Keys as a form of mosquito control. Aha! I thought and when I went for a walk on Big Pine, at the Watson Trail I found confirmation:
And a view of Duval Street to boot. Janna asked for me to say hello to Riccardo so I did and took his picture, all of which left him a bit nonplussed. Actually it left both us I suspect, wondering about the power of the Internet.
He put up with my camera good naturedly, and sorted out my change. And so, there you have that too. One of my preferred downtown lunches still thriving. A while ago I wrote an essay about places I miss and I mentioned in passing that I regretted the closure of Martha's and Benihana's on South Roosevelt. Well imagine my surprise when the Citizen reported that the owner has given up the idea of building (unwanted condos) and Benihana's is coming back as soon as he can get the staff sorted out. Maybe something to replace Martha's later as well. I shall have to treat my wife to Japanese theater-as-dinner because she remembers it fondly with her parents from years ago. Nothing in Key West is permanent. Ever.
Who couldn't love that crazy 1950's neon sign, something that I think would be most appropriate on the Genuine Florida blog. The sign got knocked down by Wilma and it lay on the side of the road apparently abandoned. But lo and behold it got resurrected and its back in all its glory. So much so it deserves a second look:
If I were a visitor to Key West (and my wife let me choose where to stay) I'd try this place for at least a night, and when the Gilligan's Island theme had worn threadbare I'd move on to La Concha and pretend it was 1946 again. I don't think the Blue Lagoon benefits in the decor department from the gazillion rental jet skis, but there it is, commerce is king.
No not really, it was just an elderly Vespa, doing double duty as a poster board for a local charter boat:
If I were a kid I'd have desired this more than anything, not least because 40 years ago mopeds were a lot cruder than this little rocket. I put my camera away and wasn't I surprised when a man looking to be in his 40's hopped on the little race bike and bopped off down Whitehead Street.
The sun was going down rapidly last week when I was on Big Pine Key after checking out the Blue Hole, so instead of going home to my empty house I kept riding through the subdivision. It was a perfect evening, warm not buggy and relatively still deep in the middle of the largest island in the Lower Keys. The only cruddy thing about the evening was the way the camera can't quite capture the richness of the colors as the sun sinks to horizon.
I have discovered in this place another open space with no particular purpose except just being. Yet in this case we have what appears to be construction interruptus or just a very large swimming pool with absolutely no facilities:
Another of these impenetrable Keys mysteries. But this time I adjusted the camera's attention and got it to focus on the sky and got a rather grand result as the sun sank lower:
It was getting too dark to photograph anything and I'd have to come back another day for a more in depth exploration of this area. The headlight made a warm orange glow on the road in front of me as I burbled back to civilization, Big Pine Key's shopping center where neon and fluorescent lighting invited me to shop, and perhaps rent a video....
...on my roundabout way home. 
Robert Duvall's line about "the smell of napalm in the morning" from Apocalypse Now comes to my mind when I pass a working boatyard. I love the smell of drying fiberglass resin, the mixture of dust and copper bottom paint hanging in the air. I like the chaos and the sense of new things rising out of the old and worn. I like boatyards because I know boatyards from many years experience. Ask any boater and they will tell you hauling out is the most stressful part of ownership, watching one's precious hull swaying around in the slings, out of its element. I remember it well, to quote that other movie chestnut, sung by Maurice Chevalier.
Spencer's Boatyard lives in a corner of Garrison Bight Marina and it's a left over from a more industrial time in Key West. These days there are three haul out facilities left in the Lower Keys, Spencer's and two on Stock Island. How it is that Spencer's has survived into the 21st century in a town that is remaking its image so rapidly, is a mystery to me. But here it is apparently thriving:
Thriving is a word I use advisedly though one can never be sure, but the yard seemed full of work even though the facilities are not "polished"
This yellow boat I've seen swinging to a mooring just off the docks at Spencer's and out of the water its lines as attractive as when the boat is floating, and that's a rare attribute:
The smooth lines of the shear offset the angular lines of a nearby Swedish built Vega 27, a small sailboat notorious for making long journeys. It doesn't look like much but its an amazing machine, and this one has to be at least 30 years old:
One thing about hauling your boat out is when you get to paint that toxic copper bottom paint on the hull to discourage growth the result is instant good looks. I mention this because I am giving my skiff a coat of paint this week in hopes of going swimming next week and I look for the same result. Instant, creamy smooth, improvement:
The yard is right off Palm Avenue, the street that bisects Garrison Bight marina with a bridge through the middle. Spencer's is on the north side of the bridge but is blocked from the open water by 50-foot wires at the entrance to Garrison Bight so big sailboats can't get in. But there are big honking motorboats in here awaiting attention:
And tell me this massive prop won't be a glowing bronze work of art when it gets cleaned off and fresh green bottom paint is applied to the fiberglass bottom of this beauty:
To one side of the yard you will find the Key West Sailing Club which is not the Key West Yacht Club (that's the expensive one!):
No this is decidedly not the expensive one. When I lived in the city I was a member for something ridiculous like $10 a month, and I could take out any of their 17-19 foot sailboats for a spin. That was one advantage of living in the city, nowadays I like to be at home and drive my motor boat, which is the advantage of having a dock at your house:
And this is also the end of the yard that holds the facilities. The thing is, when someone who lives on their boat hauls out they need to continue to live on the boat- it is their home. Which means they need to do their ablutions in the yard. These facilities were more than usually...rustic:
In our years sailing together my wife suffered some pretty gruesome shower blocks but I think this might have been a bit much even for her.
And though it may look like chaos to you, to some intrepid boater, in the midst of all the stuff lies a critical component for the very project he is working on in his cabin. So out he pops like a prairie dog, pops down the ladder, grabs the thing, nods to the stranger while exchanging a pleasantry about the weather, and finally pops back out of sight:
Indeed checking aloft one can hear the halyards clanking against a nearby mast (a halyard is the rope one uses to raise and lower a sail), a sure sign the wind is picking up:
And check out those clouds! This had all the makings of a classic summer squall, the wind got fresher and cooler and small waves starting building across the enclosed waters of the Garrison Bight Lagoon:
And the clouds raced across the sky and the waves raced across the water pushing weeds and trash into the seawall at the yard:
Half of me wanted to be snugging down my boat, and then sitting in the cabin listening to rain pelting down on the deck. There's no feeling quite so snug as a decent anchorage or a secure berth when bad weather hits. The rational half of me wanted to get the hell away on the motorcycle before the big fat wet cold raindrops hit from the clouds. The dog wanted me gone too:
I got to Mile Marker 9 before I had to stop and put on my waterproofs for the rest of the ride home. And that too is a snug feeling, tucked inside a waterproof cocoon with big heavy slugs of rain splattering down around you and your motorcycle. Different strokes, same good feeling.
Photographing North Roosevelt Boulevard presents not a few challenges. There's tons going on along its two mile length and cramming it all into twenty pictures seems like an impossible job. Then again this isn't the most visually appealing part of Key West, but it seems to me it is still a story worth telling, perhaps it is especially worth telling because it is such a peripheral area of town. This is Key Plaza where Key West people go to shop, I mean this is the real locals shopping area.
Can't get more real than K Mart, and in this picture we see the third most profitable K Mart in the country. Not surprising really because as we shall see, there ain't much in the way of competition. I read a plaintive comment in the Citizen's Voice a few months ago. "If they let us have a Wal Mart we wouldn't be so poor," went the comment. From the height of middle class mediocrity I could sniff on reading the plea as of course Wal Mart is all things bad in corporate America, but they do help make ends meet for many milllions of Americans. Not in Key West where the cold harsh reality is that things cost more here, not because we are a "long way away" but because we are isolated. And here's the competition, flying the flag, Sears Roebuck and Company:
Searstown was an early development in the wilds of far Eastern Key West, built up in the salt ponds and mangroves, a 1960's outpost of shopping civility for an island that relied on Fausto's and Pantry Pride for groceries and then Sears stepped in to compete I suppose with downtown Kress: 
Nowadays Publix is located in Searstown, along with a six screen Regal Cinema and an Outback, a Champs and a whole bunch of stores both chains and locals. There's a Home Depot in Key West which was built in 2004 as I recall and that opened up a lot of shopping possibilities. Beyond Searstown is a region for a future essay, currently a line of chain hotels that will soon make way for a giant convention center(!). Megalopolis here we come... Meanwhile we have got used to Albertsons, next to K Mart:
And then in the third big shopping plaza called Overseas Market we have Winn Dixie as the anchor supermarket. This chain used to advertise itself, years ago as "the beef people" on their old signs and for the longest time I thought Winn Dixie was a butcher's shop. 
I love the totally black sky at night, and no one in the parking lot except me and my trusty Bonneville which of course I have to sneak into a picture...
I know Pier One, and Ross next door have given local shoppers a few more choices when it comes to furnishings and clothes. Around the corner from TGI Fridays there is a dark delivery area alongside the mangroves. I love poking my way round these spaces, sneaking a peek as it were behind the facade of the nice stores up front:
And shining a light into the bushes, where Salt Run Creek flows, from the Riviera Canal out to the Gulf of Mexico to the north. Our residentially challenged locals hang out around here too, not so much for the shopping I believe, as much as for the peace and relative quiet:
Until my Bonneville comes rumbling through at some ungodly hour. I saw no one while I chased the dirt road with the Triumph, doubtless they were all asleep like solid citizens, not drifters like me. 
As I viewed this picture I thought to myself, "hmmm, Anywhere USA" and all I can say is that this really is Key West and not the back side of your local shopping maul. And just around the corner across from the back of K Mart lies this magnificent structure in all its cement glory:
Looking at the Professional Building you'd think this would be the spot to take refuge in a hurricane. Well, it turns out Wilma did a number on this place in October 2005. The building is on stilts with parking in the lit up space underneath, but the roof yielded and the entire building flooded from the top down! It was a nightmare for the many offices in there, which lost all their records and their furniture, including my optician. The building was closed for ages while they gutted it and rebuilt it from the inside out. 
The family owned Gordon Food Service bought this little warehouse and added it to its chain a few years ago. That was weird because apparently they don't sell alcohol, the family being religious in some manner and teetotal, and for a while they were dumping their stocks of wine and beer from the Smart and Final store at fire sale prices. A bit of a stampede in heathen Key West ensued. Nowadays we get our fizzy water here, but I believe restaurants appreciate the bulk supplies. 
Then you can have your burgers your way, just next door, past the Borders Express bookshop:
Looks familiar doesn't it? This doesn't though, the "mobile" seafood vendor at Owens gas station:
In the land of the perpetually underpaid and intoxicated there are several pawn shops that seem to do quite well, all over town, including here:
The Boulevard is home to one of three overnight gas stations, this one has a car wash, the other two sit across from each other at the intersection of Truman and White Streets. I read a thread on the Adventure Rider forum about a Georgia kid who rode to Key West and backon his sports bike and he prudently filled his tank in Florida City because he didn't know if he could find gas in the Keys...Dude! This is the US you know! And this proves it!
You might meet a cop here doing a business check at some unearthly hour, buying coffee or a soda. Not this one though, Officer Cardona is Puerto Rican and he prefers his cafe con leche to an Americano.
Shining like a beacon in the night. And that's it, one quick look at the Key West that tries to emulate Main Street USA. Like it or not. Which is my cue for a gratuitous picture of the Bonneville, across the street from Sears at the Blue Lagoon Motel, of which more later.
I forget sometimes how obsessed with alligators outsiders can be when it comes to Florida.There are a few things people associate with Florida, with varying degrees of revulsion. They are: 1) Hurricanes. 2)Humidity. 3) Bugs. 4)Alligators. Well you can get a pretty good slice of all four at Big Pine Keys' Blue Hole. The Blue Hole isn't blue, the one in Belize is because its out in the Caribbean Sea, this local hole is actually the product of some rock mining and it would be hard to expect a quarry to produce water of a hue comparable to the Western Caribbean; so it doesn't even try:
Green Hole would be more like it, if one lived in a less charitable, less visitor oriented world. But part of the expectation for the keys is blue, turquoise, azure waters, and fresh water holes must conform, in name at least.
The Blue Hole gets a mention in every guide book, not because it's buggy and humid but because it has alligators, and fearsome animals they are too.
The sad fact is that like sharks, alligators are much more at risk from humans than vice-versa. A notorious court case concluded last year with two young men going to the slammer for torturing and killing an alligator they plucked from this very spot. This dinosaur was just lying there, showing but one tiny sign of life, the nostrils opening and closing rapidly as it breathed.
There used to be a bunch of turtles sunning themselves on the logs, and whether they ended up as alligator lunch or turtle soup, a Conch delicacy, I don't know. Perhaps they were off enjoying a less threatening area of the hole that evening. Alligators are fresh water creatures and when the Blue hole flooded out in the hurricane season of 2005 the alligators had to be rounded up from neighboring islands and dumped back in their hole. They, unlike American crocodiles, don't do well in salt water. Unlike crocodiles, alligators are more aggressive and they don't back off when humans show up. Plus they run extremely fast on land. I am cautious around them as I find them less predictable than sharks. There are thousands of alligators in the Everglades and you can canoe among them on the Myakka River near Sarasota. That is a creepy experience I shan't repeat for a while.
Less dramatic are the white dots across the water in an inaccessible area of the Hole. They may be herons or ibis, depending on the shape of their beaks and the color of their legs, which just goes to show I will never make the annals of the Audubon Society though one day I may bestir myself to visit the Audubon House in Key West. What I learn there I shall promptly forget I'm sure.
The Blue Hole is, in my estimation a modest little attraction, though it is a peaceful spot to contemplate the glories of Nature. In this one is not helped by the abundance of fencing and the absolute dearth of benches. For some reason the short paved trail round half the hole has nowhere to sit to allow for contemplation.
Which means visitors tend to gravitate to the observation platform and one ends up contemplating Nature rather as though one were waiting for a bus in a municipal bus shelter which tends to spoil the effect:
Rather than invest in benches and the adornment of relaxing vistas with seats, the Wildlife Sanctuary has decided the Blue Hole needs a more complex parking arrangement than a simple pea rock parking area:
The Blue Hole has long been ADA compliant with a cement parking space and cement walkway to the observation deck for visitors in wheelchairs. Despite all this construction busyness the Blue Hole is what it is, a quiet spot just off the busy road. And even if forced to stand, one can take a moment to enjoy another splendid Keys sunset in the woods:
And, lest there were any doubt I paid my latest visit on my favorite form of carbon creating locomotion:
Parked rather sneakily at the back, unmarked, "entrance" to the Blue Hole. For locals who know, only, I fear. 
I have mixed feelings about people en masse, but it would be churlish to mention my phobia in light of the fact that sunset at Mallory Square is a crowd. That's the point of the gathering, to draw in tons of people to mill around in a small space at the waterfront. And then sell them things. Oh and to look at the sunset, though people will wear their hats:
Quite the Roman profile. 
The habit apparently got hijacked a bit in the flower power era when young travelers stopped by to sell their wares. A fond memory of a friend in California, a very proper attorney in Oakland, remembers wandering the Sunshine State in a van making a living trading trinkets. She gets a lost, misty look in her eyes when she tells the story of her hippy youth... And then there's the modern trader, doubtless checking the Citizen's Voice column. He's an old hand at sunsets apparently, and enthusiasm isn't his stock in trade.
It is quite lucrative working Mallory Square, for some of the performers and traders. So much so there is a committee that runs the sunset celebration and assigns the spaces with some kind of a lottery, I believe. The acts are quite a mixture, some funnier, some more serious, a few are very capable and there are those acrobats that have managed to buy themselves a home and send their kids through college based on their takings at Mallory Square.
People grunt all the time about how Key West isn't a family destination though you wouldn't know it from all the small persons littering the square:
There's lots to see at Mallory Square and it's not clear who comes to see what. The Coastguard swinging low in a helicopter to check the crowd out got lots of attention from the grounded tourists:
And for some tourists, local winged rodents merit attention when they are pecking the ground like their more famous fowl counterparts, the Key West chickens:
Everything is new, exciting and different in Key West.
Home sweet home, and be it ever so humble this is sunset just the way I like it:
And yes, the opening lines do come from the mouths of babes and innocents and have been recorded from the mouths of Key West tourists, so I hope the joke can be considered my contribution to the saturnalia of April Fool's Day.
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