There is a stereotype that equates a palm tree with the most desirable beaches in the most exotic locations, places where the rest of us go to escape the dreary reality of life. Palm trees are symbols of vacation in the tropics. Palm trees are cool, especially at night.
Park the Bonneville under a street lamp shaded by a spreading palm and the resulting picture takes on the qualities of some place far from Key West, where trees grow tall and banana palms thatch palaces. Its just the parking lot at Banana Bay Resort. And the resort's office looks out of this world behind its palm facade:
Across the street the boring old Fairfield Inn, a chain hotel of epic architectural conformity looks magnificent with its splendid growth:
I took a lunch break to check out Key Cove, a funky little street off North Roosevelt which allows some few people access to a canal, like those of us lucky enough to live in suburban out islands in the Lower Keys. But the moon was obscured and I couldn't see anything and could photograph even less. So I took some pictures out of boredom and I saw the Banana Bay become someplace else in my camera:
This is the landscape occupied by Graham Greene's Quiet American, a place of heat and intrigue, of broken promises and heart breaking diseases, a place where life is lived like an onion, layer after layer of secrets need to be unpeeled to get to the nub of whatever the issue appears to be. The banality of a Key West hotel becomes the stuff of movie scripts. How cool is that? And all thanks to the humble palm tree.I go home to that suburban home I was just referring to, and even from the top of the Niles Channel bridge it is invisible. Not just because its so small (around 800 square feet-72 square meters) but because the original owners who built the house in 1987 added trees, and look at them now:
I have my own grove of coconut palms, and what a tremendous amount of work they are too! Each tree produces a vast number of coconuts in continuation all year long and alongside them we get tons of fronds which I hack with a machete to fit them in the bins for the garden waste mulching program at the landfill. Coconuts are not native to the Keys, which may come as a surprise, but they prized because they set the right tone for the islands. The fiction is that the Keys are tropical ( they are sub-tropical as they lie North of the Tropic of Cancer), that they are in the mythical Caribbean Sea (The Keys are in the South Atlantic- the Caribbean laps the south shores of Cuba, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, the islands known as the Greater Antilles), so ever since tourism took off these lumpy rocky islands have started to sprout palm trees to dress the islands up for the role of tourist haven; because Palm Trees spell Exotic Relaxation.My neighbor keeps a vacation home vacant most of the year but his palace is shaded by these same trees which give his place the requisite vacationing air:
I have wondered for a long time why palms are called palms and the answer I got for my troubles was that the trees appear to look like human palms with fingers extended, especially when the breezes blow and the trees sway back and forth. It sounds pretty stupid to me, but I've met no better explanation for how they got their name. And so they grow, like the clappers come rain or drought, sunshine or shade. Amazing plants and vastly underrated in those sickly advertisements for vacations and liquor and... all that other stuff. Respect your palm trees, oh vacationer and doff your hat to these remarkable survivors of all that nature can throw at them.
Imagine my surprise when my good friend Bruce and his wife Celia announced they couldn't stand the mosquitoes anymore and were relocating from Key West, where they lived on their boat, to Santa Fe, the city of the Holy Faith, the capital of dreadful New Mexico. They bought an adobe home several centuries old, renovated it and settled in. They seemed to like the place. So after a few years of this madness my wife and I got on a plane last Saturday and flew to Albuquerque. Bruce drove us up the freeway to Santa Fe, a city of 75,000 people at 7500 feet above sea level (2450 meters), nestled in an enormous plain in the shadow of the Sangre De Cristo (Christ's Blood, bless the melodrama of Catholicism!) Mountains, still snow capped last week. That Catholicism comes through loud and clear downtown where the cathedral is dedicated to Saint Francis of Assisi, one of Umbria's most famous exports. The best known saint from the least known Italian region:
Bruce is a retired engineer and Celia is a retired teacher, both spent their lengthy careers in Northern California and they both take delight in the Spanish state of mind that predominates in Santa Fe. They tell stories of bubbas in Santa Fe, the old Spanish families, that are similar in many respects to the death grip bubba families have on politics in Key West. The city is pretty enough, if you like adobe, with a grassy central plaza in front of the church and bless us everyone, they have the residentially challenged cluttering up their downtown too!
And though the New Mexican newspaper doesn't boast a Citizen's Voice anonymous column, if it did I have no doubt someone would be complaining about the lack of action by Santa Fe's finest:
"The longer you stay here, the more similarities to Key West you'll notice," Bruce said dryly as we walked the plaza in the 80 degree sunshine while the wives shopped. It sure is pretty, the La Fonda (not La Concha) hotel:
There is a sunset viewing platform from the tower at the top of the building but they don't look out over any harbor that I know of. We took a night tour of the lobby and it is quite fantastic, rococo in the New Mexican style of elaborate tiles and heavy wooden ceiling beams and desert Indian art works. Adobe is how New Mexico dresses itself, much of it real mud and wattle some of it simply a veneer. But it does make the architecture refreshing even on something as silly as a MacDonald's on the commercial strip in "new town" ( or the local equivalent):
In the heart of the city, the original Palace of the Governor, the Palacio, is the oldest public building in the US, dating back to the 1600's. Nothing faux about that. Nowadays it is the location of the daily Indian art market. The local native Americans (they call themselves Indians, what do I know?) bid, at some ungodly hour of the morning for the right to spend the day spreading their wares on blankets under the portico of the Palacio:
For such a major holiday it wasn't terribly busy over Memorial weekend. How do I know? Well that would be because my wife went there more than once. She got some nice artwork too from a camera shy artists who grinds up the pebbles she finds near her home and renders them into pure colorful sand for her pieces. One of these too will join our Haitian, Dominican, Key West, etc etc stuff on our walls:
The Indians were a cheerful bunch, relaxed sales people, and some of them offered expensive jewelry for sale. "Beyond our price range" my wife said, as she reluctantly put down a particularly enticing arrangement of silver and stones. "Oh go on," I said to encourage her to splash out on her self. This was after all the woman who pushed me to buy a brand new Bonneville, what can I say? "No," she said firmly. "What's our range? " I asked, "Not $2200" she said. Case closed. 
Or the Georgia O'Keeffe museum:
Which was unfortunately showing a joint exhibit of O'Keeffe along with Ansel Adams, a photographer whose pictures leave me as cold as the shades of gray he preferred. For some reason this museum, which owns much of the late artist's work, doesn't have a permanent exhibit of her works, so I got to see very little of her paintings which was something of a disappointment. They do show an excellent 12 minute film about the artist which I found fascinating and it included some footage of Herself (she died in 1986). The film explored her relationship to the photographer Stieglitz, her husband, who portrayed her early on in an erotic light that made her shy away from publicity in later life. 
It turns out its some sort of rehab program and these corners are assigned and jealously guarded by the sellers.
Bruce and Celia eat out all the time and they showed us several eateries that made a pleasant change from the known and familiar in Key West. Chili peppers are a huge component of Santa Fe cooking and most foods come with the offer of "green, red or Christmas?" which prompts a joker like me to want to shout out "Passover!" just to confuse them.
The offer actually refers to the color of the chili salsa with Christmas referring to a mixture of red and green chilies. Bruce says chili roasting season is a very festive time in Santa Fe, but it comes later in the year with itinerant roasters passing through town.
Pinon showed up in enchiladas and meatloaf, pizza and pancakes. Those blue corn pancakes at the Plaza Cafe were divine:
Real maple syrup, friendly staff, locals stuffing their faces and all in the middle of the tourist part of town. Key West, the city that loves to hate its visitors, should be so lucky to boast such an eatery- and plates of food for seven dollars.
All this adobe stuff is cute enough to look at which is lucky and it is pervasive. I kept expecting to see the kepis of the French foreign legionnaires popping up over the walls. Fort Zinderneuf anyone?
I know the gaps are a crude form of rain spout but they look much more like battlements than gutters. 
And the company of a rare breed called Bernese Mountain dogs which seem perfectly adapted to the environment of Santa Fe:
Nice enough in its own way but where I ask myself, is the ocean? Bruce and Celia are martyrs to mosquito bites and high humidity. I'm horrified by a dry climate, my hair turns to straw, my skin cracks and my nostrils fill with razor sharp lumps of...oh never mind, lets just say dry mountain air is not my cup of tea. Santa Fe was cute though and the other parts of the state we visited were picturesque too. Very much so, especially as I don't have to live in Truchas or Las Trampas. I know another visit is in my future if only because my wife wants to take a long slow walking and shopping tour of old town Santa Fe. For that reason if no other we'll be back, and to eat Christmas on our tacos.
I like the full moon better than the new moon phases, the silver light bathing the countryside, the stark shadows and the two dimensional flattening effect of the light, I like that better than the pitch darkness of the new moon. When I was out traveling by sailboat the nights of no moon were made magical by the absolute blanket of stars visible in an unpolluted sky. However the full moon nights on the ocean created the effect of a journey across a sea of quicksilver. Plus you had a chance to see where you were going, which was nice. Nowadays I live in a firmly anchored house and lacking street lights I still get to see the stars from my deck and from my bed I can look out of the window and see the salt ponds glistening under the full moon.
I suppose it has to go without saying that I prefer to watch the moon's phases from the comfort of countryside that enjoys temperatures well above freezing. I know some people find magic in the glitter of moon light on snow flakes, but I absent myself from that group. I was recently in the mountains and saw stars shining unwaveringly through the rarefied air at one and a half miles above sea level. The air was cold on my skin and though my wife insisted I couldn't see my breath I was pretty sure I should be able to. I saw a black sky much more like the night sky in the keys than I would ever have imagined. 
Which it just so happens looks a bit like this at night, may favorite time in of day in Key West:
If you were so inclined you could think of the Bridle Path as another type of park in the city, though of course it has nowhere to sit and contemplate the beauty of the palms, the sandy pathway or the water across the roadway:
In modern times the Bridle Path has enjoyed a somewhat checkered history in the city. It used to be that the area was pretty much ignored and you would see cars parked and people picnicking under the trees. Then some bright spark saw waterfront property, went to Kmart and bought a yellow and blue pup tent. Others soon followed his example and pretty soon there were half a hundred tents lining South Roosevelt Boulevard. Which went down really well with city residents, as you can imagine. So the city did what cities do and formed a task force which reported back to the city and this followed rapidly behind them:
Aside from the fact the sign makers don't know how to spell "trespassing" the signs have been pretty effective and camping on the path is no longer tolerated (in case you were getting ideas!). From my point of view the unfortunates in this story are the residentially challenged who used to live in the mangroves quietly minding their own business, but when the city got involved they were moved out on the grounds campers were polluting the Salt Ponds that back up behind the path:
The bushes that line the path and separate it from the water are ideal habitat for local residentially challenged:
There also used to be a deck for bird watchers who had a convenient platform to sit out and see what was what on the salt ponds. Wilma did some damage to the old planks so now it takes a tad bit more athleticism to get into position to observe birds or eat sandwiches:
Even at low tide the view is quite pleasant. 
Not to mention motorcyclists who take this, the longer way in and out of town just for the sheer pleasure of the uninterrupted ride (no traffic lights) and the splendid views. It's hard not to envy this guy surely, cruising the southernmost stretch of State road A1A on his Sportster:
There's lots of free parking on the seaward side of South Roosevelt, so cagers can drop off their passengers under the palms:
And then park the car across the street and take in the sights:
In the low tourist season crossing the highway isn't impossible but in winter it can get pretty hectic, as the airport is just up the road as well as a bunch of hotels so there's always someone coming or going:
Less so at my favorite time of day, three o'clock in the morning. Pretty black huh?
Day or night the Bridle Path is a good place to take a break in Key West. as usual with public spaces you'll need to bring your own chair- and don't camp in the mangroves because we dispatch police officers day and night to check!
It wasn't just that there were a number of them, they also were large in size, by Key West standards and appeared empty. As I chatted with my wife on the cell phone, something I rarely do as I dislike phones in public, among other modern annoyances, I strolled back a second time and on my third pass snatched a few pictures. 
I should point out that these pictures are pretty much shot at random, I have no idea why the houses are for sale and my feelings of disquiet are prompted by the general housing market across the country. Let me say that typically during the housing bubble homes in Key West were sold as is, occupied and buyers paid without question. It comes as a surprise to my roving eye to see homes, recently refurbished, for sale with unkempt porches and none of the tarting up beloved of Realtors. 
It smacks of foreclosure, desperation, economic downturn. Whether or not it actually is, I couldn't say. I just noted the homes during an idle stroll. This one, shown above I noticed for its massive flank, exposed to the evening sunlight, some shutters open and some closed. The design of the shutters reminded me of those of my childhood which cast bars of light and shadow across the room:
And it's For Sale. 
We should feel fortunate that inspired people came in and spent good money t make these old palaces look good. With any luck their face lifts will carry them through to better times ahead.
I am simply speculating out loud about why and how these places are being sold. What struck me was how empty they seemed, as though abandoned hurriedly. It used to be that people stayed home and showed off their masterpieces and primped them for showing. These places don't look at all like that:
And the park like garden is just...a garden, not a tropical fantasy. Its still looks good to my untutored eyes, just not breath taking:
I like the way these houses look but I have no desire to live in them. Practical aspects overwhelm any sense of the aesthetic beauty I might perceive, because I know they must have high ceilings so they must be hell to air condition:
And i like the old touches like these massive Bahama shutters though i don't want to live with the limitations of Historic Architecture Reviews:
I like to know these places are being taken care of and kept up. On the other hand an example of the genre that isn't being kept up, that appears to be in the hands of original owners has its own corroded dignity in the midst of the primped parvenus:
The roof may be rusting and the paint may be peeling but I'd like to think there are no second or third mortgages on this house, no adjustable rates, no burden of debt so heavy that it might sink beneath the weight. Just a house, being lived in, as God and the builder originally intended.
There really is nothing quite so much fun as messing about in boats. Originally the boat in question was a wooden rowing boat, but for me the object of fun has transmogrified into a 14 foot (4 meter) fiberglass center console. A quick run down my canal and out into Newfound Harbor and I can park the boat somewhere smooth and out of the wind and take a swim in the turquoise waters. An hour of that, an outdoor shower when I get home and a leap into my uniform and I am relaxed and ready for a night of dealing with crises at work. Going swimming for me is the best release of tension, being on the water or in the water is my reason for living in the Keys, and having a dock on a canal is another reason why I like to live outside Key West proper. Twenty years of living on the freezing coastal waters of Central California will do that for you. And then there are days when you want to go for a boat ride as well as go for a swim.
Zipping down the south shore of Ramrod Key I headed out to Niles Channel, which is the deep water channel separating Ramrod from Summerland Keys. There is deepish water close in to the south shore of Ramrod, not too close in and you'll find several feet at low tide. My Dusky has no electronics and with a modest 25 horsepower outboard doesn't need much water to float so if I can barely see details on the bottom I've probably got three feet of water and that's plenty. But I still have to follow the bubba sticks to get out into deep water:
The first bubba stick you leave to port (the left side of the boat), and then there's another one to swing west to aim at Summerland in the distance, and then at the last one you are free to turn north:
Bubba sticks are the local name for homemade markers, usually made out of white PVC pipes planted somehow in the ground and sticking up above water. The trick is to know which side the bubba who planted them intended to find deep water. First approaches may need to be cautious but they are very handy. And then there it is: the tallest bridge between Big Pine Key and Key West, fully forty feet clearance above median high water:
I need much less to pass safely underneath:
That's the marker light hanging under the bridge to show the way at night. Beyond the bridge to the north Niles Channel stretches to the horizon and disappears beyond the mangroves that line either side of the deep water channel. On a calm day its a mirror of flat water and the boat flies along as though skimming an endless expanse of shimmering green sand. On a windy day its too much hassle in a small boat and one turns around to find a quiet spot to take a swim:
There are a bunch of boats anchored just south of the bridge and i see them everyday when I ride the Bonneville on my way to work:
And there's even one that's sunk at its anchor and the way it's lying in the water gives one some idea of how shallow it is around here:
People wonder why "they" don't remove these boats. The problem is what to do with them? It costs huge amounts of money to get the boats to the landfill, but even before that state officials have to carry out "due diligence" to seek out the owner and even if "they" get rid of these abandoned boats more appear. Constantly. Not so long ago a sailboat in this area broke loose and blew the fuse on the entire Lower Keys electrical supply when it's mast banged up against the wires that run alongside the highway. We were out of power for several hours in the Lower Keys, not least because the power company had no idea where the "break" was. They run trucks along the highway shining searchlights at the wires and that takes time.
All original cement from the beginning of the 20th century, and you can see it took a fair bit of effort to blast the gap in the old bridge to make room for boats to pass through.
And then the State of Florida laid a roadway on top in 1938 after they bought the rights from the railroad company.
This dude out fishing is doing a bit better than my 20 miles per hour, and he's through the bubba stick chicane before I even get close. That was a good day on the water.
To my eyes it has a South Pacific Polynesian flair, perhaps because I've never been there. The varnished wood curves up like one of those Tahitian canoes or something. And there's a Useful Secret about this place.
There are two parking spaces in front of the church. They are reserved for the church on Sundays according to a conveniently located sign, but the rest of the time they were there for the taking, and they aren't metered either. And the bonus is you get to park near the coolest church roof in Key West.
I've seen this little shrine before but it looked more noticeable as I came across it, on 
I like the sunflowers keeping the statue company, a sunny token in a sunny city. We find reminders of our youth in the most surprising places.
And in closing a pretty Key west picture, 
Key West, oh so pretty. This blog doesn't 
That low budget unit (thank you Dean) installed by the previous owner of my home (Dean) in the year 2000 has bought the farm. It has stopped working. This is a dead parrot (to misquote John Cleese) my air conditioning is no longer functional, it has ceased to exist, it has evaporated its last droplet of humidity. My house as a consequence is HOT. Everything inside the home is hot and rather than present you with a tedious list check out the lovely leather couch ignominiously covered by sackcloth. Hot leather is hard to sit on:
And in the bedroom all the fans are going, all four of them, moving the hot sticky air around:
Each of the ceiling fans spins silently. Usually they are busy moving cold air down from the a/c vents. Right now I'm glad to feel any air at all moving against my sweaty skin. And outside the sun shines white, like pure heat:
Did I mention its hot out there? Hot and dry. The salt ponds across the street from the house are looking parched and this is supposed to be the beginning of rainy season.
You could cook an egg on the plaque put up by the Nature Conservancy to honor the Spottswood family for taking a tax break and donating 90 acres of mud to the county. I'm glad they did because I'm guaranteed a westward view as long as I own the house, uninterrupted by development. Meanwhile my water cistern has run out of water. It's been 18 months that I've survived without falling back on aqueduct water, but this drought has run me dry. My pumps are turned off:
And I had to switch the cistern off until it rains again.
Those are Dean's marks on the wood, and though he never used the cistern I love using rain water. And though they seem rather crude they work. I hope it rains soon. I never used to wish for rain in my previous lives because I lived in places where rain meant cold, mud and being stuck indoors. In the Keys most rain comes in the hot season and rain means refreshment and variety and a delicious smell of crisp ozone lingering in the air. Besides the rain comes and usually goes and usually doesn't linger in the form of endless drizzle.
We're not even seeing thunder heads building. Its just blue sky day after boring day. Which in the ordinary course of things suits me just fine but the aqueduct water tastes of chlorine and the jug water I buy costs money. On the subject of money I can't wait to get the bill to refill my hundred gallon propane tank which has sunk to almost empty:
Good Lord! It's all happening at once! Suburban will be out next week and my a/c company has promised my brand new $4,000 unit will be installed and cooling my house by next Tuesday evening. I can't wait, I have to admit we've survived without climate control, though cooking anything in the kitchen is out of the question, any exercise not involving swimming is impossible and I hate to think what the humidity would do to my books, clothes and furniture if we went for a long time without a/c. 
And still the drought persists, and the mud shrivels and my cistern remains as dry as an English sense of humour. Gotta be tough to hack it in the Keys. I need some whine with my cheese.
It happened that I was in town in the car because even I have not yet figured out how to haul 4 cases of mineral water 26 miles to my home from GFS, the bulk food store, on the back of a Bonneville. So I was forced to park the car on Elizabeth Street, the street closest to Duval without meters, and walk, which is anyway a pleasure. I saw a few interesting little things that I recorded for posterity. The cleaners on Elizabeth street for instance, that I find reminiscent of an earlier time, the terrazzo floor, the big fan whirring and the couch for the customers!
I am one of the few in Key West that really enjoy the summer heat that is upon us. I like the bright white light of summer, I enjoy the sheen of sweat that comes so easily to one's limbs, I like breathing the hot sticky air as I walk, I feel as though I am swimming underwater. I took a picture of the ATM at Bank of America which shone bright white in the sunlight 
On Fleming Street the city wants to remind people that bicycles have to follow the rules of the road, and I rather liked this sign so I took a picture for no particular reason:
For some people its getting too warm to use their bicycles so they park the in the garage during the heat of the day. This is a typical Key West,Old Town garage:
Or, if you rented an apartment in Old Town you might have a flight of stairs to climb, a long one too, like Jacob's Ladder. It looks romantic but imagine a 600 square foot apartment with uneven floors and funky cupboards cooled by a noisy expensive window air conditioner blowing cold air in one spot. And for all this at the top of these stairs, or any others like them, you could be paying $1200 a month. 
I mention it as an example, to remind those of you contemplating a move to the coolest city of a possible pitfall. Perhaps the person living in this Paradise pays just $500 a month and monitors the homeowner's cat. You just never know. On the subject of homes I liked the plaque on this porch, not to mention the balloon:
If I lived in Old Town I'd like a brass sign like that on my porch. I'd like friends who sent balloons while i was at work, too, though I have no idea what this is all about. When writing about downtown key West one feels a certain obligation to illustrate the streets with any number of pretty conch homes. Here's one of no particular merit or demerit for the record:
I like the combination of formal frontage combined with the greenery and the delicate porches; Tara meets Conch. There is a ton of them like this around town, you practically can't point a camera without snapping one.
Others embrace Key West's preference for alternative transportation, an embrace that goes back far beyond the first stirrings of high cost gasoline:
Note the black garbage bag for a seat cover, the absence of a left hand mirror and the ever useful basket. These old Honda Elite 50s haven't been built for years but they keep on running. Mine carried me down the Boulevard at 38 miles per hour day after day on my way to work downtown. I regretted selling it when I went for the flashier and unreliable Stella 150. I view all Elite work horses with a certain fondness these days. 
I had no memory of Criss Cross, a 1990 film set in 1969 and shot in and around Key West. I am frequently ready to ditch a movie because I know the location and the plot ruins it, or vice versa I'll watch a movie only because I know the location and the plot is just an irritant. Criss Cross really does show Key West as it was in 1990, and completely recognizable today but the plot itself is entirely worthy if one had no interest at all in the shooting location. In this case the Eden House on Fleming Street, rendered shabby to illustrate the era:
The plot is simple enough, Goldie Hawn's character is divorced from Keith Carradine's and while he mopes in Miami ( they pay a visit from key West illustrated by footage shot on the old Seven Mile bridge:
And very evocative it is too, with all camera angles masking the presence of the modern bridge). 
I liked the local scenes which were integral to the plot and not too outlandishly misplaced. Truman and White Chevron after a summer rain:
And the old Peary Court long since lost to Navy housing. This shot can be placed by the presence in the background of the White Street Armory towers:
And an unusual shot, rendered impossible since 2001, of the underside of the Coastguard Piers:
The plot moves along merrily against the backdrop of the first lunar landing and I found this movie to an entirely enjoyable treat. We shouted out the locations as it moved from place to place and none of us fell asleep. 
As it was earlier this week:
As for the plot, the video store clerk glowered at me darkly and muttered something about hoping I wasn't too attached to the No Name Key bridge as it wouldn't look the same again to me. I slunk out clutching my films hoping I wasn't in for too much gore. I am no fan of horror films. The movie locations made little sense in relation to reality, because in another scene the booth looked like this:
Its actually a love story, boy meets girl kind of thing and the story goes downhill from there. There are a number of unpleasant people lurking around the tollbooth where he works and the gas station where she works, and the bait shop owned by the third leg of the triangle. It's a story in the style of Carl Hiassen involving road kill:
A fear of butterflies (?!) and trailer parks in the stereotypical Florida style:
All of which combines for a bizarre story with a surprising outcome. I rate it as okay, but by its nature a tollbooth is a pretty static location for a plot and the fact that the booth is known to be on a road to nowhere in this viewer's mind makes it a little harder to get stuck into the plot which in any case is not based on a realistic premise. In my estimation it was fun but not exactly compelling. Same tollbooth supposedly looking completely different than earlier in the movie...
Ah yes, but the Keys are always pretty to look at. 
There was no shelter for the Bonneville so I had to leave it out in the sun, poor thing, while I took off on foot. The signs were faded and illegible but I knew they indicated this as being a National Wildlife area so I wasn't going to drive the Bonneville down the trail:
The path through the mangroves started out in typical style, firm and dry underfoot lined by the pale green leaves of black and white mangroves stretching off to the horizon:
Well, I thought to myself, this won't take long. I strode along in the sun congratulating myself for taking some time on a work day afternoon to knock off this pending exploration. I had sunscreen on my nose and ears and though I lacked water I wasn't going to be gone long as clearly there wasn't much to see. I saw some grass at one point along the trail and it looked unusually pastoral for this part of the world:
I poked around and started to get an inkling that perhaps I might like this place more than I had at first thought. There was a car lurking in the bushes. It had been there so long it was rusted though and it lay sprawling under a mangrove tree that was actually growing through it, impaling it, leaving it with doors flung open and its bodywork brown with corrosion barely visible:
I couldn't help but wonder what it's story was; taken out and dumped ignominiously. Around the corner from the carcass of the car was a gate that screamed Mel Brooks to me:
It sat there bravely guarding its space which was open on both ends. Who knows perhaps it locked the wrecked car inside, those many years ago.
And as if I needed further proof that this was a bridle path I came across these in the crusty dry clay left behind from a rainless winter:
I think this place would be a positive marsh after a downpour, and underneath the mangroves I could spot puddles of water here and there and vast areas of more dried clay:
And then around a corner in the path I found a puddle of epic proportions, deep dark and mysterious. As lakes go it was small, and really outside of the Keys it would probably not rate as a pond, but this is Cudjoe Key so I call it a lagoon of what is, in all likelihood fresh water. I wasn't about to taste it though: 
And I could hear some pretty heavy rustling from the clump of mangroves on the other side of the water. It could have been the light west breeze shuffling the dead leaves...or could it have been...an alligator? Nah, I don't think there's enough water to support a dinosaur out here. Besides the prey would be pretty sparse wouldn't it? Key deer at the drinking hole, birds perhaps and the odd motorcyclist sweating by as a pedestrian in his sneakers...I kept moving briskly.
This giant piece of rubbish was not representative of the trail as a whole because of human trash there really wasn't much at all. I saw a couple of pieces of plywood (?) in the mangroves and very worn tin cans far off the trail but that was about all. It was pristine. Except for signs of vehicular traffic in the mud:
And clearly the ATV riders had some fun kicking up spray into the mangroves as they went by:
By now I could discern marine engines racing, deep throated, up the channel alongside Cudjoe to the east and the breeze seemed stronger the closer I walked to the water, which was still unseen through the mangroves. Except when it wasn't! A finger of salt water pushed through from the middle of the island a perfect canal penetrating deep into the interior. I needed a kayak:
And so I called it a day. On a map I measured the walk at just over a mile and a half, and there does appear to be the possibility, depending on water levels, of connecting by trail to the Spain Boulevard area off Blimp Road. That would explain the evidence of horses as there are stables on that part of Cudjoe.
And so I turned and started on the return journey down the long winding trail of hard packed dirt and mangroves:
I took a break, in the sun lacking shade, and in so doing I observed that which I had been taught in class. Because mangroves flourish around salt water some people believe, erroneously, that they survive on saltwater, but only in a manner of speaking. They absorb the saltwater, but have adapted to expel the salt through their leaves, which die, turn yellow and fall off taking the salt with them. These white mangroves had salt coating their leaves:
I can't remember the ins and outs of all the botanical details, they never stick in my brain, but there it was, salt on the leaves. At this overheated stage I could have used some potable fresh water as the path through the bushes was snug and breeze free.
In winter it is very pleasant to be out on a brisk 65 degree (17 Celsius) day with a strong north wind blowing overhead and to find oneself snug among the leaves and branches, listening to the wind ravish the crackling palm fronds and mangrove shrubs. In the heat of summer it is rather less so. But in the distance the baking summer sun illuminated a few tin roofs reassuring me that the civilization of Cudjoe Key was to hand:
Home, home to air conditioning, ice cold water and shade. Exploration is all very well, but in summer its best enjoyed in moderation, especially when you have a night's work ahead of you.
I haven't taken a night wander lately so I left work last week with the intent to do some prowling downtown. It gets light early this time of year so I didn't have much time to take pictures before the sun started to peak over the city spoiling the night effect. I zipped down to the 
The marina attached to the hotel is known in the city as Pier B. Why B I don't really know. The Outer Mole is called just that or the Navy Pier because the military owns it and Mallory Square where smaller cruise ships tie up is called Mallory Square so the 
During the day, later than six o'clock in the morning, this area bustles with visitors, hotel guests and boat Captains who keep their boats in the 
The waterfront is quite attractive as far as resort construction goes. Lots of people might make the argument that this was proportioned better for human use in the Good Old Days, when shipping in Key West was commercial not tourist based, and the docks and wharves were classic 19
And yes, there are the usual tourist oriented shops including, I might add, a coffee shop that opens at six to service the boat Captains getting ready to take their passengers out for a day of fishing. Buy a coffee sit out on the dock and wait for the sun to come up. Or you could wait a few hours and buy a...whatever it is they sell here:
Or anywhere else 
I'd rather eat worms than go shopping but this complex isn't as 
The marina still attracts people with expensive tastes in boats, people who for some reason like to leave their outside lights on all night:
Take heart, they bring excellently varnished furnishings with them, the better to sit out and admire our 
There are boats built to a more modest scale but don't be fooled, even this cute little launch all lit up and ready to go is here to serve those of a certain standing, for this is the Sunset Key ferry: 
There are a few retirees who have chosen to live year round on Sunset Key, the 
Sunset Key is another stark example of Conchs selling their heritage for a mess of 
I am no 
Give it twelve more hours and they will be out to crowd the waterfront and toast the sun as it disappears yet again. 
For an island four miles long by two miles wide (6 kilometres by 3) Key West manages to tuck away quite a few unknown and unknowable spots. When one is faced by an undeniable shortage of land surrounded by an ocean, the human response is to make the most of what you do have. Now that I've lived here for a while I'd like to go back to Monaco and seek out the less obvious corners that I never bothered to in the past. Away from the aquarium and casino there must be an entire culture of the minuscule I was never attuned to seeking out when riding a motorcycle meant going as far and notching up as many locations as possible. Ah youth! Pass the bottle...
Key West has an abundance of nooks set aside for human refreshment, not of the liquid sort, for a change, but of that part that other activities cannot reach. Well, the fact is these tiny parks would be fabulous is they actually offered somewhere to sit and contemplate, but in response to the residentially challenged habit of permanently occupying any flat surface all city benches and sitting arrangements have been removed from Bill Butler Park. There is a child's playground, possibly owing to the fact that spending all day in a child's swing is beyond the capacity of even the most determined loafer:
Bill Butler is a pretty little spot, green shady and relatively clean. In my pictures it looks quite huge and in terms of pocket parks I visit in this essay it is the second largest, and one of the shadiest:
On Google maps its shown at Pourhouse Lane which should be Poorhouse Lane (where we are all destined to end up the way things are going), not far from the cemetery. And that's all the link you get unless someone wants to waste their time adding links for each park in the comments section. I say have fun searching and finding. A couple of surprised visitors found the park on their rented bicycles and passed me by with smiles of pure delight as they freewheeled on through. And look at the access lanes they used, pure Key West:
You won't need a map to find the next one. Clinton Square is a triangle in proper Conch style (we don't need no stinkin' geometry!) and it is crossed by a gazillion tourists a day especially when cruise ships dock at Mallory and the Westin. This lot didn't pause:
These two did, to smear lotion on those lily white limbs, poor things:
In the middle of the swarm of t-shirt shops, souvenir stands and Conch trains is this not divine?
And naturally there used to be benches to sit on and enjoy the peace of a tiny triangle in the midst of the bustle. Now the benches are gone as is the pervasive stench of stale urine, so I suppose...it's a good compromise? Bring your own chair. If you are having trouble locating this tiniest of parks let me put it, and the Bonneville, for Janna, in context:
If you need more than Clinton Square you will need to move further afield, perhaps a cooling swim at this point in the tour. That would be next to the Community Pool at the end of Catherine Street, where we find not one but two parks bracketing the above ground pool. Willie Ward Park, whose splendid donated flag pole flies at the top of this essay is blessed with seating arrangements:
Further afield one tends to come across pocket parks that have more of a neighborhood flavor. A short walk from Bill Butler we have, on the other side of the cemetery, the Angela Street Park, which was the first spot converted to park use and is thus known generally as the Pocket Park.
It's on the south side of the island at the corner of Alberta and Seminole Streets. If that's too vague let me see if this puts it in context:
That white block would be Casa Marina viewed from the rear. The dark blob is the Bonneville. 
If you find yourself in difficulty finding this one you need a GPS implanted in your brain. Just look for the marker (not the Bonneville -its long gone from here):
This was the most popular piece from a past Sculpture in the Park exhibit at Fort Zachary, and it appears to have found a permanent home in New Town. Very cool.
There were tons of parents with toddlers, strollers and people hanging out chatting and watching the youngsters tossing a ball. It was a perfect end to a hard fought tour. Key West, a livable place to live. Oh and its not on Google maps, but if you can find 19th Terrace you will be close. Please don't tell them I sent you, they seem to like to keep it to themselves. 
I was riding out of downtown after a pleasant afternoon at the Tropic Cinema watching Patricia Clarkson and Chris Cooper pretending to be in love, and the afternoon was still pleasant, sunny and breezy and unnaturally dry and cool for the middle of May. God was in his Heaven and all was well with the world so I detoured on my way to the Police Station and took Greene Street to Elizabeth and there at the Monument at Lazy way Lane I flashed past Curt riding his bicycle one handed, hauling bits for his boat in the other hand. We each spotted the other and we circled like prey and predator in the street before coming to rest at the side of the road. We had not seen each other for a while and we had lots to talk about.
He's as cheap as ever and enjoys thoroughly his ability not to spend money. He disagrees vehemently with people who say you can't make a living in Key west; he's done it for years making less than $10 an hour. It just takes finesse. No one owns Curt, Curt owns Key West and has for decades, living on the margins, sticking to his plan and not letting the naysayers tell him its not worth it or Key West is changing to much to be able to scavenge a living on the edge. Curt embraces the changes and makes them work for him. He is the romantic survivor all the wanna be Key Westers aspire to become. "Key West accepts you or it doesn't, " he says, shrugging his shoulders. I'm glad it accepted me in all my middle classness. Being seen in public chatting to Curt reasserts my own credibility as former wharf rat, a belonger even if I have now sold out and joined the ranks of middle class mediocrity. Everyone wants a romantic Key West story attached to their lives; Curt is the witness to my waterborne past. 
The Navy prepared the land for hand over, emptying its old buildings, emptying its last remaining guard huts, pulling down an elderly, creaking water tower and spiffing up the open space for new users.
Some of the new users are actually old users, like the State Park at Fort Zachary, a chunk of land in the southwestern-most corner of the waterfront, long since dedicated to civilian recreation. The Navy funneled traffic to the park along a special, fenced off road for civilians, reserving the other road to the military. Nowadays, with the military withdrawn from the land there are two roads that both lead to the park entrance:
During winter in particular there are many many visitors who make the trek to enjoy the city's best swimming beach at Fort Zachary, making their way by car scooter and whatever means works for them:
But the Navy only retreated they didn't leave altogether. There are still installations along here including satellite dishes and antennae aimed at Cuba, military housing and who knows what all else behind the fence. This visitor is walking to the park, and in the distance behind her is the entrance to the Truman Annex Navy Base: 
Key West has been a Navy town since its founding and even today the navy presence is bigger than ever. Since Vieques closed down its base off Puerto Rico the Navy has expanded its flying schools in Florida and Key West is glad for the money the Navy brings in. Spouses also take jobs in the city and provide a stable competent workforce in a town that can't provide civilians a place to live at less than astronomical rents. Its a symbiotic relationship. Truman Waterfront is illustrating that relationship in a whole new light. Not least because of the presence looming over the waterfront of Truman Annex, that gated community of "Key West style" homes:
With the hand over of the waterfront the Navy decided, after the Al Quaeda attack on the Twin Towers, to retain control of the Outer Mole and has agreed to let the city dock cruise ships there as long as the Navy doesn't need the pier, seen here across the basin that should soon become a new luxury civilian marina:
The new users that have already moved into the Truman Waterfront include the Eco Discovery center in their new digs, associated with the national Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. There are national Marine Sanctuary boats docked here as well:
And a World War Two Coastguard Cutter Mohawk is docked as a floating museum:
Further north is the waterfront sold to the owners of the Westin Hotel who also have a marina on their property:
Next to the Westin is the white block visible from miles at sea, of the old officer's quarters now a condo complex known as the Shipyard: 
And on the remaining side lies the private property of Truman Annex:
The Truman waterfront is pretty much surrounded on all sides, making easy access by water a viable option and I suppose one could take a ferry if such a service were offered. Hell there's even a boat ramp, used these days by sailors who come to town in January for Race Week:
Hold on though because there is a street that leads into the Truman Waterfront, its Southard Street which starts, or ends, here.
The trouble is, and what big trouble it's turning into, is that Southard Street traverses the gated community of Truman Annex. The Annex has worked out a deal with the city to close off Southard`Street with a couple of gates, because God knows the riff-raff need to be kept out at night. There was some uproar about allowing a private community to effectively control a city street, but Key West is nothing if not flexible and for the sake of peace and quiet and to avoid lawsuits as is the modern fearful way, agreed to let the Annex gate the street, which the annex claimed it bought when the property was sold to the developer a few decades ago. The city has no records stating otherwise so there it is. Now of course having given an inch the city must yield the rest of the ell because apparently the only way to keep the riff-raff out properly is to build gates taller than those allowed by ordinance so a variance is being considered. Southard Street should remain open by day to hoi-polloi, goes the agreement, and closed at night to all but residents:
All signed sealed and delivered with much huffing and puffing and minimal civic protest. However, the deal makers forgot the Navy. But the Navy is not allowing itself to be forgotten. The Base Commandant, scheduled to be reassigned later this year, has announced that National Security requires no gates on Southard Street and no impediment to Navy access through Southard Street. Cynics have suggested the city cut the deal so quickly with the Truman Annex because they fully expected the Navy to step in and trump the deal. Others, yet more cynical, suggest the Commandant's departure scheduled for the Fall may allow a more amenable replacement to go along with the deal. Which mouse roars loudest roars last I guess.
And some of it is quite pretty. I've never, for instance, seen a date palm growing out of a baobab:
There aren't many trees on this open space which mostly resembles a wasteland, with the odd tropical trunk sprouting:
There are still some Navy buildings...
...and Navy fixtures...
...and even old navy cannon barely visible behind the old fire hydrant, in the distance, and old Rodman presumably liberated from Fort Zachary. There's so much land down here that parts of it are little more than a parking lot or a junkyard, be it ever so picturesque:
And over it all hangs the Southard Street question:
I have almost 12,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) on the Bonneville since I bought it new last October, and as one might surmise I have developed a few opinions about my Bonneville. It's pretty simple actually; its a nice bike. The truth is just about any motorcycle built by the major manufacturer nowadays is reliable and offers longevity almost as a matter of course. Even the marginal machines, Royal Enfields and Urals say, are getting better and seem reliable enough if you have the time skill and patience to keep them running.
The Bonneville appeals to me because it has an old fashioned air. when looking at it, or when riding it, it reminds me of the machines of my youth. I like the big round headlight, the curved tank, the old fashioned suspension and the general symmetry of the motorcycle. I like the way I sit on it, straight back and feet under my knees which are under my hips, with none of the feet forward stuff while sitting on the tailbone required of cruisers. Modern bikes tend to go for weird styling, pairs of mismatched headlights, pieces of pointed plastic sticking out at odd angles and exaggerated single sided suspension and angular seating. I like the old fashioned look.
Next year Bonnevilles sold in the US will join their European counterparts and get electronic fuel injected engines, but for now we get the last of the engines sold with carburettors. I am a bit skittish about EFI as the injection systems require electricity, frequently don't provide the same smooth overall performance of a carburettor and I had lots of problems with the system on the Vespa GTS. However carburettors offer worse gas mileage and are somewhat higher polluting than EFI, even though modern motorcycle exhausts use catalytic converters like cars. My Bonneville also has a choke knob, very old fashioned and a manual fuel tap, just like the bikes of my youth. It shouldn't leak ever but I like to turn the fuel off like I used to 30 years ago... 
I soon put paid to that with a pair of Triumph gaiters:
Some people like the gaiters because they look "old fashioned" but for me they are good way to protect the seals in the legs and keep the damping fluid where it does the most good- inside the fork legs. Plus they look cool, especially when they have settled in and smoothed out. Then there is the question of a center stand. Some modern riders don't want a center stand in addition to the side stand because they add weight and aren't necessary.
I like to have both choices to make parking easier in certain conditions, and to aid in simple maintenance chores, like adding air to the tires, checking the oil level and cleaning and oiling the final drive chain:
I have for decades abhorred final drive chains as maintenance intensive and a nuisance. After years of shaft and belt drive I have been forced back to chain drive and really its not so bad. The chain looks pretty much brand new and should be good for at least 20,000 miles- some people claim 40,000 off a modern o-ring chain like this one on the Triumph. I clean it as the factory recommends about every thousand miles with a stiff brush and lashings of kerosene (paraffin in England). To oil it I use a little English gadget called a Loobman which is a tremendous invention for $35.
I use fresh engine oil for its light weight and lubricant qualities and I lashed the little bottle to a frame member above the chain. The other end of the system grips the final sprocket between two electrical ties (!) that drip oil onto the sprocket that spreads the lubricant to both sides of the chain. 
A squeeze of the bottle every time I fill the tank and the chain stays lubricated and supple. I give an extra squeeze from time to time (in the rain, or if I'm feeling generous) and the the little bottle of oil lasts forever. The oil does spread some muck over the rear end but it makes the rear wheel rustproof and it washes off easily enough.
I like the slight curvature as opposed to the straight vertical type offered by Triumph and Parabellum comes with the rubber mounting around the headlight, along with cutouts for the turn signals. Also it is completely quiet in operation, no creaking or squeaking. It was a bit of a bugger to install:
And I had to bleed the front brake (boo hoo!) after the handlebars were upside down for the thirty minutes it took to get all the bits organized.
I took advantage of the screen to move my two add on instruments. The clock and the barometer from New Bonneville at $70 apiece are helpful to me partly because I'm rotten at estimating temperature and partly because I hate being late. Also they are self contained and don't rely on the bike's battery to operate:
The Bonneville has gobs of torque and pulls easily and smoothly from 40 mph in fifth gear so the tachometer has been missed less than I would have expected. I have no plans to install one at this point, much to my own surprise.
And finally there is the question of luggage for the dapper commuter roadster. On the aesthetic front people groan at the thought of burdening their spiffy machines with bags and boxes but to me a motorcycle with no luggage is a motorcycle not ridden as a real alternative to a cage:
To me the Bonneville as presented above is just right for my daily rides, and with a waterproof bag strapped to the seat I can travel at my ease. (I am no fan of tank bags, even the modern ones). To reach this point I started by adding a rear rack, the only one I know of that fits the Bonneville.
It's made by Renntec and is sold by New Bonneville for about $130:
I found it a pain strapping my man purse to the rack each time I rode, so I added a top case (top box in England). This one is preferred by off road riders on bikes like the Kawasaki KLR 650. I like it because its cheap, $85, and is square so there is no wasted space inside with swoops and compound curves. Plus it was available at the Yamaha shop on North Roosevelt:
The top case will hold my full face helmet or my carefully folded mesh/Kevlar jacket, or my man purse with my open face helmet, so I can leave my stuff with the bike locked, weatherproof and out of sight:
In one saddlebag I always keep my waterproofs. The bag itself comes with a waterproof cover but I spray them with silicon and so far their contents have remained nice and dry. I store my waterproof clothing in cotton bedding bags, the sort of bags sheets are sold in, and I label them to make them easier to figure out by the side of the road in a downpour- "liner" for my jacket liner, "pants" and "over boots" for my waterproof mittens and boot covers. I also carry zinc sunscreen and insect repellent, which is always useful around here:
In the other bag I have odds and ends, a socket wrench, bungee cords, rags, fix-a-flat (some hope!) a pressure gauge and my Chico shopping bags of course along with a tin of Nevr Dull to shine up the chrome when I'm bored and waiting for an appointment. I have taken to carrying a blanket for those occasions when one has nowhere to sit but has time to take a break. 
The plastic bag I use as emergency waterproofing if I have to carry my man purse on the back of the seat with my ingenious permanently in place bungee tied to the front of the rack to make an easily used and very secure loop thusly:
Storage is not as elegant as my late lamented Vespa but it's just as roomy in the end.
I have to say there is pleasure in having the details figured out. There is a peculiar satisfaction in having a place for everything and everything of course, in its place. My inspiration lately came from this BSA single loaded for travel to Panama in the 1950s, a story I reviewed here months ago:
When I took off for Tampa last week almost 500miles away all I had to do was add a waterproof dive bag to the seat with a few days worth of "proper clothes" and I was ready to roll. The horizon beckons, just as it did 30 years ago when i was taking off on my unsuitable motorcycles all the time. Ah impetuous youth.
There was a front page article in Monday's Citizen about recycling in "Frisco," which is the commonly accepted abbreviation for the city of San Francisco (commonly accepted by everyone except residents of The City who hate the overly intimate abbreviation). It seems San Francisco recycles fully 70 percent of their waste and the mayor wants to increase it to 75 percent. However that doesn't seem possible to Mayor Gavin Newsom unless he requires all residents to compost. Which seems draconian even to them by their own eco standards. 
And I know there are naysayers who argue that recycling is not particularly useful in the grand scheme of things. To some extent I agree, so I try to follow the rule of R's- reduce, reuse recycle and in the end the bromide is that something is better than nothing. I reuse the moisture from the air conditioner by pouring it into my rainwater collection system:
When full it amounts to just over three gallons of purified moisture (the stick is a ramp for geckos that have fallen in). I put the water into the black collection tanks under the house. When its hot and humid I can get three gallons every time I leave the house, it seems like:
The black tanks behind the Bonneville settle the rain water I pump out of the 12,000 gallon collection cistern that collects rainwater off the roof. There is a series of pumps that moves the water around:
And a series of filters on the wall of the cistern, which purify the rainwater that gets pumped into the house in lieu of aqueduct water:
Year round we use very little aqueduct water which is supposed to be a good eco thing, helping preserve the South Florida aquifer. We hang our laundry out to dry which is pretty effective in this climate especially when there is as is frequently the case, a breeze:
If all these small steps aren't saving the planet they do no harm, actually save me some money and use very little extra time. I'm pretty slack on the composting front and we are getting psyched to move into creating a small composting area outside. I'm reluctant to compost because our waster stream is already pretty tiny- we get two pick ups each week and I'm pressed to put out garbage of any kind on two out of three visits by The Man:
The composting thing fills me with anxiety because when we eventually develop a supply of fertile soil we will then have to find a way to use it and that means building a bed for planting. Which means gardening and that my friends is a pain. It always was and always will be. So I need an attitude adjustment. Gardening in my middle age will not become the chore it was in my youth and we will enjoy home grown flowers and vegetables. In the Keys no less. So composting is on my to-do list. 
In my defense I do keep the trees around the house trimmed but palm fronds are fibrous and abundant and they would take three lifetimes to compost down to soil so I put them into garbage cans for yard waste pick up on Fridays. My wife has noted I seem to enjoy the tree trimming routine and I guess it is true, being outside in the heat is much less of a chore for me than struggling with lawn mowers and out of control growth and cold wet dirt. There is hope for me yet.
The City of Key West reports a modest savings of $30,000 in the trash bill annually thanks to a modest increase in the amount of stuff recycled. If nothing else one would think taxpayers would recycle to save the community some tax dollars but I have my doubts about the willingness of the stubborn down here to be led in that direction. One does what one can- to avoid the trash can!
The island's first American name, for a secretary of the Navy didn't stick, but Simonton sold quarters of his strategic possession to John Whitehead, and two others who sold their quarter to Pardon Greene. The fourth quarter went to an Englishman settled in Mobile Alabama next door to Simonton's business interests. He was called John Fleeming, whose name in the passage of time was reduced to Fleming. Anyone with any knowledge of Key West knows that those four names represent major streets in Old Town. Yesterday I cruised Fleming Street with my camera.Fleming Street begins behind the county courthouse at Thomas Street, which is currently under construction as the county is building itself a new center next to the long standing buildings.
The old courthouse and administrative buildings are in brick, in the Southern style, and the new ones we hope will not jar our sensibilities. So far so good. The old building from the front still manages to look dignified:
And if you chose to work your way past the courthouse security those arches up high offer an private and unparalleled view across old town, with tables for a secluded picnic.
This next photograph shows Fleming Street heading northeast towards Duval from Whitehead, with on the left the bulk of La Concha Hotel looming over Duval Street. 
La Concha close up spreads out on the 400 block of Duval with shops, a bar, a Starbucks (one of two in the Keys, the other is at Mile Marker 99.5 in the Upper Keys). Fleming Street is one way out of town and is thus a useful street to escape Duval direct to White Street:
Across from La Concha lies the redoubtable Kress building long since given over to Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville Cafe and Tony Falcone's store:
Tony Falcone, one of the founders of Fantasy Fest (an antidote to the low season blues he says), owns Fast Buck Freddies, an eclectic department store.
I worked there a few months years ago in the shipping and receiving office as if to prove my lack of suitability for the world of retail. Fast Bucks deserves an essay of its own.
Call me an arriviste but I patronize Voltaire Books a few blocks away on Simonton Street, newer, friendlier and less cramped. Fleming Street is just packed with notable local businesses including the delightful Fausto's Food Palace, and the current owner is the founder's son in law. Jimmy Weekly served as mayor for years and was always to be found, like today, working in the store, wearing an apron and frequently wielding a knife in the deli.
My wife loves Fausto's deli where she loads up with picnic items with a decidedly non traditional flair- dolmas, seaweed and octopus ceviche to name but a few. Faustos is also advertised as a crossroads for one and all in town:
But as we know Key West is home to all types of people, shirtless, in uniform or all buttoned up... I don't know which is tougher, hauling letters in the heat of summer...
... wearing a suit on a blazing street corner...
...or dragging your offspring behind you on your bicycle (actually these last two looked pretty cheerful)...
Tourists cruise Fleming Street in the gruesomely slow Conch Train:
Or the slightly more sprightly Old Town Trolley, which is also owned by Historic Tours of America:
I have to say the tours (around $22, I think, for 90 minutes) are quite worth while though the identically repeated narratives drive home owners quite mad, and the 5mph speed of these contraptions make drivers crazy. Ride the train and pretend to ignore the scowling locals (me included I'm sorry to say). 
This family name spells mad development with a capital D, though rumor has it Beachside isn't doing so well and the proposed massive Convention Center at the entrance to town across from Beachside has hit a few snags in the current uncertain financial climate.Which spells tough times for construction workers as well of course. No issue seems clear cut when one reaches the wisdom of middle age. Hate that development, love them jobs!
The Spottswoods have a death grip on the tourist economy and they take their bows in the simpering Conch Color magazine every now and again- noblesse oblige. They own this building too and keep offices in it to promote their various multi million dollar enterprises, employing God knows how many locals:
I know I was never born to be a businessman because I don't really understand the drive to build. Entropy seems so all encompassing to me, the idea that a new building will make a better city seems a little off kilter. I prefer making the old new, maintaining the look or the feel of the past with the modern conveniences of the new (Think Triumph Bonneville year 2007 model!). The tear it all down approach leaves me cold. I wonder when they will have enough of moulding Key West to their rather sterile vision though I doubt I shall be alive to see them say stop, enough. So one turns away and keeps looking northeast on Fleming to find examples of old preserved:
Old refurbished to look new. And all those wires; its amazing power flows as reliably as it does in this windy city. Conch houses of course abound, with all their Conch details, like this breezy figurehead:
And these lovely old/new homes, just two on a street filled with such examples:
And then there is the public library, Florida's oldest at Elizabeth and Fleming, with of course a passed out residentially challenged citizen sprawled uncomfortably on the planter:
And in the shade a young person sucking up knowledge:
The Library comes with a delightful garden alongside, a place I used frequently to escape Fast Bucks on my downtown lunch breaks (the other favorite was the cemetery, though some considered me eccentric for preferring to share my midday meals with the dead):
And this being Key West, there is a convenience store before you journey too far, and one should note the dog friendly white water bowl outside the doorway: 
Then we find Bubba's an outdoor restaurant that replaced an eclectic Asian place known as Monsoon Cafe, which was a place where I liked to buy curries and sit out watching the stars. Bubbas I don't yet know (that dog had been refreshing itself at the previous dog bowl a few minutes earlier, so even though it looks stressed it is just a maldajusted moment captured by the camera):
Then there is the Eden House a hotel that took a starring role in a movie shot there, Criss Cross, from 1990. Nowadays Eden House, named for its owner Mike Eden, not the mythical garden, slumbers in the summer heat with its guest bicycles clogging the bike stand in a way that is spectacular to my mind, even by Key West urban cycling standards:
There is also the Island House for Men in this area, and if you're gay you already know about it and if you're not you need know no more. I used to work with a colleague who enjoyed his lunch breaks there, though I draw a veil over what he said he ate for lunch on those occasions. He moved Up North, though I cannot imagine his life in Central Florida is nearly as stimulating. 
A metaphor for life perhaps? No, that's way too heavy a burden for this delightful urban artery.
Open and airy, yet filled with knick knacks all reeking of the past which is the only era Denise relates to, her home is a shrine to the way Florida used to be, and perhaps should become again. She was born up the coast and has a passionate attachment to old Florida, a place of quiet and modest respectability, not the loud and brash and sprawling Florida as represented by the modern mauls and multi-lane highways we call streets. Tongue and groove ceilings and terrazzo floors inside, palms and lignumvitae trees outside, with the ocean nearby. Denise could be a counter culture figure from a Carl Hiassen novel:
Across the street from her long sought after beach house, is another remnant of a bygone era, a remnant that Denise, an inveterate flea market browser, could not actually buy, though someone else did put a bid in recently:
As seen from Denise's porch, behind my wife's convertible, are the neat rows of white boxes that make up the city of Briny Breezes. A developer put a $510 million offer on the entire 43-acre community. The idea was to pay all the occupants of the nearly 500 trailers in the city for their shares and then build luxury condos and hotels in their place. Most of the residents went for the deal after a lot of vocal opposition (led by Denise), but the bursting real estate bubble killed the whole project dead. 
The current bust in the real estate market has kept this strip of undeveloped land open and green for the time being:
It's a block of land in the county, across the street from Briny Breezes, that is slated to see a few 35 foot high condos rear up to overlook the ocean which will give Denise some adjustments to get used to, but for now...things stay as they are, a pause for breath in South Florida's eternal need to rebuild itself.
But Briny Breezes isn't normal. It has a Community Center because it is a community: 
And Denise is just tickled pink by the fact that her home town has the BBC. "But," I protested,"every cable company offers the BBC." Not Briny Breezes Cable Channel 8, she chortled.
And they have a convenience store the like of which I haven't seen anyplace else. It sits on A1A, the coastal highway and looks like any dive selling overpriced milk and beer, but inside I found a haven of yuppie foods, a mixture of traditional jazz and show tunes to shop by and locally produced instant meals, hand crafted soups, Swedish meatball lunches and pasta dishes made just up the street and for sale in a store that defied convention. It looked normal enough, but this was a small store that followed it's own path:
It's not Key West, but Briny Breezes sure is a community in the real sense of the word, a small town for ordinary folk wedged between the manicured mansions and condos of the wealthy snowbirds to the north and the south of its own slice of slightly scruffy beachfront. My visit to Denise's corner of Americana made even me nostalgic for something I never knew, beach town Florida, circa 1950. Those trailers peeking out on A1A:
The developer is threatening to return to Briny Breezes to have another go at buying the entire town, but that doesn't seem likely at this point. For me, it was time to convert the convertible ad get back to the Keys before I start pining for my own home alongside the mouse that roared, on Florida's Atlantic shore. 
The city of LaBelle lies on the south side of the river and as soon as your Bonneville crests the bridge there is LaBelle's most famous product:
This isn't a heavily populated county town, Hendry County isn't overly residential, and there's lots of room to store stuff. perhaps you have a few hundred bee hives waiting to be placed? Why, just toss 'em out back:
The town is as pretty as the surrounding woods and the buildings are picturesque and dilapidated to some degree, rather similar to Arcadia in that way.
But highways, like time and tide wait for no motorcycle so it was onwards, ever onwards, south on 29, more straight lines carved across the belly of the state:
My target on this leg of the trip was Immokalee, a farming town in the middle, approximately, of nowhere. The funny thing about this part of Florida is that all the glamor and wealth is on the edges, and the hole in the middle of the doughnut is very impoverished. Hilarious isn't it? Palm Beach, home of every winter resident with millions to burn is part of the same county where cane workers burn and cut cane by hand. Immokalee is part of Collier County, that would be the city of Naples, another enclave of wealth nestled on the gulf coast. Immokalee is a very different kettle of fish:
Immokalee is at the center of a dispute these days over tomatoes. pickers get paid a piece rate for their work and they want a raise for the first time in decades. The owners of KFC/Taco bell and MacDonalds have agreed to pay a penny a pound more but Burger King refuses. It seems weird to me, forgetting the Henry Ford principle of paying workers well enough to afford the products. There again its the way the world works these days and we don't seem to be able to escape the Walmartization of wages and benefits. Immokalee could do with a leg up:
But this is a town of immigrants:
And our migrant neighbors aren't that well liked this election year, so I guess our Mexican vegetable pickers have to cheer themselves up any way they can:
I'm not a pinata type of guy, anyway it's time I got my lily white bottom out of town:
Not so lily white in this heat, and that's my face by the way. The camera got away from me while I was concentrating on riding that long straight road and I shot myself. I wanted to photograph this instead:
I have seen converted school buses all over the world giving their all transporting people and their possessions. But this is the first time I saw a school bus in service as a melon carrier. Ride far enough I suppose, and eventually you'll see it all.
When this place was first bruited people took to wondering what the world is coming to (not much I dare say). Ave Maria is as daft a notion as its name, founded in this instance by the orphan boy who made a fortune creating Domino's Pizza. He could think of nothing better to do with his spare cash than to buy up a few hundred acres of nothing much and proposed the creation of a community based on strict Catholic principles. That flew like a lead balloon, as the American Way apparently doesn't allow anyone to ban condoms, porn on television, or binge drinking off campus. It strikes me as funny that this place stirred up so much hot air and manufactured controversy. Who cares who wants to ban condoms? Whose business is it anyway? I grew up in a Catholic school attached to an Abbey and as far as I'm concerned I don't need to repeat the experience as an adult, thanks. For those that missed out on a Catholic English boarding school experience, there's Ave Maria.
That didn't work so well, as this little back road was like Grand Central Station in rush hour with a constant clamoring of passing vehicles. In a grumpy mood I saddled up and moved on. And came to the big slash in the earth that just a few shorty weeks ago i had been traveling with the wife's Vespa:
Alligator Alley in all it's glory, as seen from the Highway 29 overpass. 
I rode down to the strand where I found the alligators whose portraits I posted a few days ago and bugged back out. I got some pretty impressive white dust on my machine, and myself, in those few miles. From there it was back on the Tamiami blacktop and a quick wave in passing to the Miccosukee villages and their privacy fences:
By the time I was back in the Keys I had been on the road for 12 hours and that was as much as I needed, so the last two hours home were torture in a manner of speaking. Still it was good to see blue water again in this small corner of Florida so unlike anywhere else in the state:
I hope the Florida Keys reputation for tolerance survives the difficult times ahead. I like living in a place where being left alone to get on with it is the countywide credo. Oh, and the swimming is pretty nice too.
The Meadows is a neighborhood outside the confines of Old Town, which means the Historic Architecture Review Commission doesn't nail your ass to the floor, but it's old enough , dating to the 1930's that the houses look cute and conch-like.
The Meadows is the area between White Street and Eisenhower, and Truman and Angela Street. Eisenhower is short street that connects Truman to Palm Avenue and its a bit urban industrial: 
The Meadows is not a neighborhood heavily frequented by tourists, and its far enough from the heavy drinking on Duval to require the use of a cab, or a bicycle or (God forbid) a moped. I suppose that were I planning a night of debauchery I would walk to Duval, a pleasant stroll across town at dusk, and ride home in splendor in a cab. But that's just me and I'm dreaming because there's no way I'm moving voluntarily to town. Or taking up debauchery, as unlikely as that may seem. 
Angela Street, the northern side of the neighborhood, is typical of The Meadows, wooded and lined with a wide architectural variety of houses:
And right across the street, behind the fence is Peary Court, Navy housing. Peary Court used to be open space, littered with large trees and grass and crisscrossed by grassy overgrown streets long since disused. The Navy decided to build on Peary Court and that sent the balloon up, with protesters protesting and people tree sitting and all the panoply of humans acting pissed off. It didn't stop the Navy:
Peary Court was in effect, the first big loss suffered by the anti- development crowd. It just happened to be at the hands of the Navy, who is exempt from city planning and municipal taxes and all. These people aren't and they have got their plans through City Hall. They have the cheek to call these 2000 square foot "residences" The Meadows and they want $1.7 million each.
There are eight single family homes around a pool in this upscale condo and their advertising web site suggests this is the first step to a better sex life. I'm not joking; Google "The Meadows" and see for yourself. (If you need a link you are too lazy by half), and if that doesn't seem so suave there's another one across the street:
No word what this one does to your sex life. How disappointing. Anyway if I were wanting to live in a condo this one below might be more my speed, as long as the neighbors were permanently comatose:
It's on White Street at Olivia, and just across the street is this little gem, the Ben Harrison Gallery.
Harrison is the author of the a superb, gruesomely detailed biography of Karl Tanzler, the man
And if you want to go boating, how convenient, Garrison Bight is right across Eisenhower and there are racks right there:
There are religious centers in The Meadows too, and there used to be a Chabad Jewish outfit until they sold the land that has become the sex obsessed Meadows development. 
I spent a happy half hour on an abbreviated pre-sunset lunch break riding around the neighborhood, checking out this...
...and that... 
...and the other:
The Meadows has homes that look more like they should be in Old town. This is one of a few eyebrow homes left in the city. They were designed to allow upstairs windows to stay open and in the shade to allow airflow. Instead they let hot air in to stagnate.
Pretty enough even if it doesn't work. 
When the original seven mile bridge was under construction at the beginning of the 20th century it was viewed by many as an engineering feat on the same order of amazement as the "Eighth Wonder of the World" which at that time was the construction of the Panama Canal, less beautiful perhaps than the Hanging Gardens of Babylon but decidedly more useful in the Industrial Age. The original bridge seen here from the new bridge, shows off the cement columns built around 1910 and still as solid as ever.
The new bridge was built in 1982 and opened to traffic much to the relief of the claustrophobic drivers of the Lower Keys. The new bridge is little more than a normal two lane highway when you drive on it: 
Of course its a bit wet on either side and the scenery is quite spectacular:
The old bridge was quite narrow as can be seen today as it is still open at each end for pedestrians for use as a fishing bridge. This is the section of old bridge at the southern/western end, towards Big Pine Key and it's has been gussied up with cement barriers and trash cans:
The northern/eastern end of the old bridge, the Marathon end, is still in use as a roadway for the trolley to Pigeon Key. That's an excursion I wrote about elsewhere and i snagged a couple of pictures for this essay. 
When the railroad was converted to a highway by the state of Florida in 1938 (thanks Works Progress Administration!) the state laid metal sheets across the rail bed, asphalted it and welded the rails as barriers, which are still there. Pigeon Key was a half way spot where rail workers were originally housed and is now a private park open to the public:
The new bridge has a 70-foot hump three miles out from Marathon, which allows tall boats to go from the Gulf of Mexico to the Straits of Florida through Moser Channel.
And the hump gives a nice view towards Marathon to the east/north (the road actually goes east but its labelled as "northbound"):
Or west and south towards Big Pine Key, more or less:
The top of the bridge is marked on the south side by the blue apparatus of the Florida Keys Acqueduct Authority ( the main water pipe to Key West runs alongside Highway One):
In the distance you can see the incredible shades of colors created by the shallows surrounding Moser Channel as it spills out into the Straits of Florida.
On March 2nd 1981 an aqueduct truck carrying a backhoe accidentally hit and detonated the propane bottle that supplied the bridge tender's quarters on the old lift bridge on the old span:
The 39 year old bridge tender died in the explosion and the Lower keys reverted to their island status for a period of several weeks. An old timer I talked to about the incident said it was a difficult time in Key West when everything had to be emergency airlifted or barged into the city. They fixed the bridge up to take cars once again but the lifting portion never returned, as the new bridge was opened the next year to much fanfare.
The speed limit is clearly marked though many people, visitors obviously, slow down to take in the views. Its perfectly legal to pass as long as you don't pass where the double yellow lines are solid. I have seen Highway Patrol cars pull a U-turn on the bridge to chase down and stop particularly egregious speeders. And speaking of views, they are quite spectacular, and I try not to get jaded or judgemental when out of state tags are crawling along at 40 miles per hour (The legal minimum for the bridge):
That last picture shows two small islands off the southern end of the bridge, lying on the south side. They are called spoil islands because they were created by Flagler's engineers who heaped up the "spoil" as the dredgings were called. In fact all along the highway you will find deep water up close to the roadway where channels were cut so the dirt could be used to buttress the causeway. 
Perhaps it was a lack of mosquito repellent, or the hazy nature of the day, but I found the island to be rather gloomy and unappealing. Though the view of the bridges was rather nice:
It's actually much easier and faster to get to the Seven Mile Bridge from my house by Triumph Bonneville than by bouncing 14-foot center console.
In fact I had been considering an essay on the bridge for some time, but to do it the way I wanted to wasn't possible during the winter (I tried a couple of times), but traffic was always just too heavy. This time of year there are fewer cars on the Highway so what I did was I waited at the southern end of the bridge for cars to go by and when I saw no vehicles approaching I chased the back of the line onto the bridge (the black SUV in the pictures above), so that by the time I got to the hump I could stop and take the pictures while stationary. I don't recommend stopping as vehicles barrel down on you surprisingly fast and you have NOWHERE to go. Caveat photographer. 
Our instructor at the dispatcher training seminar was excellent, a great facilitator, the first time I have ever seen someone truly facilitating rather than simply teaching and she did it beautifully. The down side was that we never got out before the appointed time... This was not a junket I was on, which is good news for future dispatchers I may be training as they will ultimately get the benefit of the mass of techniques that I learned. All of which is not to say I didn't take the time to enjoy myself on a little after-school solo field trip, which required me to get on the horrid Highway 19 and bug out south:
It rather amazes me to realise that I lived in St Petersburg fully 19 years ago. I left California with my 20 foot sailboat on a friend's trailer and he launched me in the Gulf of Mexico at Port Aransas and from there I made my solo way around to Florida, along the intracoastal waterway, finally sailing into St Petersburg's Vinoy basin where I anchored and got a job at WMNF Radio in Tampa. In those days there were no docks at the Vinoy and one could anchor for as long as one wanted without interference, and on this trip I discovered sailboats are back at the Vinoy:
And according to a couple of photo-shy dudes spiffing up their dinghy (right where I used to land my dinghy!) people hang at anchor for as long as they want.
The approaches to downtown are the usual wide open streets, and a mishmash of local businesses, chain stores and unoccupied buildings. This is Central Avenue heading east:
From a long way away one can see the tall bank building rising up over downtown with it's unmistakable brown roof:
And from the water I remember the big white hockey puck of a stadium roof. These days its paid for by a juice company in the manner of modern stadiums bought and sold to sponsors, but in the bad old days it was a white elephant that leaked, cost the city money and couldn't attract a team to save its life. It doesn't look to me like it improved its neighborhood:
St Pete took advantage of the boom of the 1990's to build attractive downtown lofts and condos and develop a core that tried to attract life to downtown. I visited in around 2000 and it was a much more lively town than when I had lived here on my sailboat. Downtown on this past sunny Sunday evening was still pretty in its own way:
They even masked the municipal parking garage with murals and stuccoed walls to make it look like just another office building. I may have been alone in my admiration for a boring city parking lot, but not for my admiration of the Bonneville in the midst of this urban planning:
Which was the moment when I heard a loud popping noise, that sound only made possible by a two stroke Vespa using a muffler with attitude, and this young tattooed dude showed up to go hang with his buds- in downtown St Petersburg! Definitely not the largest above ground cemetery in the world, as they used to call this city of old aged pensioners.
We talked Vespas for a bit and he confessed he had been thinking of riding to Orlando on his tricked out PX150. Naturally I egged him on, never one to quash someone else's dream. I hope he has the nuts to follow through and take the ride. 
It's one of those architectural abominations that grow on you the more you live around them, and I was glad to see tons of people out enjoying the unusually mild spring afternoon. The Gulf of Mexico is the place where humidity reaches Amazonian proportions in the summer. There is not a drop of wind, combined with humongous downpours and lightning storms that would scare most people into religious fervor, especially if they live on boats ( lightning and sailboats are a gruesome combination- worse for sailors than pirates wind storms and foreigners combined). I moved my boat into the marina at Demen's Landing when I met a woman:
Peter Demens was one of two men who founded St Petersburg. He and John Williams flipped a coin and the winner got to name the city- the winner was Demens who hailed from Russia. So the other dude, Williams, got to name his other dream, a luxury hotel for the railway terminus after his home town. Which was how the somewhat dilapidated Hotel Detroit came to be in downtown St Pete. And it's Demens Landing, not Demon's Landing, thank you.
To my eternal shame this is where I confess I have never gone to the Dali Museum, though my wife who, paradoxically has, says its fabulous. I am a cretin even on my good days.
In the unpretentious neighborhoods of south St Pete:
I don't ever wish to go back to those days, as i wasn't particularly happy and fled back to California as fast as I could, but there is a nostalgia in realising how much time has passed and how unlikely it was that I would ever find myself prowling these old dilapidated neighborhoods wondering where the years have gone. Because they have gone and won't come back and all I can think to do is to keep on keeping on making every day count.
Nostalgia for this place? I guess I'll have to bear myself in patience and wait another twenty years. 
I cannot help but notice that people Up North are starting to see flowers in bloom and green grass and the moaning about winter appears to have dried up with the snowdrifts. I on the other hand ventured up the Myakka Valley on my way home to Key West and found myself in a life or death struggle with the thermometer.
I think Key West hit a temperature somewhere below 60 degrees (15 Celsius) just one time this past winter, reason enough to commute by car. The low lying Myakka mist produced bone numbing cold, especially considering the wind chill factor as I tried to ride east from Sarasota on Highway 72 just before dawn. I had to stop and warm up alongside the road in the dark, my teeth were chattering so much. I am the poster boy for thin blood.
In my continuing effort to avoid interstates I wound my way along Highway 41 to Sarasota, a continuing moon scape of chain stores with not enough personality to differentiate Bradenton from Lake Tarpon, may blessings heap up on these urban planners, until finally the sun started to come up and illuminate my predicament. Myakka Valley isn't a valley in the conventional sense, as there are no hills, but it is simply a place where water runs through the fields and attracts damp and moisture and COLD air.
I put on my waterproof liner and seriously thought about wearing my waterproof over mitts but the rising sun fooled me on that long straight road through Florida's cowboy country. So I rode with cold hands for far too long:
I couldn't keep up with this dude in his truck towing a box at 75+ miles per hour, with a fully saddled horse and two dogs who showed their appreciation for the Bonneville by yipping wildly every time we were stopped by construction traffic lights:
But its a cow town that processes citrus as well, and neither crops has done too well for the city. Brief prosperity that came with the housing bubble has evaporated and many of the old main street store fronts are up for lease. I find it utterly frustrating that people prefer to flock to the numbing monotony of mauls and highways like 19 North, and abandon these intrinsically human and richly styled streets:
For a while in the late 1980s Arcadia got into the headlines as the city that denied a haemophiliac child with AIDS the ability to go to school and burned his family out of its home. I had breakfast in the Wheeler's Cafe (sausage and biscuits; what else fits the image of a cowboy town?) and I felt like a martian, surrounded by crabby old men with fingers and backs gnarled by years of field work, ten gallon hats, plaid shirts and jeans. And then they held hands to say grace... it's all in the context I suppose. 
...and more ranches. People don't tend to believe me when I point out that Florida has a long tradition of cowboys in the best Wild West style, as though mountains and deserts are a prerequisite.
There are plains here in the middle of the state. And mixed in with the cows you'll see horses too looking very picturesque.
The orange groves stretch for miles too, alongside the open fields and pine woods, and the trees themselves reflect the sunlight off the waxy dark green leaves. They look like squat bushy Christmas trees lined up along the road, when they are well tended. When not tended they look scruffy and spiky:
This orange grove was almost on the Caloosahatchee River which is a main cross state waterway connecting Fort Myers with Stuart, and the river drains Lake Okeechobee into the Gulf of Mexico. In fact don't be surprised to see ocean going boats parked in the orange groves around here, in the middle of Florida, far from hurricane surge (if not hurricane winds):
For ocean sailors its a treat to travel slowly between the green banks of a gently flowing river, watching cows graze and small towns float slowly by. For the average motorcyclist there are the pastoral moments and places too. Small creeks
Ideal for a picnic if one were so equipped, I wasn't though I did have my repellent on as it was over 80 degrees by now and the recent cooling breezes had dried up around here. The road alongside the river wound its way most enticingly:
And I enjoyed every winding mile. South of these temperate woods lie the Everglades and those fascinating alligators and more straight roads all the way home to Key West.
As an interim while I unpack and reorganize my life at home, I thought I might throw out pictures of a few alligators I encountered on my trip home. All but the last, which I warn in advance is dead and a bit battered, I found sunning themselves along the Loop Road off Tamiami Trail. Its a dirt road that I shall explore more thoroughly in an essay later, and it winds through some cypress swamps for 26 miles. I love it.
I didn't check the mileage but I'm guessing Sweetwater Strand is about 3 miles in from Monroe Station on Highway One. I rode the dirt at about 40 miles per hour, to keep the ride smooth over the washboard and I was pleased to see the Bonneville, loaded, was perfectly smooth and manageable. I passed a gap in the trees, a couple of miles in:
And I thought I saw a gray lump in the grass. Indeed I did, and this was it closer up (using the telephoto feature, not my feet):
Which was indeed an alligator, though not a very cooperative one. It reminded me of my dog when she was mad at me and plunked herself down with her back to me. I rode on down that white dry road. It's the end of rainy season in Florida the road was dry and in many spots the gravel was scraped clean off the roadway. There were quite a few cars too riding up and down throwing up huge plumes of white dust with no slowing down, no mercy for the geek on the motorbike. 
They are amazing creatures these dinosaurs, lying placidly in the water, grinning, and doing almost nothing. The weird part is when you turn around to take another picture, the alligator has slithered away so gracefully and silently you never even noticed. I was glad i was on the road and they weren't. I stopped to tank up on water well away from the gators:
But when one returns to the noise and bustle of civilization there is always the reminder, somewhere, that they have a lot more to fear from us, than we from them. Years ago I got a ticket for speeding on Tamiami Trail. I was driving from Fort Myers to Key West to visit a friend and at four in the morning I figured it was safe to cut through the Seminole Village areas at a steady 60 instead of slowing to the mandated 45 mph. The trooper told me that I needed to slow down in "that little car" (I was driving a Mazda MX6 which I didn't think of as little) because the gators were in mating season and all over the road. Evidence of what a car can do was on the side of the road this afternoon and very gory it was too:
Not nearly so scary after an encounter with a car. However there were bits of automobile grille scattered all down the roadway near by. An excessively close encounter and chalk one up to the humans, who, once again, didn't even stop to eat their prey, in the words of a very funny Far Side comic strip. 
They belch smoke when they are processing and provide big black smudges of sky to alleviate the open beauty of the fields. Sugar cane is an appalling crop, it sucks the nutrients out of the soil requiring huge amounts of fertilizer to be poured into the soil annually. The harvesting of the cane is such hazardous and horrendous work the companies import labor from the Caribbean (Jamaica principally) to wear armor in the hundred degree heat and slash at the cane with machetes. All this and the industry gets huge subsidises to make it viable. And the fertilizer runs off into Florida Bay and the coral reefs of the Keys. The fields are picturesque though...
Moore Haven, county seat of Glades County was ravaged by the great hurricane of 1935, the one that trashed the railroad in Matecumbe Key, and the town itself appears never to have recovered completely. They have built a rather attractive waterfront walkway with trees and benches in a park like atmosphere: 
And the waterway itself is a cross-Florida stopping place much favored by traveling boaters. Though most land oriented tourists rarely bother to come inland to see these places...
And when they crush the fruit as they load it into trucks, fruit laboriously handpicked by emigrant pickers, the air is redolent with the smell of fresh squeezed orange:
But the theory was that if the state made it two lanes in each direction it would aid and abet development as it would allow more people to evacuate within state guidelines. One way of putting a brake on development in the Keys is by calculating how many people can get to "safety" off the islands within 24 hours. Local officials work the numbers to accommodate developers anyway but the Stretch will remain two lanes wide when all is said and done, creating ample opportunity for road rage and tailgating:
I will continue to favor the Card Sound alternative and its one dollar toll.
Homestead saw a fair bit of prosperity in the 1990's on the coat tails of the wild land speculation of the housing bubble and lots of farmland was gobbled up by little box houses at inflated prices. Nowadays enterprising developers are staving off bankruptcy by turning the tracts into Section 8, federally subsidized rental housing, rendering those formerly $400,000 mansionettes almost worthless, the ones that did sell. Downtown Homestead continues along unperturbed slumbering gently in the 1950s:
Unlike Florida City Homestead has retained a proper downtown, populated by mom and pop (mama y papi) stores and local restaurants.
One of the better known Mexican restaurants is El Toro Taco which despite the odd name serves up pretty decent Mexican grub. Its right on Krome Avenue at Second Street:
I usually head a little further down the street and chow at an unnamed hole in the wall which has a banda jukebox 
and six dollar dishes, which with a Styrofoam cup of rice milk called horchata, keeps the hungry motorcyclist nourished:
Homestead used to have a big air force base here but that got blown away, literally, by Hurricane Andrew and the minuscule reserve base doesn't do much for the local economy. I predict a future of somnolence for Homestead as the economy totters on for a while. Perhaps its charming period flavor has been saved from the wrecking ball:
Nice to visit and pause in if you are on your way home to the Keys, not perhaps as much fun if you are wondering where your next decent paying job is coming from.
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