"You can't leave out a word!" Dale muttered to me as we prepared to visit Marc's much hyped temple in Key West. I was craving
cafe con leche, for I had packed a month's worth of socializing into an afternoon, and I had a night of work ahead of me. And Saturday night was a brutal one for police and victims as it turned out. Dale was ready to suck down something cold at the Green Parrot but Marc was like a lion hunting on the veldt- except what Dale and I actually had to contend with was a macrobiotic vegan looking for live vegetables. This lion's prey was definitely not our poison.
"Ah" he sighed contentedly, "The Sugar Apple!" I rather expected him to fall on his knees on the sidewalk right there on Simonton Street, in the manner adopted by the late pope every time he landed a new country. Marc contained himself long enough to scuttle directly into the temple, an unlikely figure his movements hampered by Kevlar encrusted High Viz BMW fashion ware in a place that caters happily to the bra-less and tie died.
"That was not at all what I expected," Marc looked downcast as we left the store, a short line of mismatched characters in search of refreshment. Key West, as i often point out, has the capacity to disappoint.
.
I had faced my worst fear when I received one of those "...want to meet you," e-mails I so dread (
conchscooter@hotmail,com for your chance to be embarrassed on this page and that's the first and I hope last link you'll ever see disfiguring these essays). Years ago I used to read the news on public radio in the Granola capital of California's Central Coast and when I met strangers who said they had heard my voice my first thought was; what did I do to embarrass myself? I just had a bad upbringing I guess. My wife who grew up in a happy family thinks I'm daft.
My first clue that this was to be an unusual encounter was when Marc wanted to meet at the Good Food Conspiracy which is the proper name of the health food place on Big Pine. I had been hoping for an excuse to abandon the proper eating guide and head to No Name Pub for delicious fried fish and silver dollar fries; I got a pesto wrap instead (with rennetless cheese) which is excellent in and of itself but not properly greasy. Well, I thought, at least I'm not going to be sitting by watching total strangers get sloshed out of their minds and fall flat on their faces in front of me, which is the protocol for people let off the leash in Key West. We led them home and we all ate our sprout encrusted stuff and drank our fizzy water and Dale started fidgeting ( I got used to that as the day progressed). We all dressed up properly like high school dorks on a first date and took off under most unpromising skies.
It was a bit of a conundrum for me, riding with two strangers with about four hours to burn on 27 miles of highway- an average of six miles per hour? First stop was blimp road, a long straight stretch where Dale on his 1100RT boxer pulled away and took advantage of the straight stretch ( illustrated above) to taste a little speed. Marc was rather more cautious. Aha! said I to myself. We stopped at the boat ramp at the end of the road where we managed to scare off a middle aged woman and her van. People aren't usually intimidated by me and the Bonneville so it was a rather novel experience to be playing Marlon Brando in The Wild One. I still don't think we looked like desperadoes; you be the judge:
Even the chickens were completely unintimidated by Marc the desperate hunter-gatherer and his camera. 
Marc was making noises about the bat tower so we took off, still dressed to the nines and expecting a downpour at any moment, and we turned south for a quick jaunt down Highway One to Sugarloaf Key at Mile Marker 17, more or less. Marc was back out with his camera:
It was built as a way to house mosquito-eating bats by a man who wanted to develop Sugarloaf Key. The bats fled never to return and the tower is all that is left of the project. It sits there unloved and largely unnoticed with no signage or descriptions of it;s history.
This was where I had my own little epiphany. As we pulled in Dale took his fully faired road touring behemoth and plunged into the dirt alongside the road, breasting a puddle and then standing back and admiring the mess on his motorcycle like a small boy in a sand pit. I broached the idea of backtracking a couple of miles and visiting a dirt track I wrote about last winter, reported on November the 9th 2007 in an essay titled " Paved Road Ends" (which the search function at the top of this page will reveal as long as you patiently scroll through all the results.).... 
It was grotesquely hot and muggy at this point but Dale took off touring bike through the brush and puddles. Marc and I followed on foot like the stragglers of a disintegrating expedition.
Dale left us marks in the wet slippery marl to follow:
By the time we had worked up a nice sweat the intrepid rider burst around a corner on the track of the road:
Dale was hopping up an down like a boy on Christmas morning as he burbled on happily about the technical challenges of the old state road. "Yeah ," he said,"I like to ride off road. I guess this isn't exactly ideal for me," he added looking at his 640 pound BMW. We contemplated the motorcycle and agreed, as a light drizzle descended on us, that a GS should be in Dale's future. He rumbled alongside us as we strode back to our bikes, Marc and I, he to his Custom 1200 BMW, I to my Triumph.
We took another couple of detours, mostly unmemorable to the out-of-towners, paved roads that dead ended as they tend to in the Keys. The submarine pens at Mile Marker 8 were more of a success, as Marc and i stood around waiting for the schoolboy off his leash to finish trundling through the woods on his unsuitable motorcycle:
When he got back Dale gave the pens a cautious thumbs up, but he ruled them slippery when wet. By this time it was hotter than blazes and our jackets ended up on the motorcycles, not us, as we got back on Highway One closing in on the big city, at the end of the rainbow. Dale led the way, irrepressible, Marc following with caution writ large and me somewhere in the middle trying to keep an eye out for cars with light bars.
Cruising South Roosevelt along the water is always rewarding and the views were starting to look good with some sunshine sparkling on the water. Then began the hunt for macrobiotic Key West. "Waterfront market!" Marc chanted, "Cafe con leche!" I replied, "I want something cold," was the chorus from Dale, who had whispered to me that he grills a mean barbecue given half a chance. "Mm," I replied while I handled a bag of delicious looking ground kelp in the Sugar Apple's aisles. We ended up at Waterfront market, a pale shadow of its former self where the juice bar was closed and Marc couldn't find organic spinach. "Take the commercial stuff," Dale and I implored the suddenly hard-of-hearing vegan:
Yeah, Dale was ready for refreshment by this point. Marc clutched his commercially grown spinach until a manager appeared with the organics for their dinner that night. Nori (toasted seaweed lined with spinach and a paste of other macro delights) was on the menu and Dale actually smacked his lips at the prospect. Talk of barbecue was just to poke fun at the unflappable Marc. 
I watched the two of them fussing over their luggage as dinner went into the ice chest in Dale's top case. Dale manages a business, Marc retired from a lifetime in the family dive shop where the two buddies met. Apparently they shared passions relating to the sea and motorcycling and they hang out together the ex-military man and the vegan. It was a sight to see like a cat and a dog hanging out and running together. Marc made gentle fun of Dale's conquest of a vegan woman in Big Pine ("We just had dinner!" Dale said indignantly) and Dale made fun of Marc's grub ("I'll eat tofu if I have to!" said the anxious macrobiotic vegan) and I stood there and wondered about what it is that glues disparate people together. It seems a lot to ask of a motorcycle but it sometimes does the trick.
My next-to-last trick was some tourism, admiring the square riggers at the waterfront bight:
And then we cruised the point, but Dale, who used to visit the Keys all the time in the "good old days" to fish (he's a Florida native) took a seat to discuss his hometown of Naples with a new friend:
While Marc did the right thing and i took a picture of him with his camera. Not before one of our delightful local subjects tried to butt in on his action:
We were exhausted by that time and helmetless (yes, even Marc after considerable nagging from Dale) we repaired to my choice of eatery and put our knees under a table at The Cafe on Southard. I was all talked out and not even a veggieburger could bring me all the way back to remember to commemorate the occasion with a picture. We were tired, we were hot and we had ridden as much as one reasonably could on a peninsula with but one road and three scary motorcyclists on it. However this town isn't big enough for the three of us so they fled with their tails between their legs and I tried to stay awake all night at the police station on a night with more activity than we have had for a long time.
I can only assume those two desperadoes didn't actually leave town when they said they would. I hope they come back one day.
I spent a couple of decades living in Northern California and the words South Beach conjured up a mental picture of the Italian quarter of San Francisco, hills, Italian stores Caffe Trieste and all the rest. I liked it too, but that doesn't mean I dislike the rather more modest South Beach in Key West. Unlike the San Francisco version South Beach in the Southernmost City is actually a beach, with a restaurant and everything:
South Beach is actually the southern end of Duval Street, more or less the last block intersected by, not unnaturally, South Street:
This is one of the spots in the city where southernmost everything is located, house, guest house, hotel, etc... etc...because this is after all pretty close to the southernmost tip of the continental United States. The Southernmost House has been owned since 1939 by a prominent family of Conchs and they are currently having a tiff with the city over the status of their building. They want more commerce, their neighbors want less and where previously locals were welcome on the premises now they (we) aren't for casual poolside drinks. Bummer because it is quite the structure:
It's quite the pile and people do like their picture taken here:
Though I quite like the details, like their brick driveway:
Across the street is the more modestly proportioned southernmost hotel, one of the southernmost's anyway:
The thing about this location though isn't the architecture though there's lots of it. It's the ocean, more precisely Hawk Channel which sets visitors to thinking. They look out from their perch on the South Beach pier and think about the clarity of the water:
And the fact the Forbidden Island lies just over the horizon, 90 miles away, making Havana closer to Key West than Miami, were there a road over there:
South Beach is one those pocket parks that a little town like Key West does so well, using and taking advantage of every speck of recreational space:
You come, you see, you contemplate a moment, then you leave headed back to the fleshpots of Duval Street:
It didn't strike me as much a dog park but a dog might well appreciate the modest pleasures of the little pier at the southernmost end of the island:
I find the southernmost thing gets a bit tedious, it's as though one has to make a virtue of an accident of geography that of itself imparts no virtue. I guess Duval Street had to end somewhere and it might as well be here. 
Upper Duval is the bastard stepchild of Key West's most famous street, it's the part of the main drag that gets least exposure and sees less tourist traffic and is, at the same time the most attractive part of Duval. It is eminently walkable and even though it is less treed than the middle portion it has it's own attractions.
Art galleries by the dozen, 
and they tend to come and go in these difficult times. They were offering all sorts of sales as I walked by at closing time:
Call it a sign of the times but this realty office was closed and a hand written sign in the door offered body painting services instead. For Fantasy fest only, I assume, though probably body painting pays better than real estate these days:
Some shops seem recession-proof, including my favorite ice cream store, Flamingo Crossing:
Personally I prefer ice cream to publicly traded sex acts but of you feel the need, the Scrub Club, renamed with the more delicate title of Adult Entertainment, seems recession proof:
I think it costs a hundred and fifty dollars to get in the door, and another six hundred to hang out with a naked Eastern European woman. The terms are a little vague, owing to the illegality of blatant prostitution, thus from time to time people call up to complain about getting shorted by the club, and other times frustrated gentlemen callers get angry and police are needed at the club to keep everyone calm. I can think of better ways to spend six hundred bucks, incinerating them on the stock market comes to mind, but some people really do think paid sex is glamorous and not sordid. Weird. Even weirder are the laws that make it illegal to pay for sex. I don't know why anyone cares. Fortunately it's not up to me to make sense of all this convoluted nonsense, and ice cream is still legal though always sinful. And if you don't have naked ladies to peddle, or excellent ice cream, you could very well go out of business like this storefront:
And all that's left of the venerable Valladares is the sign:
And businesses that are continuing to operate can find their buildings sold out from under them:
That last one, the Coffee and Tea House used to be across the street here:
And this move was all part of an elaborate game of musical chairs because the building currently occupied by the coffee and tea place used to be where the Banana Cafe used to be. The Banana Cafe moved to the building where Camile's Italian restaurant used to be, until they got turfed out abruptly by a rent hike. The building languished empty for a while and now has a new paint job and the French restaurant has established itself there:
For some reason I can't fathom that end of Duval that is furthest south is known as Upper Duval, perhaps because the street numbers are highest here, culminating in 1499 at the beach. In any event Upper Duval tenants have complained in the past that their end of the street got less attention and less tourist traffic, especially from cruise ships which dock closer to Lower Duval. It seems lively enough to me but I just tend to pass through this area. There are tourists enraptured by chickens, of course...
or each other...
or the need to rest their aching feet...
...from walking so far down Key West's main drag:
Businesses come and go like I say, but bits of Upper Duval have been around for a while:
And of course there are new entertainments to check out, this one in place of the old Alice's Restaurant:
Alice herself I'm told, may be going to cook at La Te Da:
Which I doubt will be inducement enough for me. I am not really flamboyant enough for La Terraza de Marti, and there's another art form I've never figured out, that of cross dressing. Plus I've never really understood why people throw beads at Carnival or Fantasy Fest, beads which end up everywhere, even on the "ignored" end of Duval:
Oh and while we're at it, lets not forget that other feeble excuse for a holiday extravaganza, All Hallows Eve.
Did I ever mention how annoying it is to have been born on the one day in the year when everyone feels it incumbent upon themselves to dress up in a stupid costume? The older I get the more crotchety I become.
Currently we are in the throes of a cold front that has dropped temperatures to below 70 degrees (24C) with north winds freezing our socks off. But before the front it was quite reasonably warm and not too humid at all. Many of the tourists this time of year are Europeans, taking a trip to warmer climes after the grand kids are back in school, but this year with the early arrival of cold weather there seem to be lots of early snowbirds in town. And they are joined in riding around, on mopeds, bicycles and electric cars by locals who take pleasure in not having to use a car. 
Reading the Citizen of the Day entries on page three of the newspaper one sees repeated, time after time, the notion that the weather is a big draw for people who move to Key West. Which comes as no surprise though you'd think people interviewed by the paper could come up with something more...imaginative? Laid back lifestyle, the weather, the water... Being able to do without a car is also an attraction for residents of Old Town in particular though even if you live slightly further afield a bicycle or moped is entirely adequate. I enjoy seeing people who in most places in America wouldn't be seen dead riding a "moped" out on the streets, getting on with their daily lives:
Visitors like to enjoy Key West sometimes as an extension of the theme parks they know and love Up North, so cycling is less transportation and more a diversion:
Though pedaling is optional on Duval:
The pedi-cab drivers tend to be, for whatever reason, Eastern Europeans and they pedal up and down Duval holding hands-free, glottal phone conversations apparently with thin air.
I can't imagine its much fun as a way to earn a living but I guess they keep fit. And they aren't snowed in. There are other ways to get around including hybrid cabs, which get 38 miles per gallon, though with gas prices around $2:50 a gallon...at least for now:
There's also a relatively new car dealer in town selling Canadian electric cars called Zenn (zero emission no noise, out of Toronto). They are limited currently to 25 miles per hour but the dealer told the Citizen they were selling like hotcakes when they started up:
Some people buy the rental type electric vehicles and when they are sold for private use they can come with proper doors and flat beds and accessories to make them more useful. The rentals are everywhere, for those that don't want a scooter:
Some people like to drive regular cars and they are available too, convertibles preferred by many even if they don't always convert them:
Chrysler Sebrings are handy cars in the Keys, where exotics are harder to service and get parts for. My wife really had a hankering for a Saab convertible but the Sebring has worked out well for her. She always converts hers. Just around the corner from Tropical Motors I saw...a visiting Sebring!
There is a certain amount of distancing from rentals that goes on in the Keys. My wife has a personalised licence plate holder on her Sebring; scooter riders adorn their vehicles sometimes:
Though the decorations aren't always Fantasy Fest beads. Rentals generally have plaques on the baskets identifying the rental company. Some scooters are not of the type that are available for rental, an Aprilia 500 would be one of those, tucked away at a private parking parking lot:
In the end though the absence of internal combustion is what makes living in Old Town so... livable.
A nice round town station wagon, several gears, mudguards, and a basket to haul the groceries home from Fausto's. Some slightly less new bicycles are carefully locked up, as all bikes are at risk for theft. 
Stolen bikes are worth reporting as they do turn up again in the city from time to time, and a police report identifies the original owner. Some though, appear to be beyond help:
Bicycles are always a symbol of youth and childhood even in cities where they aren't used as daily transportation. Part of me envies the youngsters I see riding around treating Key West as their playground:
Of course as we grow older and wearier we may find a tricycle more to our taste. Or perhaps it's just a better way to haul stuff around town, because I see lots of them:
I guess I must look odd when I roll up wearing my helmet and jacket and gloves, fresh in town from my 25 mile commute, but the Bonneville does a dandy job of getting me around town as well as getting me into town. My wife on the other hand keeps her Vespa 150 at work and rides it around town almost exclusively. It's rare she'll take it home. When the Bonneville and the ET4 are parked together it means the Conchscooters are probably doing something nearby:
In this case fillet of tuna on a salad for her, and a burger poivree in a crepe for him, at Duval's nicest French restaurant Banana Cafe, now in new and more spacious digs a block away from it's old home:
At last she showed up, and even let me taste some of her roast potatoes. Well worth waiting for.
The International Tourist Agency, Intourist, which supervised my journey (I was not a member of any group tour) set me up in designated tourist class hotels that cost the Earth, one hundred dollars a night was a lot in 1981, and I found myself sleeping in third rate accommodations, leaky double glazed windows, cold running water only in Siberia (!) in October(!!). It was the equivalent of an eight dollar a night fleapit on my trip across the US earlier that year. So I came away from the eight day train journey wondering what all the fuss was about. In California there were endless protests over nuclear weapons, and fear that we would be overrun by the godless communists was second only to fear that Ronald Reagan might unleash the bomb first. I stood on the sidelines and wondered what all the fuss was about. I figured anyone who couldn't build a decent hotel stood a very good chance of blowing themselves up first, before nuking their neighbors. Chernobyl proved me right. 
Since those heady post-Iron Curtain days Eastern Europe has boomed. And now it's going bust. Ukraine and Hungary are the first to fall, the Russian Stock Exchange has had to shut down trading repeatedly and the International Monetary Fund is asking for opinions on what if it decides to essentially print money to save Eastern Europe and who knows who else. This rumor has made news because the IMF has only ever previously issued Special Drawing Rights once before when the Soviet Union vaporized. Then things went back to normal and the IMF begged money from member states and distributed it as loans helping to keep Third World countries poor and indebted. 
It was a warm windy night after Fantasy Fest wound down and I went to take a quick tour of the city before I went home. Lower Duval was closed thanks to an ocean of broken bottles in the street so I wandered a little further afield to get some fresh air and take a stroll. I started out at Simonton Beach home to a bunch of bicycles illuminated in the headlights of my car:
It rained pretty hard in the days leading up to and following Fantasy Fest and city drains seem to manage to cope better than in the past. There was certainly some flooding but new drainage systems seem to have helped.
Key West has different sensory cues compared to most cities in temperate climates. I look out at gray clouds and shiny streets and I see winter because I grew up in a world where cold weather followed on directly from autumnal storms. In Key West, puddles and shiny streets indicate the heat and humidity of summer:
After I parked the car on Simonton I took a walk down Front Street towards the Galleon Resort. I found a few people walking, or better yet staggering along the street but it was pretty quiet which surprised me. I guess alcohol had taken it's toll.
I find Key West to be an evocative place at night, there are parts of the city that look positively 18th century like the wood structure above, while in the next picture below all I could see was Casablanca in 1941:
I am fond of saying that Key West drives me to temperance. Alcohol is abused so much and by so many people and I hear about it so much at work that I find myself getting booze shy. The thing is alcohol knows how to sell itself:
Even at three in the morning sitting out in front of Damn Good Food looks tempting...a glass of wine a slice of bread and...my camera:
The boardwalk around Key West Bight is a good spot to pause and contemplate the meaning of life, especially in the middle of the night when no-one else is around:
And the effects of the rain create their own ambiance as well:
I was hurrying back to the car to get out of there and I saw what can only be described as the proper vacation rental:
Before you decide to over indulge on your vacation and lose what's left of your dignity throwing up in public places, you should probably be seen riding around in this converted golf cart. It is so absurd it is quite cute. But of course for hard core me a scooter is always the better rental option:
Wet it may be, cold it isn't, so its always the right time of year to cruise the city on a scooter. Especially in the middle of the night.
There are many of these signs strung out around the Keys. It could be no other way considering the geography of the island chain, with one long highway down the middle and lots of little streets branching off and ending up in the water. These days, when I see those yellow diamond shaped signs I see a different message. Especially as I contemplate the signs put out by realtors:
A brand new house across the canal from my place had a "sale pending" sign on it for so long we cracked jokes about it as we went by in our boat. The "pending" sign has gone and just last weekend we saw what might have been people interested in buying wandering the property. I hope they can raise a loan because we saw another hopeful looking at the house yesterday as we came in from a swim. Elsewhere this magnificent waterfront property was originally for sale if I remember correctly for more than 1.5 million dollars. It's now down to 1.3 million:
Its a nice suburban home on Ramrod-Torch Channel with all the Florida Keys appurtenances:
It is a concrete block house which is a distinct disadvantage especially as home insurance rates tend to be twice as high as those for homes on stilts. Still there are quite a few concrete block structures in the Keys and people do live in them, happily apparently. This is another one that seems a bit unoccupied and unloved:
The islands have been littered with realtor's signs for a decade it seems like ever since interest rates plummeted and money from the dot.com boom was redirected into housing. It used to be that these homes revolved from owner to owner with prices spiralling up between closings. Nowadays properties languish:
You'd have some trouble locating the owner of this corner lot. But even those offered for sale by realtors get forgotten:
And they have permits and apparently had plans to do something with the land in question:
Further up the street an SUV was sitting at the side of the road and a man with a cell phone was walking in small circles eyeing a piece of land that you knew was just perfect for whatever scheme he was hatching:
Who knows, perhaps something will appear in lieu of the bushes that currently cover the lot. You figure someones got to be buying something somewhere, so why not here? Homeowners everywhere are trying to get out of their homes and I thought the deflated Halloween decorations looked symbolic on this one:
I've passed this house pictured below with the For Sale sign for what seems forever. It looks a nice enough home, spacious by Keys standards on a lot that is large by anyone's standards. It's a dry lot (no boating access) but three years ago you could ask half a million for this and not get laughed at. Now? Who knows.
Sometimes I wonder out loud to my wife if we should have waited because we are now "under water' as the economists put it. We owe more than the house is worth, but that is irrelevant to me. I like where I'm living and as long as we have our jobs we can afford the mortgage. I doubt we could have got a loan to buy a house these days anyway, even with our excellent credit... We never looked at the house as a source of money, we were just glad to get into a home that was attractive to us in a nice quiet neighborhood not too far from Key West. I had calculated that if gasoline got to $5 a gallon it might be worth my while to get a monthly bus pass to make my 25 mile commute. At $2:56 a gallon the Bonneville is not only a joy to commute on, it's cheap! Please God let us keep our jobs...and if the economy is going to tank completely could you ask Wells Fargo to cut us some slack on what we owe for our little house on the canal? Heaven knows we can't sell it now even if we wanted to.
The question from a reader was: How is the palm weaver doing? I noted a couple of weeks ago that Michael Beaudet had had a little adventure floating off to sea in his disabled sailboat. The latest is that he is doing okay. 
Winter is coming and I can feel it, even though temperatures are still in the eighties and there is plenty of underlying humidity. The winds have been honking out of the east to fill a void created by a low over Texas and the winds have been cool and dry creating the illusion of a winter cold front. Winter is the time to go walking so that was what I did. All good walks start with a ride on a Triumph:
The old highway on the south side of Sugarloaf is now a wildlife area and they don't want Bonnevilles rumbling around there. Imagine that.
However this being the Keys it would be entirely possible to roll a motorized bicycle onto these miles of deserted roadway. There is a by pass to make it easy to get a bicycle onto the trail but motorbikes are out. 
It turns out you need wheels to explore this area as it is enormous. The road itself may have been abandoned but it's in excellent condition, even the gravel bit:
The first half mile or so leads up to a bridge which spans a canal which leads to a group of houses to the north, clustered near Highway One. The bridge itself is a solid structure covered in graffiti of course:
And anywhere there is a body of water in Florida there is someone dangling a hook in the hopes of snagging a fish. And there in the distance are the open waters of Hawk Channel more easily seen from upstairs:
At this early stage of the expedition it was sunny and breezy, with a little humidity in the air and it was a perfect afternoon to be out exploring. Looking north from the bridge the mysterious canal carved out of the living rock stretched away through the wilderness:
I was not alone either as there was a family enjoying a splendid afternoon romp with their dog:
But before I reached them on the horizon I found a wide junction in the road with a paved street leading off to the left, that is to the north. I decided to follow the paved road and see where it lead. The mangroves and scrub palms and buttonwoods were growing tall and wild on either side:
It was really quiet out in the roadway and I got a rather apocalyptic shudder down my back, walking along a perfectly serviceable road with no traffic, no sounds and no other signs of human life. I did find an old speed limit sign which was not applicable to my walking pace:
It didn't seem very fast to me, 35 for such a wide sweeping road but then I remembered the modern new straight-as-an-arrow highway across Sugarloaf Key is as broad and deserted as a runway, with a speed limit of just 30 miles per hour:
I had been trudging for the best part of thirty minutes when I started to wonder if perhaps I should turn around and head back. Clouds were starting to close in a bit overhead and the road kept just winding its way through the scrub, endlessly:
About the time i was ready to start bugging out, as unsatisfactory as that would be I saw a break in the bushes, which was my cue to follow a diversion. Boredom was banished and I started down the rabbit hole.
This VW Microbus was sitting there melting into its component parts, fading into the surroundings, like an icicle. It reminded me of my old '64 Bus that I drove all over California and Mexico when I was taken with the desire to go RV'ing on the cheap. Mine was a six volt model which meant it never wanted to start in anything cooler than perfect summer weather but it never actually stopped running. This one did, and its block and cylinders were scattered all around in the bushes. I wonder what happened? An orgy of frustration perhaps, or exhaustion at having to travel everywhere at an uncertain 54 miles per hour...They tell us metal trash will be around for hundreds of years, but not if that VW's rate of decomposition is anything to go by.
I kept going past the Bus and the skies seemed to grow increasingly wintery and cloudy as I strode on through the shrubbery.
Then I came across the canal as I was pretty sure I would. That meant if I turned left and headed south I would reach the bridge and the road back to the Bonneville. I started walking again. And I walked. And I walked. And I walked. And then I walked some more. It wasn't unpleasant, on the contrary I was enjoying the solitude and the outdoors after a long summer away from the back country.
It was almost like walking down a desert watercourse along side the canal. The ground was dry and dusty crunching underfoot and the going was easy. It was getting cloudier though and gave the impression it was going to rain soon. Had it been 50 degrees cooler it might have looked like an imminent snowstorm out of the low cloud cover. I kept walking. After about a half hour of this I expected at some point to see the bridge but it never appeared. The canal seemed to be in the rising tide stage of it's day as the water boiled along like a fast moving river, and I was walking in the opposite direction. Other than that there was no movement. Then I came to the bit I had been dreading, finding my path blocked. I came across a small lake that stretched from the canal all the way to the impenetrable mangroves to my left. I scouted around and could find no way around it. Well, bugger. Either I turned around to go the long way back, a 45 minute walk at least. Or... nothing else for it but to keep going; so I did: 
Luckily the water was warm, and I suppose I could have removed my shoes and socks but I had no idea where I was walking. The water rose up to cover my knees but I kept going and managed not to fall over. And wouldn't you know it, as soon as I got through the lake I saw this:
I got back to the bridge leaving a trail of muddy wet footprints and the fishermen were still out there killing fish, totally unaware of my perilous lone expedition facing all sorts of dangers:
And after a brief break in the cloud cover the clouds closed in again overhead, but I was off the bridge and heading for the barn like a Clydesdale smelling oats:
And then as I was closing in on the barricade at the entrance I caught another sign of winter lying by the side of the road:
This guy was sunning himself at the side of the road and didn't seem nearly as excited to see me as I was him. He was the second snake I'd seen out catching some rays in two days so I'm thinking it's getting cooler in the bushes for our cold blooded neighbors. For those of us with wet feet and and home to get to the time was good for the getting. So I got.
I wasn't sure if this bearded unreliable man was spaced out or happy, as he leaned against the barricades to be used in Fantasy Fest this weekend:
El Mocho on Stock Islands' main drag, Maloney Avenue, is the magnet for breakfast these days. They open at five in the morning and serve a mixture of American greasy spoon and Cuban delicacies till three in the afternoon.
Lunch at El Mocho is a massive affair, heaping piles of rice and black beans accompany the main course with sweet fried plantains to leave you stuffed and barely able to move... but this is the robust fare workers on Stock island have come to expect, and for well less than ten dollars too from the funky little hut a block away from the Tom Thumb convenience store and across the street from the last remaining independent home supply store on the island. This is a small corner of independent small business on Stock Island amid the mobile homes and dusty light industrial welding shops and carpenters and fishermen who all wait with bated breath hoping massive redevelopment slated for the island is held off by the economic misery generated by the derivatives collapse. We heard recently that the frou-frou Harbor Yacht Club situated in the new marina that replaced Peninsular, has folded, though the developers promise it will reopen in January, so clearly all is not well in the world of gentrification. In El Mocho the Cuban family that has owned it continues to serve up what the people want:
Eggs, bacon, and Cuban toast already buttered, cafe con leche, no soy milk low fat options here, in an atmosphere that would be no atmosphere were Formica and chrome Naugahyde furniture not nostalgic.
The lights are bright and the food is served in a hurry from the kitchen. Each of the half dozen tables wedged into the misshapen room gets a minimum of condiments, the basic oil/vinegar for your salad, ketchup, hot sauce, salt and pepper:
If you are on your way to work and barely awake put in your order and when it arrives piping hot in just a few minutes you put your head down and dig in:
Spanish is the lingua franca here but English is also spoken, perfectly fluently if masked by a smile and thick Cuban accent. El Mocho is a classic old fashioned hub and the espresso machine is the tool that creates coffee but also serves as the spot where information is traded:
My wife and I come here often enough to be greeted warmly and with a hint of recognition, but I am not one of those that is very able at the hail-fellow-well-met routine, in the places I go to eat. If no one knows my name that's fine by me so I cannot give you the family's story that runs this place for our benefit. I'm not alone in my reticence, reading the paper is a favorite way to accompany some breakfasts:
I first used to come to El Mocho years ago when I was hauling out my sailboat for maintenance down at Peninsular. One year we spent almost an entire winter it felt like sitting up on the dusty pea rock of the boatyard with a task list as long as a battleship's and El Mocho was where we came to escape the tedium and filth of the boatyard. It is not atmospheric in the traditional sense, but it isn't fake either:
The walls under the bright fluorescent lights carry a few modest period ads:
And some autographed pictures brought in as a token of appreciation by fliers far from home training at the nearby Boca Chica Naval Air Station. It's not rare to see the military in here looking for a bacon and egg sandwich and a con leche:
With the closure of the Vieques training ground off Puerto Rico, Key West has become one of two major training facilities for fliers in the US (Elgin Air Base in the Florida panhandle is the other) thanks to proximity to open water and mild weather easy to fly in year round. And because the US has its military fingers in pies all round the world our allies come here to get training too from time to time. This picture was signed by fliers from 433 Escadrille of Quebec and there was another similar from 4 Air Wing in Alberta nearby:
But for the most part the dress code at El Mocho is informal, and that's the way I like it too:
El Mocho reminds me of places I've eaten across Latin America, no air conditioning, no glass in the windows as a matter of fact, hot in summer, cool in winter, a cash only economy that keeps prices down and accessible. The porch out front is reserved for the regulars who gather like their counterparts in the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico (or Cuba I'm sure) and talk as they suck down their Latin espressos, known in Cuban as buchi (mouthfuls). Through the grille that serves as a window I could see one patron repeatedly flipping a small paper cup to his lips:
Cubans order coladas, which are half a dozen buchis in a large paper cup, then they distribute the thimble sized cups among friends and pour the coffee out in rounds and throw them down the hatch. It's powerful stuff with lots of sugar (lots!) so they are well wired for the morning... All too soon it's time to go, my wife on her Vespa (sporting her red Turkey sticker she got on her trip) to the college on the north side of the island and me to bed by Triumph:
But before we left the haven I took one last picture of the Cubans arguing about nothing and watching the world go by:
Say what you like but to me this really is a last piece of Old Key West, unselfconsciously real. Vaya con Dios.
I have taken quite a fancy to the wide open spaces of Big Torch Key lately, and I recently had a couple of not too rare encounters with local residents near the long empty road that runs across the mangrove swamps of the island. I was actually riding my bike:
First up I spotted a black lump on the road up ahead. I stopped and picked him/her up and set the tortoise in a sunny patch well off the asphalt. I have no doubt it will be back tomorrow to warm it's entrails in the road whereupon some unfeeling car will squash it.
I did my best for it.
There are indeed a few people living out here, a clump of homes straddles Dorn Road and there are a few more houses strung out along the rest of the island but mostly it's blue skies, white clouds and green mangroves. And the occasional osprey:
I spotted it swooping over the mangroves and snapped a hasty picture, it was then I saw the nest atop a telephone pole. Ospreys are quite remarkable birds, predators of the highest order and yet I learned about these birds in a marine biology class.
At first I thought the raptor had a fish in it's talons as it landed back at home base, instead after watching a few minutes it became apparent it was still working on rebuilding the nest. Ospreys keep several nests they use year after year and they like them up high. Utilities sometimes build platforms on poles to attract the ospreys away from electrical poles in use by humans, but their elaborate nests are unmistakable:
Ospreys like to eat fish and they can often be seen circling over the waters alongside the highway. When they spot their prey they fold up and dive bomb the water, feet first. The idea is for the bird to grab it's prey with it's talons and haul the thing back to the nest. 
My marine biology instructor was a sober man not given to joking and managed to make an interesting subject pretty dull. He did however tell a story which I have to judge to be true because of the nature of the man. He said a fish had been found with a pair of osprey feet stuck in it's back. The speculation was that the bird had dive bombed it's prey which had turned out to be too large for it and the bird had been pulled and held underwater by the fish, until it drowned (the bird, not the fish). 
Ospreys I believe mate for life and share nesting duties. They are incredible birds, graceful in flight and are gifted with a slightly bizarre call rather like a school boy with an off key whistle ( if my childhood is anything to go by). I like watching them fly and I am no birder:
My closest encounter with an osprey took me a bit by surprise. I was riding north on Highway One and had just crested the rise on the overpass at Boca Chica when an osprey carrying a torpedo in it's claws flew past my face just ten feet over my head. The fish probably was none too happy with it's bird's eye view of the world but that encounter took my breath away. I quite like herons too:
I don't even mind the fake ones they are selling at Bayshore Nursery on Ramrod Key, though I don't think one of these bobbers will ever grace my yard, thanks:
It was a good ride even though I didn't reach the end of the road. There is something very refreshing about the long stretches of open road, and pedalling them makes them all the more relaxing it turns out:
Good exercises of course but not better than the Bonneville. That, never.
She was glad enough to see me and she wagged and wiggled just a little and let me scratch her neck and rub her ears in my attempts to give her relief from her awful plastic torture ring. I spent a half hour sitting and talking to her, in a room that smelled to my inadequate human nostrils, of hospitals, not least because that is where we were:
Lula Mae seemed almost relieved to settle back into her bed, exhausted by the contact. I wanted to say hello to her neighbor but one doesn't want to aggravate some unknown condition or other. She looked like she could have used a visit:
Lula Mae is long since home and mending. One of the lucky dogs in a world where animals get short shrift. A hospital as equipped and modern as this would be quite human, never mind humane in many parts of the world. 
I don't think this house is going to be loaded onto a trailer and moved, I believe it is simply being raised to get a new, and perhaps proper, foundation. Certainly it appears to need one, as it sits looking rather undignified, up in the air above White Street. Key West has an above ground cemetery as noted elsewhere and this is the reason why:
It's not just the dead that need to be kept above the water table on "the Rock."
I may be wrong but I couldn't help but chuckle to myself as I walked the new street. It has the undefinable air of being something of a passive aggressive statement by the city, as it does open a fresh access to the waterfront which is important to the Navy Base whose Commander has demanded twenty-four hour access to his property. However, while obeying the letter of the agreement with Truman Annex, the city has created a route that defies the ability of any large vehicle, military or otherwise to negotiate the corners. Thus it is, Southard Street remains the only viable waterfront access for trucks. Which is not anymore the city's problem as the agreement to end the lawsuit with the Annex has been adhered to. If the Navy wants 24 hour access for trucks, that will be their problem. A solution worthy of the machinations of the former city manager Julio Avael. I am impressed.
And this left over from my cruise ship pictures reminded me that they still want us to keep on shopping to keep the economy afloat:
I was on my home one evening and I stopped on Sugarloaf to photograph a sunset (see the next paragraph) and I got overwhelmed by a patriotic moment. No nation puts out more flags than the US. If any Cubans were to parachute onto the airstrip at Sugarload Key in their quest for freedom they'd be sure which country they'd landed in...
She was 56 and spent much of her adult life in Key West. My buddy Curt taught her the fine art of living on the water and she spent a good few years living on her Chris Craft anchored near Rat Key. I took this picture of our sailboat anchored nearby sometime around 2000 after my wife and I arrived here from our trip from California via the Panama Canal:
For me the half mile row into Garrison Bight was generally a pain and I was extremely glad when I organized an outboard. Cheryl disagreed:
Curt was always a fanatical rower seen here with Cheryl's dog his stalwart passenger. He still lives at anchor but even he these days has an outboard:
I look back at that time and wished I had taken more pictures, which makes me glad I've got it together finally to do just that. Better late, as they say.... 
...than never. 
I wasn't quick witted enough to take advantage of the situation, because when my wife asked me to do her a giant favor, I replied "Of course," without thinking. It turns out she wanted me to stay on in town after the chores were done to accompany her to Goombay. Instead of turning it to my advantage by whining and demanding a quid pro quo I was all too quick to agree.
Bill bought me a beer, in case there were any doubt that he was going to miss that opportunity and I, standing there like the very confused abomination of desolation listened to Bill and Diana regale us with several of their escapades- he's been visiting Key west since 1991. They seem a happy couple which suited my wife and I because I'm hoping they show up next year and I can spend an evening with them without being thunderstruck at being recognized on the street. I thought i was really canny about not including my picture in this blog. Grrr! Diana dragged Bill away eventually which was a shame because he was full of good stories and now i'll have to wait a year to hear the rest.
And there were hot dogs and kebabs:
And heaped helpings of machete-sliced conch salad, Bahamian style:
I'm not that fond of conch "cooked" in lime juice and served with a salsa-like vegetable mixture but my wife lapped it up. We had home made ginger beer from Conch Town cafe, sweet and spicy to wash down the food, though this was not a dish I could approach any too safely:
The evening ended with a monster cookie we were unable to finish:
There was music too, drums and DJ'ing nearer Duval:
And a chest splitting band perched high above the intersection of Thomas Street:
There were also a ton of vendors selling knick knacks and dust catchers of all sorts, including inspirational t-shirts:
The best part of Goombay was getting the chance to say hi to friends and bumping into people we hadn't seen in a while. There were a surprising number of chance encounters, quite aside from the amazingly determined Buffalo Bill! It was very lively, and very easy going on Petronia at Goombay and a lot of people were having a good time, wearing all sorts of headgear as I couldn't help but notice:
As we walked back to our motorcycles my wife turned to me and said: "I had such a good time I don't think I want tobother with fantasy fest this year." Score! Being such a good sport paid off, I'm convinced. I get to stay home and barbecue something delicious and you lot will have to look for naked people on some other website. Cool. 
I published an essay a while back which I titled "Bridge to Nowhere" chronicling a short walk I took on the northern side of Summerland Key where I found a bridge at the end of the path which had been shorn of it's on ramp and as I stood there in my shoes and socks I wondered where the bridge went. The picture above looks back at the southern tip of the bridge and the end of the land where I had to stop last visit. I had returned to the spot armed with a pair of rubber clogs and the nerve to wade into the water and grapple with the end of the bridge.
The tide was coming back in pretty fast and I had this moment of wondering how cold the water would be, it reminded me of a cold mountain stream gurgling over the rocks. Naturally it wasn't cold at all, so the next obstacle was to haul myself up onto the wooden bridge. I threw my backpack onto the bridge to keep the camera safe while I dealt with the bridge.
It turned out to be surprisingly easy, there were nice solid bolts sticking out of the vertical post. almost like steps, so up I scrambled, trying not to worry about how i was going to get back down later. It wasn't real high, just six feet maybe, but I felt rather middle aged scrambling about like a child. Rather sooner than I expected I was up on the wooden bridge and walking to the opposite end.
It was a glorious day in the Lower Keys, bright sunshine, sparkling waters and a fresh easterly breeze. Indeed the wind was refreshing though not out of the north, almost like the first cold front of the winter, even though temperatures were in the upper 80's. The bridge itself was surprisingly solid, despite years of being abandoned in the sun and rain and storms. The planks were bolted together and the galvanized bolts were still solid. It was a fine piece of engineering, and now entirely wasted as the other end was also removed:
From on top of the bridge I could see a trail snaking away into the bushes:
It was, even for me, the work of a moment to leap off the end of the bridge and start walking. I was curious to see what this elaborate bridge had been built for and why there were the remains of a road at the northern end. The old road took but one turn past some bushes and immediately it began to deteriorate:
I was wondering if the road might lead to the remains of a home, at least the foundations or something. I have seen abandoned homes in the Bahamas that had collapsed under the weight of time and in the old days they used to build homes in these latitudes with cement foundations and coral rock chimneys (Crab Key near Georgetown comes to mind). The bridge fascinated me because it seemed so elaborate merely to connect a homestead which in the old days would have relied on a boat to get around anyway. I kind of figured there had to be some kind of cottage industry up here to justify a bridge this well built....
The trail snaked around a fair bit and from time to time I could see a peak of water off to the west, or some mysteriously uprooted trees to the east:
But of human construction there was no sign on any side of the trail. Which probably shouldn't be too surprising as the shrubbery was pretty thick:
I wish I could say that it was a pleasant walk but despite the sun, the breeze and the invigorating blue sky and puffy white clouds it was a really clod hopping clump through the muck.
We are in the closing weeks of rainy season and everything that isn't asphalted is wallowing in water, and as result my rubber clogs were squeaking and squelching like crazy through all this water. Plus I was carrying my camera in my hand ready for any exciting thing to appear, so there was that to worry about too, as the camera is not waterproof.
The only interesting thing I spotted were a few faint footprints in the mud so others had come here before me, possibly walking a dog, though as I'm not Natty Bumpo I can't say for sure. I also found a few strategically placed planks to bridge the deepest water puddles. I was covered in gray clay specks at this point and I surrendered. Back I went and I confess I was glad enough to see the bridge reappear through the greenery:
I got back on the bridge easily enough and spent a good bit of time standing on the warm wooden planks letting the clay dry on my legs and feet and other places where wet mud isn't supposed to reach. I played with the camera checking out the manual settings and trying to capture the sparkle of the sun on the water:
Not very well it turned out, looking down Niles Channel towards Highway One. I think I was just dicking around to avoid facing the descent at the end of the bridge. I am well enough convinced I did a good job of poking around in the underbrush to be fairly sure there is nothing too obvious that I missed on the island though you could probably hide an Iraqi army in the spiky shrubbery. I shan't be back I think. The getting off of the bridge was a piece of cake, and I didn't tear my shorts or fall in the water or commit any of my usual pratfalls. Expedition successfully concluded I'd say.
There is something about food that is covered in a batter and deep fried that tastes particularly good, and even though such cookery wrecks the nutrition, Americans' favorite flavor I once heard it said, is crunchy. I am quite fond of the fish basket at No Name Pub, deep fried fish and salty crunchy silver dollar fries. Throw in a large glass of 
The bard remarked that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but apologetically I choose to contradict the immortal one on that point. "Big Pine Key Pub" does not have the same ring as "No Name Pub" and I find it hard to imagine the pub would have lasted as long had it taken the former name. Nevertheless it is a fact that No Name Key is across a rather long bridge from the eponymous pub:
No Name Key rejoices at least for a while longer in the fact that it's residents enjoy cable television and phone cable service on their island but not cable electricity. This apparently has to change to 
No Name Key's other claim to fame, aside form the 
I spent probably a quarter of an hour just lounging on the bridge, admiring the 
And then I rode home. I swear there was almost a chill in the air. It must be freezing somewhere Up North.
I have seen two people jogging down my street these past couple of days. They have earphones and they look fresh and sleek like seals sweeping along so I'm pretty sure they are visiting for the winter. I don't see joggers on my street in summer, except Linda who waves each morning as I get home from work. There was a comment in the Citizen's Voice about dilapidated cars parked on the street, and could the owners of the work trucks please park them in their drive ways. I am seeing out of state tags popping up and someone tried to jump a line I was in the other day like her time was more valuable than mine. These are all signs that winter residents are back, and this first wave is down here early.
People who live in Key West year round have a rather split approach to snowbirds. It's that mixture of dependence and resentment that seeps into many aspects of our lives. Snowbirds bring money and spread it around which has all the beneficial effects of trickle down that keeps people employed. Plus everyone knows and accepts that wealthy winter retirees raise everyone's standard of living by virtue of the fact they spend money here. I doubt we'd have near as much live theater without them, or as varied restaurants, but that wealth also raises costs, notably of housing.
Snowbirds do up the houses they buy as winter homes, and pay more to rent homes and apartments for six months than many people can afford to lease for a year. Lots of people enjoy the quiet of summer in the Keys, as do I, but have trouble focusing on the good when the roads are clogged with all those extra vehicles in the winter. Parking? Forget about parking in Old Town - get a two wheeler! There again I wouldn't get paid as well at my city job without the increased tax base of much improved buildings in the city... Snowbirds are nature's reminder to keep an eye on the big picture while coping with the minor daily irritations of the little picture. For instance I get taken aback by the lines that magically appear at the Tropic Cinema, but without the snowbirds Key West wouldn't have an arts house in the first place. 
You have to think the residents of this little street must have developed a sense of humor about their burden when you read signs like these... NO "hunting, fishing trapping..." but I hear no humor in their voices when they call to request an officer to do a check of the lane to move along bundles sleeping in the bushes.
I, like everybody else, enjoy the architecture and beauty of Key West, but I like living in the peace and quiet of the island suburbs to the north a little ways. I too would get grumpy if I had to step over sleepers on my porch.
Peacon Lane is trim and tidy and at first glance is not particularly eccentric or odd but it has it's features for those willing to look.
This house put me in mind of the Pacific Northwest, for some reason. It has stained glass windows, not clearly visible in the picture and a heavily varnished front door:
The abandoned ladder put me in mind of unfinished projects (though my ladders are mundane affairs of aluminum and plastic):
And then this object of art under the trees:
I was pondering the puzzle when a lady walking her dog came by and was rather startled when I asked her what she thought. After she composed herself she thought for a bit and suggested it might be something on the lines of a merry-go-round.
Triumph Bonneville 900, circa 2008, Key West Florida.
BMW K1200R on the road to Spoleto, Italy. Rented one very wet and cold June 2008.
Chris' less elaborate picnic, on a bicycle camping trip from our English Boarding school. 1971. 
His son Giovanni sheltering from a downpour with me, Terni Italy 2008.
My castle was my home at Morruzze. Fifty rooms with the oldest from the 12th century.
800 square feet dating back to 1987. I'd much rather a canal instead of a wine cellar. 
My sister Liz, 60, the happy farmer's wife and grandmother. Umbria Italy 2008.
57 years ago she is the twin on the left. Neither has ever left home making me the wanderer. 
The filth is visible from the street which is where I stood to take all these pictures over the modest sized fence:
Upon the advice of Lisa and Josh we spent a little less than $250 and came home with planks and plywood to make four vegetable beds, four feet by four feet (1.5 square meters each), soil to fill them and a few pots for some fruit trees. Lisa has been developing her own southernmost garden over the past few years:
She showed me how she created her own raised beds using simple pine planks with plywood floors, properly drilled to drain water. I followed her instructions and found a shadier spot for some vegetables that don't need to be in the direct path of the blazing southern sun:
With their help the selection process to get all the necessary stuff was easy and painless, and I have started to put together my new beds. The pots were a bit easier as all it took was basically lining the bottom with some rocks for drainage and tossing some potting soil in on top:
Lisa gave us a couple of pineapple cuttings, and as unpromising as they looked I just stuck the spiky things into the dirt and off they hopefully go, they seem quite vigorous so far in their pots. We also got a mango, a key lime, an avocado and an orange tree and I spent a pleasant afternoon potting them as well.
I am always astonished by the way things grow. It seems to me wildly improbable that things will sprout, never mind flourish, when they are stuck in the ground but sure enough the drive to live pushes them up. This neck of the woods is not very promising as far as gardening goes, thanks to the absence of soil and proximity to salt water, but it is frost free and I think it's time I took advantage of all that sunlight.
Lisa calls her beds a Victory Garden which puzzled her mother who had to point out there isn't a war on, but her daughter ever the activist begged to differ. She's fighting to create her own locally grown organic food:
This gardening thing is an experiment for me, I find it surprising that I have taken to it after decades of not wanting to deal with growing things. I justify in my mind as a way of seeing how well we can do growing our own food, organic, local and overseen by ourselves. I hope we can fend off the damned iguanas and insect pests and have something to eat in a few months. I expect some failures but I hope that given time and experience I will remember the lessons my father taught me years ago.
I am getting back into it on a more modest scale, four beds, a few pots and I hope the patience to expand as soon as i think I understand what I'm doing:
Having friends who can show the way is a big help and Lisa is quite the adventurous gardener, taking advantage of our frost-free climate to grow wildly tropical fruits in her much larger space. Sunday night we went by the have dinner and after dinner we sat out in the balmy eighty degree night and watched the full moon hover between the clouds:
As we sat down below in the midst of Lisa and Josh's arboretum:
Josh has half a dozen degrees of one sort or another to his name and he is driving the bio-diesel program at Key West High School:
He also introduced me to something called Gentleman Jack, a brand of whiskey that was in large part responsible for my inability to produce a coherent essay yesterday. We sat out under the stars marveling at our good fortune, enjoying the absence of seasons, more or less:
Lisa is a teacher at a nearby middle school and together the two of them taught for a couple of years in Kuwait. they were momentous years as there was an outbreak of some unpleasantness next door in Iraq, and they have their own stories of ducking and covering:
It was a just reward for screwing and drilling and cursing and grovelling looking for errant seed packets the afternoon before. 
The ones I feel sorry for are the youngsters with their rubber burning crotch rockets, stuck in the Sunshine State with its straight roads:
Vespas, the deluxe scooters are appearing in greater numbers in Key West, mostly in winter because the do tend to be the preserve of the wealthy, relatively speaking. You can buy a lot of cases of Bud Light for the difference in price between this yellow Vespa LX150 and something like an entirely functional Taiwan Golden Bee:
A Yamaha Zuma 50cc will do the job if you are buzzing around town with a package to deliver:
And Duval Street gets crowded with people sitting in their cars cruising and checking out the scene. Irritating I call it, entertainment others call this style of not driving:
Or you can be like me and get out of town every now and again, to enjoy the open road, albeit straight and flat:
Some days it's good to drive a car, but downpours are usually short lived, as short as they are heavy:
Even if parallel parking is beyond your natural abilities you should try to fit into the space properly. Your best efforts may make your rivals for the sought after parking spot crazy, especially as those spots can be in short supply. Waste not, want not and if someone is tempted to stick their moped behind your badly parked car please don't knock it over when you finally lurch out of your spot-and-a-half:
Sometimes nature speaks and trees, of which key West has an abundance, make use of your car as an ashtray. In Turkey figs fall on vehicles, in Key West it's just inedible blossoms:
Cars and two wheelers cohabit quite well in Key West, even though some new arrivals still bring their hatred of bicycles with them from Up North and shout epithets at locals peddling:
Here too are some rules. It's okay to ride a bike on the sidewalk as long as you yield to pedestrians and have an audible means of approach ("Excuse me!"). Use lights, you will get stopped, and I enter a million traffic stops BNL (Bike No Lights) in my night shift.Do not ride the wrong way on a one way, any tickets you get on a bike are moving violations against your driving record.The sad thing is these tourists (identified by the rental plaques on the front baskets) ride bikes in Key West as a vacation thing, this experience won't awaken in them the notion that cycling is useful transportation. I mean, what do you do if it rains? Melt?
It's the same problem pedestrians suffer from, and Key West, particularly Old Town is ideal for walking, even in inclement weather:
And in fine weather, dry weather walking is a splendor of sights to be seen:
Plaid shorts are entirely respectable in Key West, even away from the golf course. We are fashion rebels when it comes to being seen out in public, in your car, on your bike or best of all on your motorbike. 
The easy way to find Elgin Lane is to cruise north on White Street until you find the brightly colored inconvenience store known as Blossoms:
From Blossoms its a one way ride straight down Elgin Lane to a point that pops out next to Paradise Cafe a couple of blocks away. And in that stretch of narrow one way asphalt lies all the romance and intimacy of a narrow key West lane. Personally I find Elgin Lane to be unusually attractive- I'm not sure why. 
I hit it on a bright sunny day, hot but not too hot, sunny but not too sunny I suppose. Shadows were starting to lengthen and I should have been thinking about heading home. I had just been to the Tropic to check out Werner Herzog's latest documentary about life at the South Pole Encounters at the End of the Earth, a snappy title for a movie infused with Herzog's own special brand of lugubrious Teutonic hopelessness at the human condition. Which film I thoroughly enjoyed and whose somber tone was the perfect antidote to the cheerfulness inspired in me by this modest little alley.
It sort of looked like rhubarb to me, but that's impossible...I'm pretty sure.
Well, most of them:
The houses on Elgin Lane are the usual mixture and included an upper crust guest house with barely glimpsed swimming hole:
And the inevitable Conch Cottage with its own form of OSP, off street parking:
And even though I frequently see porches set up for outdoor entertainment its rare someone is out there rocking gently or playing backgammon. Perhaps it's the time of day I pass by:
Some houses are kept full of junk, the gruesome pack rat syndrome. I could never be a pack rat, being as how I was always traveling and leaving all my stuff, perforce, behind. Not like this character who likes to live behind battlements of stuff:
Others fight the good fight, as do I, and struggle to keep the crap factor to a minimum:
You don't even have to do much maintenance if your home is made of Dade pine:
Some people are dab hands with a paint brush and pastels are the shades of choice. There is a tradition in Key West to paint outdoor ceilings a light blue color. The superstitious among us believe light blue for some unaccountable reason keeps spirits away and also has the beneficial effect they say of keeping insects away. Powerful stuff for a simple shade of blue:
I caught one less traditional detail on a house that was all shuttered up- with a zip tie!
Elsewhere ingenuity was evident, the sort of lateral thinking I used to employ when I was far from land on my sailboat, not, as in this case, on a construction site:
I saw another piece of whimsy in a road sign on a stretch of this narrow street:
"No Parking At Any Time" says the faded sign, which seems obvious enough in this kind of area, so it didn't take but two minutes for me to spot someone doing just that!
That's what they mean by "island time." Don't lose your mind when people just stop in the middle of the street- it's the response to the general lack of space.Besides if you're in a hurry there is Eaton Street, a main thoroughfare just a block away:
As if parked cars weren't enough, Elgin Lane is apparently plagued by junior league moon walkers:
And cyclists, ready to run you down. Mind you those are always available in Key West, accidental ecologists on our streets:
Oh and don't let's forget my pet peeve:
We were at a movie the other day, my wife and I, watching a Spanish movie titled Fred and Elsa, a sweet concoction about late blooming love at the Tropic Cinema and one of the characters announced, annoyed, how irritating people are who don't keep their cell phones on. I got a big jab in the ribs, but I am unrepentant. Cell phones take messages with the greatest of ease. I met another character enjoying public telephony:
Actually no, look closely and you'll see he was sucking hard on a brown bottle. He was a pretty cheerful character as he watched me point and shoot and volunteered that his was a long time Key West family that came here from Nassau. I've been to the capital of the Bahamas a few times and it never seems to get more attractive, a run down crowded borough with all the charm of a dilapidated shopping maul tacked onto a rabbit warren of narrow streets. This character turned a tad maudlin remembering Nassau in the 1960's making it out to be paradise lost, as usual; a nice guy gifted with a defective memory. Hell the Duke of Windsor was banished there in World War Two (he had unfortunate Nazi sympathies and they had to ship him somewhere he would do no harm) and he was in despair. I don't think Nassau was much improved by the time our beer toting new found friend saw the light of day.
As cold starts to tighten its vise Up North I continue to enjoy Key West's primary colors, green blue and white with occasional splotches of yellow thrown in. I would rather eat worms than have to live in a place with seasons. I think that's my greatest fear if the economic melt down were to displace me, as after a life spent wandering I have finally settled in one place, a place of endless, glorious summer time. And Elgin Lane ain't half bad either:
Not that I think too highly of speed bumps, but I did enjoy cruising the lane. And no, I didn't lose my marbles.
I do enjoy wandering the city at night. Some nights I take my lunch break in a recliner in the kitchen at work, and very snug it is too. Other nights I am feeling buoyant at the three in the morning and I take off to look for things to photograph. Namely a Harley Road King parked by itself at 
There was an impressive pile of seaweed swept up out of the way awaiting transport. Hurricane Ike didn't come close to hitting the city last month, but it was a powerful storm even here, 200 miles from the eye:
I find Key West is especially evocative at night, somehow the city's neon-less streets go back in time under the few street lights that illuminate the homes and trees on the back streets:
I find homeowners really enjoy wasting electricity in Key West, illuminating the outdoors for passing drunks and the occasional dispatcher on a middle of the night lunch break, though what the trees think about these pointless illuminations we'll never know: 
Enclosures can be legal if they aren't habitable or have walls designed to collapse in the event of a flood, or if they have so called flow-through vents:
What I don't get is why home owners want to fight regulations put in place for their own protection. We turn to the government when things go wrong (witness our crazy failed bailout attempts thus far this month!) but we essentially want an open ended check to cover our own stupidity. Thus far that sort of payout is only available to wealthy bankers. The prospect of getting government help to fix this problem, say a fund to pay to render enclosures conforming under an amnesty law is not possible. The Government can fund $192 million dollars to support US Caribbean rum makers (it was a clause in the bailout bill! Really!), but we can't get help to make our homes safer by conforming to Federal laws:
Every time I come across a group of tourists gawping at chickens on the streets of Key West, I replay a conversation I had with my wife some years ago.
That's the thing, I really don't think chickens should be loose on the streets, but luckily for all concerned my opinions haven't yet made headlines in the corridors of power, so for now the chickens are safe in their very unnatural habitats around town. Like the Post Office on Whitehead Street:
Where the Postmaster takes a dim view of the presence of all animals except barnyard fowl apparently:
If you are one of the adoring chicken fans that come to Key West and gawp you could do a lot worse than cruise by the Post Office on your rented moped. They seem to be there all the time:
The chickens attract tourists, which may be an exaggeration. I suppose it's possible some people might cancel their reservations were the chickens to disappear but I don't think that's an issue. It's true though that their outdoor lifestyle, sitting in trees:
Whitehead Street is in some respects the Cinderella Street of Old Town, living in the shadow of the more well known and more important Duval Street. Whitehead is named for John Whitehead, one of six men named John who claimed ownership of Key West in the early 1820s- along with John Simonton who bought the island from Don Juan (John) Salas. Simonton got three partners, Whitehead John Fleeming (later altered to Fleming) and Pardon Greene. Don Juan also sold the island to John Strong who sold the island to John Geddes. Strong and Geddes lost out and streets in the new township of Thompson's Island were named for the victors in the dispute. Whitehead street is long and straight and stretches clean across the island:
It is actually a much more practical street than Duval or even Simonton as it is wider and plagued with far fewer stop signs and traffic lights. It is also picturesque in certain ways:
Though it does suffer from this traffic curdling curse:
Perhaps I blew the perfect opportunity to go in and meet him, but really the store not the owner is the story... I am a misanthrope. My weird job is perfect for me. And then there's my obsession with documenting as many odd;y painted fire plugs as I can. Here's another one:
Further north of Whitehead Street there are a bunch of objets de tourisme, the Lighthouse and Hemingway House, both of which got their own essays recently ( the "Search" function at the top of the page reveals all to my amazement) and after them we find the McCain law offices:
Really it the David Horan Law office, he's the boss at Horan Wallace and Higgins on Whitehead Street and he's a huge fan of John McCain as seems obvious from the picture. Horan is an interesting character, he was a supporter and friend of Mel Fisher and apparently took an enormous cut of the Atosha treasure so unless he made some appalling investments you'd think work is sort of optional for him. However he is also a leading authority on Admiralty Law, something I discovered when I needed a lawyer to find out about selling my sailboat to a corporation. He was all over McCain in the 2004 election at which time the maverick as he then was, seemed a better alternative than Bush or even Kerry. Horan was delighted when I, a Democrat briefly pondered as much. I don't suppose he would still think I would say so, does he? Horan's office is across the street from another Key West institution:
The Green Parrot likes to call itself the first and last bar in the US, which is because Highway One officially ends up the block. The Green Parrot is a bar with character, open windows look out on the street and the interior is filled with bric- a- brac of the type that I think of as dust catchers:
Not many homes that I know of hang bicycles as dust catchers but its the same principle as sticking figurines on your mantelpiece. Up the street you can buy your own personal dust catchers or just sit and catch your breath:
I am not much of a drinker and certainly not in the middle of the day as I would keel over and fall asleep as I ride, so I prefer Jenna's across the street. The coffee shop and inconvenience store was sold a year or two ago and they abbreviated the name to Courthouse Deli, but old habits die hard so to me it remains Jenna's (pronounced Gina's):
Behind the Bonneville are benches and this is an excellent spot to suck up a cafe con leche and watch people wobble up to the traffic light on their rented mopeds. Jenna's Courthouse Deli also carries the Blue Paper so Fridays are good days to sit and read the latest scandals. I got my people watching done in short order and snapped a couple of pictures for another essay and then I saw something unusual:
There's something like 7,000 military personnel stationed in and around Key West and you'd think the city would be knee deep in their uniforms but rarely do you see them striding around looking military. But this shot, as rare as that of a Yeti, proves they do exist in Key West; the military that is, not abominable snowmen. And buses, Whitehead Street is on the bus line:
And that's as far north as we are going today on Whitehead. There are other delights to be explored but they will come later- I need an excuse to poke around this area in winter too, and Mile Marker Zero can wait.
I love riding past this building, which rises up out of its own little parkland in the style typical of Southern public buildings. It puts me in mind of any number of movies, In the Heat of the Night not least among them. Small town policing indeed! From the courthouse one can barely see the Green Parrot through the trees:
And because this is Key West our county employees ride their two wheelers to work, as do their visitors no doubt:
One day I'll have to look at the Post Office, the kapok tree, and the banyan among other delights yet to come.
Let me start out by saying my wife and I took a cruise last year and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Embarrassing eh? Let's face it cruise ship passengers are the butt of jokes, cruise ships are the world's worst form of travel, polluting the oceans, cushioning and cossetting their occupants, they are the absolute antithesis of "proper" voyaging. Well let me remind you the wife and I also sailed to Key West from California and I have an intimate personal knowledge of the joys of proper voyaging and let me say cruise ships have their good points.
The image thing is unavoidable, after all as a cruise ship passenger you are one sweating American in a herd of several hundred, possibly several thousand strangers in a strange land when you step off the floating hotel. I used to work as a boat captain taking passengers out sailing and I heard some very odd questions, naive in the extreme asking what currency we used and who governed Key West. On our week long trip round the Western Caribbean we found the ship to be extremely comfortable, we loved our cabin with a balcony and room service was divine. I've got to be honest, this was my wife's first "lounging vacation" in 13 years of marriage, something she had longed for but that I can't stand to waste a vacation on- give me a rental car and an open road!. The cruise ship was a blast, by contrast. I was amazed, the comfort of one's own room, the civilty iof a swimming pool, air conditioning or open air breeezes at will and attentive service. I felt like a character in a Noel Coward play. Reality is a little less suave and a bit more herd-like:
It has been fashionable for some time to curse cruise ships and their hordes of passengers in Key West, however as money runs low in the city fashions change and it has been some time since last I heard someone bitching about the herds roaming lower Duval Street. Protesting voices used to be raised in the newspaper demanding ships curtail the number of their visits to our city. Since the economic downturn turned into a rout cruise ships show up at the city's dock or the Westin's dock and disgorge their humanity into the happily outstretched arms of merchants begging for custom. And cruise ships need attractions to keep their people satisfied.
Times are tough, so it is a good thing I suppose to spot people bearing packages:
When I see someone with a utilitarian plastic bag from a downtown pharmacy I figure I am observing the passage of a crew member:
Opponents of cruise ships argue they pollute and they encourage mindless mass tourism, supporters say they not only bring people who spend money they also expose people to the delights of Key West. Based on our experiences in Cancun, Grand Cayman and Jamaica where on each island we rented a car for a thorough exploration, Key West really does have a lot going for it. Imagine the Art and History Museum recently garnered a statewide award and it's right there at the docks:
Not just in the matter of shops but in presentation also, bright lights, cheerful store fronts abundant greenery and a level of cleanliness that sometimes shocks me:
Key West is a modern American city in many respects and offers lots of attractions, including sophisticated nude statuary courtesy of the ever industrious Seward Johnson and his out sized efforts:
If pirates are more to the tourists taste there is the shipwreck Historeum thing and when I was down that way the place was positively groaning under the weight of paying customers:
And were it not for the cruise ship who would be taking a break at Mallory Square to chomp an ice cream in the slowest month of the year?
And if you thought all cruise ship passengers were old you'd be wrong:
Over the last ten years there were a lot of things that freaked Key Westers out. Development seemed endless and costs of everything spiralled and the number of cruise ships seemed to be swamping the city. Development has stalled, money no longer flows like water and cruise ship numbers seem to be down. Perhaps at some point there will be a chance that things could be a little more balanced, perhaps a little less desire to just make money, a little more attention to quality of life, because polluters or no, these big ships block the view and take up a lot of the harbor, witness the Sunset Key ferry nosing past:
The cool thing about cruise ships is that they suck up their passengers into their bowels, roll up the welcome mat and they are all gone:
It's a mixed blessing I grant you having cruise ships in town, but I am forced to acknowledge that their harbor dues help pay my wages so I keep my grumbling to myself when I see the hordes of people with their little shore excursion passes stuck to their shirts, or when I spot the big white apartment complex tied up alongside the city: 
I wonder how long these mobile cities will keep coming and going across the world's waterways? Riding a floating hotel is an astonishing luxury, I well remember standing at my private balcony watching the Western Caribbean float by under an almost full moon. I also remembered crossing the same waters in my 34-foot catamaran a decade earlier. I think I know which crossing had the bigger carbon footprint and I'm guessing it's the one that offered room service...
I am by nature a worrier, even though I am an optimist overall, to get to state of hopeful anticipation I have to weigh up all the odds and figure the possibilities and in the end I find myself hoping for, and expecting, the best. I figured the House of Representatives was going to give final Congressional approval to the bail-out bill yesterday and they did. Now I understand the Treasury has a month or so to sort out the investments on some of the ruined mortgages and offer them up for private sale. If no one bids (why the hell would they?) the Treasury will buy them with our $700 billion and will hold papers relating to bankrupt properties scattered across the US. On the news that this mess was going ahead the stock market promptly tanked and settled the Dow Jones around 10,300 points. Like so many Americans I hate the bailout but see no alternative. I don't want national financial catstrophe until the very last minute, thank you. Perhaps the blank check will allow the Treasury to postpone the day of financial reckoning and some miracle will intervene?
I saw subsistence living when I was growing up, scion of a wealthy family surrounded by peasants, known as sharecroppers in American history, people who rarely saw cash but raised what they ate and never read a book or saw a movie. It had its compensations but it was not, is not a lifestyle I want to live. Yet I cannot see a future that continues like the recent past that got us here. I ask myself where the cash for the $700 billion bail out will be found? What happens in Iraq? Why do people look at me as though I were crazy when I wonder out loud what the future will bring? I hate gardening but this weekend I am starting to layout my plans for raised vegetable beds around my house. Lisa has been briefing me on what I can grow and what pests I shall encounter. It is a return to my agricultural roots and I fear I shall miss the ease and simplicity of supermarkets in our Brave New World. Not to mention my beloved infernal combustion engine! I am not a fan of a horse and buggy world. I remember alll too well hitching my sister's horse to our grandfather's buggy in the 1970's when cars were banned in Italy. For a day it was cute- as a weekly event it got tedious in the extreme.
Thursday night I was discussing the impending credit derivatives swap and the sorting out of 1.5 trillion dollars of IOUs between financial institutions that don't trust each other to stay solvent and my fears of an economic seizure were brushed off airily as though I were silly to be concerned. After the President signed the rescue package into law I was dismayed to see the stock market tank a little bit further. It seems my gloom is shared by some people wondering what happens to the inflation rate as extravagant government spending overshadows our future.
I have a good government job as does my wife. We work, they pay, we send money to the holder of our mortgage, and the circle is complete. Around me everything rolls on as normal, restaurants are serving excellent food, cinemas are rolling film, credit cards are swiping, gas stations are pumping gas unlike Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas! Talk about unintended consequences! Texas gets the storm which results in their neighbors Up North,miles away, suffering the effects of an empty oil pipeline. It's been weeks of no gas in Atlanta and no end in sight. My wife told me of a Key Wester who evacuated prior to Hurricane Ike and went to stay with relatives in Ohio where he found himself without power for a week as the storm ravaged the interior Mid West...We breezed along with no problems at all, beyond heavy clouds and rain.
Some find eternal peace at Dean Lopez Funeral Home on Simonton Street, which puts me in mind of the joke about what do you call a man wearing a suit in Key West? Answer: "Defendant!" Or in this case the nattily dressed gent with the bright red tie turned away from the viewfinder is I guess, an undertaker:
The chickens don't care about the funeral parlor, which I have visited twice this year to observe the traditional wake with the dead sleeping in monstrously expensive coffins. I have instructed my wife to box me in pine and burn the whole mess before expelling my ashes at sea. If God can't reconstitute me for Armageddon, too bad I guess, though skipping the Apocalypse has its appeal.
Don't let's forget the living need somewhere to live, and despite all the gloomy economic news, with worse I am sure to follow shortly, finding a bed in Key West remains absurdly expensive if you were thinking about Old Town in particular:
FLS means first month and last month's rent along with a security deposit so I'm guessing this shoe box will need $4,000 to move in and that doesn't count money to hook up utilities or to buy beer. Or this, which needs $200 a month more but does include the cost of gas which should be miniscule as there will be no heating needed this winter:
Renting in Key West is as gruesome for the landlord as it is the tenant, and horror stories abound of drunks and drug addicts inviting people in and getting stuck with unwanted roommates. Landlords get stuck with unreliable tenants too, and they all of them end up calling the police to sort out their domestic arrangements. Another reason I like working dispatch as a civilian rather than being on the road with all these fruit loops. Perhaps as I am so indifferent to the human condition I should have been a cat, though perhaps a cat with a head, unlike this one:
Cats neither buy nor sell homes which puts them in a league of their own as the city is overrun with feral (wild for those of you not steeped in Latin) cats. Another reason not to live in the city. You will be sharing your yard and eventually you soft hearted thing, your food bill with the neighborhood strays.
"Preferred Properties" indeed. At least park a Triumph in your front yard if you want to attract upper crust punters, I say. Or here is a commercial property on Simonton at Fleming, offered apparently by the Addams family:
A lick of paint perhaps, in a tough market? They aren't quite aware it seems to me that we need to try a little bit harder now, than in the heady days of no document loans and the like. The dude at the Carriage Trade on Eaton street sits in front of his place unperturbed by life's vicissitudes. He has the Key West thing down pat by reading the paper right on a busy street while he pretends he is far away and quite alone:
The Carriage Trade keeps eccentric hours for lunch and occasional dinners and though I haven't eaten there for years I loved the prix fixe one item menu served on a delightful shaded patio during the winter months only. Meanwhile I spotted a family of tourists at one of my favorite people watching places in Old Town. I know it's fashionable to despise Starbucks but they have street-side windows in air conditioning and the coffee is delicious to a man that doesn't feel moved to drink his coffee at industrial strength. I did not grow up to believe coffee and battery acid should be indistinguishable, as some people seem to insist these days:
Further up Duval (towards the southern end, that is) I saw a rather evocative painting in the store that calls itself Cuba!Cuba! which illustration focuses on the elderly autos Americans fondly believe are still cluttering the streets of the Forbidden Isle. I believe the Japanese and Europeans have been assiduously filling the void created by our extravagant embargo but I like the picture nonetheless:
Key West's history is linked to Havana and no doubt will be once again when the family tiff between Castro and the Diaz-Balarts is mended. I look forward to that day. Meanwhile I look elsewhere for signs of history and they are everywhere, little placards, placed by the Historical Society and frequently with no explanation of what they are about:
This next one celebrates Key West's first private hospital in the city that had the State's first public library though it is unclear if blacks enjoyed the same access, and in this case private almost certainly means whites only. It's the sort of thing one thinks about as one reads the bigotry in public noticeboards online in the Keys on the subject of Barack Obama. Is that name even American as one indignant bigot asked on the Coconut Telegraph recently!
Or one can take the whole historical thing with a pinch of salt, as seen on Peacon Lane at Eaton Street:
I have noticed a slight chill in the air though I don't think the few visitors in town feel that way. Autumnal breezes are cooling either the Keys or my overheated imagination. though I am sure I spotted my first Christmas Tree of 2008. This is I think a Yuletide tree, oh pagan object:
I am not fond of Christmas, and surely that comes as no surprise, as I view the holiday (Holy Day, no?) as a massive advertising campaign and I get thoroughly exhausted by the incessant repetitiveness of the season. Besides I don't like snow and that is an insipid symbol of Christmas visible even on this excessively early tree. On the subject of holidays I saw this splendid advertisement at Blossom's Grocery for a forthcoming essay on Elgin Lane. It looks like a joke but this town has a sizable Cuban population, remember:
Cubans celebrate holidays by doing a luau, however in Key West they have to do it their way as digging a hole in the ground is next to impossible and entirely unproductive as the water table is far too high. So they put their dead pigs into metal lined boxes and cook 'em whole. If you want to adopt this aboriginal practice now you know where to go to get yours. Dead goats I don't much like and yes, I resent the whole goat cheese fad that has swept North America. Why anybody wants to eat cheese that tastes of goat I'll never understand. However this is America and if you want to eat cheese reminiscent of barnyards you are free to do so. In that spirit I saw this bumper sticker on a car. It made me rather sad, observing the rust stains seeping through the long since faded message, and it's bedraggled state struck a chord this difficult year:
Personally I prefer the sentiment I've seen expressed elsewhere, God Bless Everyone, No Exceptions. But that I have to admit is as close as I can get to cloying sentiment of the sort better suited to Christmas. Besides if God did bless everyone, no one would know they were blessed, now would they? Can you see what a burden it is to be me? I toldyou I have too much time to think because I ride a motorcycle...
I'm not complaining, really I'm not, but the rain and clouds we have been forced to live with are getting old. After all the big yellow blob on the National Hurricane Center map could soon turn orange and then red and then become a tropical something, whirling about and ruining lives. Instead the yellow fuzzy blob (low likelihood of becoming a tropical storm) stays as a blob and limits itself to dumping quantities of rain on the Keys. And making our skies dark and foreboding.
Water tends to puddle rather easily in Key West, even though the city has installed improved storm drains in many of the worst spots:
A little patience under an overhanging bush and soon enough the sun comes out:
That's the paradox of life in the Keys, winter, the coldest months are the driest months generally which is an arrangement i can approve of, if it has to rain at all.
I took the saddlebags off for Tropical Storm Fay thinking perhaps that a slimmer profile might make the machine more manageable and less bulky to park in some out of the way spot during the storm, and I like the slimmer profile and I'm seeing if I can cope with reduced storage space for my commuting needs. One day I was dawdling along the road, the only road and I met one guy fighting the heat with his lightweight packing. I think he looked jealous when he saw my ride:
It was hot, hovering around 90 degrees (32C) up to perhaps 95 (35C) with lots of humidity. My wife found me pottering around under the house polishing the Bonneville, vigorously scrubbing the rust spots on my mirror stems and started panting just watching me. "Aren't you hot?" she asked. I just shook my head and she retreated upstairs pursued by the mosquitoes that don't seem to like my blood. I seem perfectly adapted to life in the Keys, immune to heat and mossies. I like the look of Mangrove Mama's on Sugarloaf Key, especially with a motorcycle, a Harley, out front white and shining in the heat:
Further up the road is the only traffic light between Stock Island and Big Pine Key. They put it in to help school traffic at Sugarloaf Middle School on Crane Avenue. We asked the state to have it blink yellow at non peak hours, but that request went nowhere so all day and all night it sits and changes and ignores motorcycles. Need to turn left onto the highway? Too bad.
Sugarloaf School, next to the light takes kids from kindergarten through 8th grade (about 14 years old I think) and also provides an elevated haven for cars when a storm threatens. In order to reduce flooding the school was built up a bit, especially as parts of Sugarloaf Key seem more like water than dirt. The thing is when a storm threatens , people in the area who remember getting wrecked by Hurricane Wilma (a recurring theme in the Keys) bring their cars to the school for safety and park up here. They did it for Fay and then more recently for Ike. I would bring the Bonneville here if I lived on Sugarloaf. In fact I saw a couple of Harleys up here during Gustav, or Ike, or Fay or one of those storms:
On some mornings when I'm heading home absolutely exhausted I've given consideration to the idea of laying down in here for a nap; as though I were a homeless dude. I haven't given in yet but some days it seems I am sleepy enough it might be safer to stop and snooze rather than keep on riding...
They have been murmuring about sewering the Keys since I first came in 1981, but the plans never got off the ground. In the bad old days there was money for public works but now that the costs of sewering has become astronomical the State is all tuckered out financially speaking. Selling bonds in a state like Florida is akin to auctioning off your first born so we are under a state imposed mandate to have all homes connected to proper modern sewers by 2010 and no one has a clue how to pay for it. So, I hear you wondering what does happen to the sewage generated by 75,000 permanent residents. Well that's an interesting question. 25,000 people in Key West have a tertiary system already installed, that cost years of torn up streets but it's done and makes sewage potable so clean is the system (no one actually drinks it, don't worry). The rest of us, 50,000 people plus visitors use septic tanks which, built into porous rock are not the best filters in the world. And our county leaders furrow their brows and wonder why the reef is deteriorating. You would too were you eating so much crap. It pains me to think this could have been done and paid for twenty years ago when the reef was much more vital.
The exclusive, gated, private community of Shark Key pictured above from outside the gates, wants to have Keys taxpayers pay to sewer their private island too. Given the total lack of backbone among our leaders doubtless I will end up paying for their crap as well as mine. Individual hook ups may cost each of us directly more than $10,000 depending on which alarmist you listen to. They think to relieve the pain by saying they will add a monthly assessment to each home until the bill is paid. 
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