The Big Smoke

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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