The alarm goes off at 4:45 and I roll quickly out of bed before I have time to think about it. The house is cool, thanks to the air conditioner and the fans swirling in each of our four rooms, moving the air steadily round our little house. We have no street lights on our road and outside its completely dark, at least it is two weeks out of the month. This period is the other half of the month and the moon, waning is doing its best to imitate daylight.
My wife packs my lunch the night before, my man purse is packed and ready to go and the newspaper hasn't yet arrived in the driveway so I'm pretty much ready to go. The scooter lurks in the gloom under the house, wedged between our two cars, and I can do the loading by feel so I prefer not to hit the outside lights and spoil the effect.
My wife's 150 has the same accessories as my 250 so the loading plan is the same, lunchbox in the trunk, man purse under the seat, helmet on my head. The engine's louder on the air-cooled 150 than it is on the water-cooled 250 but I don't think that any neighbors across the canal could be woken by it. The neighbors on either side of my home are separated by empty lots, besides which, neither house is occupied, as my erstwhile neighbors spend millions not to actually occupy the structures. Suits me.
My street is one lane wide and three quarters of a mile long, just enough to warm the engine before pulling out onto Highway One. The air is warm enough that the chill from the air conditioning has long since worn off. Heading south on the Overseas Highway the 150 is decidedly more languid than the 250 which generally hits 60mph by the time we're passing the illuminated sign at Boondocks Bar.
Mangrove bushes line the roadway, barely visible in the headlight beam, until they fall away and cement barricades mark the start of the humpback bridge which rises forty feet above Niles Channel. Tourists love to slow down as they reach the hump and look out over the waterways, little do they know the descent into Summerland Key is a passing lane...I do, and I'm ready!
At 5:15am Summerland Key is just a few street lights shining on the sleeping gas station, my wife's dentist lurking in an ugly mud brown building, my video store flashes by, followed in quick succession by the hardware shop ("small enough to know you, bigger than we look") and the Post Office which marks the end of civilization as I know it.
The Highway gets darker for the most part after we breast the bridge onto Cudjoe Key, the odd illumination followed by long stretches of darkness, the Vespa humming steadily in the night. From time to time I can see pairs of headlights coming up from behind and they are obviously ignoring the 45mph limit. I've time in hand so I'm cruising and I pull aside to let them pass, even in the Saddlebunch Keys which are marked by the cluster of lights at Mile Marker 15, Baby's Coffee:
They call themselves the Southernmost Coffee Roasting Company, which I suppose they are, even though they are a lot less southernmost than they used to be. There was a time when they were roasting and grinding and selling in downtown Key West, but then they decided that the call of commerce required them to move 15 miles out of town. Somehow they made it work, turning coffee roasting into a cottage industry selling knick knacks and gee gaws and pastries and chocolates and offering free hot coffee after hurricanes. They aren't open at 5:30am so its a matter of buzzing on by.
They call themselves the Southernmost Coffee Roasting Company, which I suppose they are, even though they are a lot less southernmost than they used to be. There was a time when they were roasting and grinding and selling in downtown Key West, but then they decided that the call of commerce required them to move 15 miles out of town. Somehow they made it work, turning coffee roasting into a cottage industry selling knick knacks and gee gaws and pastries and chocolates and offering free hot coffee after hurricanes. They aren't open at 5:30am so its a matter of buzzing on by.Its a few more miles of darkness, humps and vales, wide sweeping turns, a steady 65 mph through the darkness, bumping onto bridges, bumping off and watching the lights of Big Coppitt grow closer. The traffic heading north is thicker too, a car every five minutes, usually with high beams glaring, flashes past, vacation over, getting an early start on the Turnpike 3 hours north.
Well, I'm going to work, its true but in twelve hours my direction will be reversed I'll be heading home in the golden rays of the setting sun, with enough time to cast off from my dock and take a quiet swim in the flat, still waters of the Straits of Florida. I read about the changing of the leaves up north, squalls and cooling days and I dread the day I have to haul my boat onto its trailer, as the ocean drops below eighty degrees and we pack in swimming for another frost-free winter. At least its riding weather year round, if only I had something to ride.
