Dawn Ride

It's cold inside the KWPD building all night. My wife calls me a polar bear because I survive the air conditioned chill in my shirt sleeves, but when I step out into the lobby a few minutes before six its a hot muggy rainless morning in Key West. The Police Department Communications Center has windows and I can look out into the parking lot during our twelve hour shift but there are those nights I miss the occasional passing squall because I'm too focused on the computer screen and aren't I surprised to find the Triumph wet when I step out of the building? I took the beach route out of town this morning, passing by a colleague's house to make sure she had sorted out the car trouble she had reported was going to make her late for work. "Ride safe!" she urged me and I suppose to her I must have looked vulnerable perched on the green machine swaddled in Kevlar and plastic. I felt like a God, sweeping through the barely lit streets empty of people and traffic and light, unstoppable and free of obligations and constraints.

The camera thought Smathers Beach was roiling with fog when I switched it on. That was just the effect of sudden exposure to the warm damp breath of morning after a night in the dry sub arctic office. While the picture looked evocative I had to stand around for ten minutes enjoying the dawn and waiting impatiently for the Camera to adjust to conditions. Testing, 1,2,3:The mass of humanity jogging by on the sidewalk didn't even notice me standing there peering into the black box and grumbling. I have a lot of patience to learn as we go in to the Peak Oil period and high energy tasks start to take longer and longer. Waiting for a camera to get ready to take a picture will require the same patience as waiting for a bus. Good things come to them as wait:Above is Smathers Beach looking west towards the harbor and not a soul in sight, while below the view is east towards the Airport. These pictures make Key West look like a beachy resort town. It's amazing how easy the illusion is to foster with just a couple of pictures. The ride out of town was easy this morning, not much traffic, not much headwinds and an open dry highway. The Bonneville has hit 13,000 miles since I bought it last October and I have slipped into the groove of familiarity with it. The handlebars fall right to hand, my feet fit comfortably tucked up on the foot pegs, the engine response is smooth and full of torque, the clutch light, the gearbox smooth. The engine with stock exhaust purrs quietly at sixty miles per hour across the Saddlebunch Keys. I manage to offend a dawdling Debonaire Air Conditioning van by passing him easily and quickly where the speed limit increases to 55mph, and he eventually puts down his cellphone or his sandwich or his newspaper, whatever the distraction was, and floors his boss's accelerator, damn all expense in a mad effort to catch me up so when he does manage to grow big in my mirror, I use him as an excuse to pull over and take a picture of this castle in the air:I miss riding in Italy, where most drivers pull to the shoulder to let motorcycles go by, and pause at stop signs to give right of way to let the bikers disappear ahead of them. Here instead passing is a comment on manhood and even women drivers get upset because they want to dawdle and you don't, so as you pull past they speed up as though to deny my 865cc twin the open road? Days when I want to dawdle I pull over when vehicles catch up to me, days when I want to go faster people hunker down and block my way. People are weird. The clouds are fascinating by contrast, all bunched and black and full of empty threats of rain.As dawns go today's was a bit of a bust, some mornings the sun rises all angry and red illuminating the horizon from end to end with white rays of light bursting from the edges of the clouds like a renaissance painting of the Transfiguration. Though I'm not religious there are mornings when I am surprised God in a white beard doesn't appear from behind these stunning arrays of light and cloud to descend onto the Overseas Highways and present me the Ten Commandments, or in a fit of absentmindedness to demand the life of my eldest (and non existent) son. The burning bush by comparison to these light shows was but a feeble ember. I ride with awe on my face and wonder why everybody doesn't pause in their commute to drink in the beauty of it all. But they don't, they're too busy, and on a pale colorless morning like this I hardly blame them, but I stop anyway to enjoy the gray and steely views and force myself to take a picture:It costs me a few pennies more to fill my three point two gallons of fuel at my neighborhood Chevron, since they don't give me the five percent rebate I get with my Shell credit card . Nevertheless I like to patronize my local business. Three point two gallons of 89 octane with 141 miles on the trip odometer equals...um...forty three miles per gallon? All this open amazing road all 27 milesof it from my workplace, enjoyed for less than the cost of a con leche. Why do they commute by car?