The Odd Couple

"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.

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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.