Last night, while I slept huddled under blankets, I'm told the temperature was supposed to drop to 48 degrees Fahrenheit, about 9 Celsius, and in Key West that equates to 22 Below Zero, when zero locally is rated at 70 degrees Fahrenheit. It was cold, and I got up to see a sight reserved for higher latitudes and stronger attitudes: 55 degrees in the house...
It's been windy cold and nasty for two days and I can only surmise what might be happening Up North. 
This man at the Big Coppitt Shell was huddled against the cold and he's from Michigan, so I don't feel like such a wuss when I moan about the temperature, and wind chill and all the meteorologic mumbo-jumbo. 
The wife had a buddy come round to drink chai, talk, eat pizza, talk, watch a video, talk, and hang on the couch with heating pads and blankets to have a nice talk, so I took off for a manly movie involving a manly ride in to the Big City and our mainstream 6 screen multiplex in Searstown.
The ride in to Key West was a brutal affair, the temperature gauge on the Bonneville read 58 degrees when I pulled out from under the house and rose to a paltry 62 for a little while in the bleak sunshine that soon vanished behind a mass of black clouds. 
Great! I thought, all I need is some icy rain to make me feel completely manly out here dodging wind squalls, trailing long lines of cages wandering along at a modest 42 miles per hour. It was a very unmotivated ride, one way and another.On the other hand I Am Legend was a most enjoyable couple of hours in the big dark room. I had a couple of talkers in front of me during the endless previews but they soon shut up when the Last Man Alive started chasing deer down the endless empty canyons of Manhattan. His only companion was a dog and you know nothing good will come of that. Unhappily the premise of being the only human left alive had its own appeal to a misanthrope like myself, and I delighted in the notion of all the movies and all the books with none of the day-to-day stupidity bumping into me. I imagined myself setting up house in a big steel tug anchored in the very middle of the harbor from which I might whistle at my enemies, but that would make a rotten movie, so cinematic heroes never make their last stands afloat.
Human beings do though and I spotted this catamaran snugly anchored behind a clump of mangroves just north of mile marker 18. I knew the boat was inhabited as there was a dinghy flopping around off his stern, and I know all too well the experience of hunkering down during a cold front and waiting inside the freezing fiberglass cocoon for the weather to get back to normal. He had my sympathy.
Human beings do though and I spotted this catamaran snugly anchored behind a clump of mangroves just north of mile marker 18. I knew the boat was inhabited as there was a dinghy flopping around off his stern, and I know all too well the experience of hunkering down during a cold front and waiting inside the freezing fiberglass cocoon for the weather to get back to normal. He had my sympathy.
Mind you I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. The road ahead to my tree house was still cold and gray and the Bonneville, a proper classic motorcycle, doesn't have the ability to bring out the sunshine on command, so I rode home under the crisp unnatural cloud cover, just grateful not to be stuck on the hook cooking flower pots to keep the cabin warm. And privately I had to admit to myself I was kind of grateful to have someone to come home to that wasn't a) a vampire or b) a mannequin.
I am only a legend in my own imagination.
