I cannot help but notice that people Up North are starting to see flowers in bloom and green grass and the moaning about winter appears to have dried up with the snowdrifts. I on the other hand ventured up the Myakka Valley on my way home to Key West and found myself in a life or death struggle with the thermometer.
I think Key West hit a temperature somewhere below 60 degrees (15 Celsius) just one time this past winter, reason enough to commute by car. The low lying Myakka mist produced bone numbing cold, especially considering the wind chill factor as I tried to ride east from Sarasota on Highway 72 just before dawn. I had to stop and warm up alongside the road in the dark, my teeth were chattering so much. I am the poster boy for thin blood.I left the hotel in Tarpon Lake, 20 miles north of St Petersburg just after four in the morning, and got on that gruesome eight lane monstrosity called Highway 19, an endless strip of chain stores and neon that depressed me just looking at it. Every time someone grumbles about change in Key West I will recall to my mind the numbing urban sameness of Highway 19, a wide strip of black through the heart of communities built, in the words of Gertrude Stein (disparaging Oakland) with "no there,there."
Of course when I was out in this particular piece of road it was night time so one has to include an obligatory night time picture. It wouldn't be my blog without an orange shaded photograph from time to time. This not being Key West I stuck to the highway and didn't venture into the recesses of a strange city. I got beaten up once in St Petersburg one dark night long ago when I was delivering pizza to the public housing. I'm too old to fight back...
In my continuing effort to avoid interstates I wound my way along Highway 41 to Sarasota, a continuing moon scape of chain stores with not enough personality to differentiate Bradenton from Lake Tarpon, may blessings heap up on these urban planners, until finally the sun started to come up and illuminate my predicament. Myakka Valley isn't a valley in the conventional sense, as there are no hills, but it is simply a place where water runs through the fields and attracts damp and moisture and COLD air.
I put on my waterproof liner and seriously thought about wearing my waterproof over mitts but the rising sun fooled me on that long straight road through Florida's cowboy country. So I rode with cold hands for far too long:
I couldn't keep up with this dude in his truck towing a box at 75+ miles per hour, with a fully saddled horse and two dogs who showed their appreciation for the Bonneville by yipping wildly every time we were stopped by construction traffic lights:
Once the sun came up and I could feel my fingers again, and my breath stopped fogging my visor (that hasn't happened in ages!) I started to feel more human and the ride became more of what I remembered, gorgeous park-like fields, live oaks, Spanish moss and wide sweeping corners between the straights. And at the end of it all the town of Arcadia, that at first blush looks like a close approximation to an idyll:
But its a cow town that processes citrus as well, and neither crops has done too well for the city. Brief prosperity that came with the housing bubble has evaporated and many of the old main street store fronts are up for lease. I find it utterly frustrating that people prefer to flock to the numbing monotony of mauls and highways like 19 North, and abandon these intrinsically human and richly styled streets:
For a while in the late 1980s Arcadia got into the headlines as the city that denied a haemophiliac child with AIDS the ability to go to school and burned his family out of its home. I had breakfast in the Wheeler's Cafe (sausage and biscuits; what else fits the image of a cowboy town?) and I felt like a martian, surrounded by crabby old men with fingers and backs gnarled by years of field work, ten gallon hats, plaid shirts and jeans. And then they held hands to say grace... it's all in the context I suppose.
But its a cow town that processes citrus as well, and neither crops has done too well for the city. Brief prosperity that came with the housing bubble has evaporated and many of the old main street store fronts are up for lease. I find it utterly frustrating that people prefer to flock to the numbing monotony of mauls and highways like 19 North, and abandon these intrinsically human and richly styled streets:For a while in the late 1980s Arcadia got into the headlines as the city that denied a haemophiliac child with AIDS the ability to go to school and burned his family out of its home. I had breakfast in the Wheeler's Cafe (sausage and biscuits; what else fits the image of a cowboy town?) and I felt like a martian, surrounded by crabby old men with fingers and backs gnarled by years of field work, ten gallon hats, plaid shirts and jeans. And then they held hands to say grace... it's all in the context I suppose. Highway 31 cuts south from Arcadia, straight like an arrow (again!) through more fields and pine forests and cypress stands...
...and more ranches. People don't tend to believe me when I point out that Florida has a long tradition of cowboys in the best Wild West style, as though mountains and deserts are a prerequisite.
There are plains here in the middle of the state. And mixed in with the cows you'll see horses too looking very picturesque.
The orange groves stretch for miles too, alongside the open fields and pine woods, and the trees themselves reflect the sunlight off the waxy dark green leaves. They look like squat bushy Christmas trees lined up along the road, when they are well tended. When not tended they look scruffy and spiky:
This orange grove was almost on the Caloosahatchee River which is a main cross state waterway connecting Fort Myers with Stuart, and the river drains Lake Okeechobee into the Gulf of Mexico. In fact don't be surprised to see ocean going boats parked in the orange groves around here, in the middle of Florida, far from hurricane surge (if not hurricane winds):
...and more ranches. People don't tend to believe me when I point out that Florida has a long tradition of cowboys in the best Wild West style, as though mountains and deserts are a prerequisite. There are plains here in the middle of the state. And mixed in with the cows you'll see horses too looking very picturesque.The orange groves stretch for miles too, alongside the open fields and pine woods, and the trees themselves reflect the sunlight off the waxy dark green leaves. They look like squat bushy Christmas trees lined up along the road, when they are well tended. When not tended they look scruffy and spiky:This orange grove was almost on the Caloosahatchee River which is a main cross state waterway connecting Fort Myers with Stuart, and the river drains Lake Okeechobee into the Gulf of Mexico. In fact don't be surprised to see ocean going boats parked in the orange groves around here, in the middle of Florida, far from hurricane surge (if not hurricane winds):Owl Creek Boatworks is still going strong in the middle of nowhere, an excellent marina for winter boaters to leave their vessels during summer. I enjoy the whole boatyard scene when I don't have a boat of my own out of the water. Especially miles from salt air.
The river itself is quite impressive and its deep too, over 20 feet if I recall correctly from own transits years ago:
For ocean sailors its a treat to travel slowly between the green banks of a gently flowing river, watching cows graze and small towns float slowly by. For the average motorcyclist there are the pastoral moments and places too. Small creeks
Ideal for a picnic if one were so equipped, I wasn't though I did have my repellent on as it was over 80 degrees by now and the recent cooling breezes had dried up around here. The road alongside the river wound its way most enticingly:
And I enjoyed every winding mile. South of these temperate woods lie the Everglades and those fascinating alligators and more straight roads all the way home to Key West.
