I'm off today so I'm not riding to work but I would be, as usual, were I on tonight. So today is the day for a backroad ramble. 
Sunny days! I remember them well! I was moved to take a few pictures of State Road 4A along it's Ramrod Key incarnation last week, before the endless summer rains seemed to set in permanently and i got by chance a few sunny outdoor pictures... It happened that I was listening to the radio (that happens a lot in my TV-less home) and I heard there was a dispute going on in Marathon, some 25 miles north of my house over ownership of a stretch of State Road 4A. That caught my attention because I knew SR4A is split between several islands in the Lower Keys, indeed I wrote an essay about the section on Little Torch Key recently, but I had no idea the road also surfaced in Marathon. In Ramrod it has pretentions to pretty leafiness:
If it seems weird that Monroe County might give up the right-of-way on a stretch of State Road to a local business, it shouldn't. The majority of our county commissioners are so half witted they don't know how to be corrupt, they're just astonishingly stupid. And I'm not someone who "hates politicians" because I'd rather eats worms than run for public office and in a functioning democracy it takes people with guts to stand for election. So at some level I admire their nerve. But this lot are so dim, it makes me wonder who elected them in a county as eclectic and opinionated at this one. Anyway parts of State Road 4A in Marathon are in private hands (!), but not on Ramrod Key where it is a public street:
Change comes slowly around here sometimes and recycling is still an art that is not fully understood. However trash comes in heaps! The Keys recycle less than seven percent of the trash stream, where even mainland Florida gets nearly a quarter recycled.
Sunny days! I remember them well! I was moved to take a few pictures of State Road 4A along it's Ramrod Key incarnation last week, before the endless summer rains seemed to set in permanently and i got by chance a few sunny outdoor pictures... It happened that I was listening to the radio (that happens a lot in my TV-less home) and I heard there was a dispute going on in Marathon, some 25 miles north of my house over ownership of a stretch of State Road 4A. That caught my attention because I knew SR4A is split between several islands in the Lower Keys, indeed I wrote an essay about the section on Little Torch Key recently, but I had no idea the road also surfaced in Marathon. In Ramrod it has pretentions to pretty leafiness:If it seems weird that Monroe County might give up the right-of-way on a stretch of State Road to a local business, it shouldn't. The majority of our county commissioners are so half witted they don't know how to be corrupt, they're just astonishingly stupid. And I'm not someone who "hates politicians" because I'd rather eats worms than run for public office and in a functioning democracy it takes people with guts to stand for election. So at some level I admire their nerve. But this lot are so dim, it makes me wonder who elected them in a county as eclectic and opinionated at this one. Anyway parts of State Road 4A in Marathon are in private hands (!), but not on Ramrod Key where it is a public street:Change comes slowly around here sometimes and recycling is still an art that is not fully understood. However trash comes in heaps! The Keys recycle less than seven percent of the trash stream, where even mainland Florida gets nearly a quarter recycled.On Ramrod Key State Road 4A is simply a street that parallels the Overseas Highway for the one mile length of the island. It's the back door to the surprising number of businesses that have sprung up on this, the least remarkable of the Lower Keys islands. The road dead ends into mangroves at each end. At the southernmost the mangroves are a little thinner and one can see water and catch a glimpse of the Torch Keys on the horizon.
At the north end I parked my wife's Vespa underneath the familiar red sign that indicates, on pretty much all the side roads off the Highway, that you've run out of road:
In between there are a number of businesses that are better known than Ramrod key itself. Boondocks, the bar and restaurant has the Keys' only putt putt golf course and not terribly prepossessing is it from the rear:
The same goes for Five Brothers Two, the suburban incarnation of the well known Cuban deli on Southard Street in Key West:
Unlike the original store downtown this one has an enclosed lanai area to eat your food in peace away from the mosquitoes, but being as how its in back of the store it is what it is. Also, unlike the Southard Street place this one was designed with a certain lack of panache, even seen from the front:
They are closed during the month of July but otherwise this is the best place to get a To Go meal break between Key West and Miami. And them's fighting words, I guess.
State road 4A is also residential with the usual mix of stilts, CBS and weird mailboxes. Rent around here for a two bedroom might be around $1200-$1600 a month depending on the usual stuff, canal access etc:
There is also a surprising amount of light industry on Ramrod Key, a nursery, a vet, a car mechanic or two, construction yards and even a welding shop to my surprise:
The Keys are always pitched as this place that more closely resembles paradise than real living but even here there are lots of people pursuing the American dream of self reliance and taking pleasure in running a business doing something they like. It's messy and doesn't quite fit with the image propagated by the "hospitality industry" but these people are tenacious. Leo set up a car detailing business on a spare corner of land:
And I use these storage lockers when hurricanes threaten, to store our powered two wheelers in, if they have any spare lockers I can rent for a quick clean week:
Usually they have something available as people tend to accumulate too much stuff even here where houses are small and land is expensive. GFS, Gordon Food Service has a store in Key West and apparently stages its trailers here. When I worked days I saw the truck driver hitching his rig together at four in the morning when I took my pre-dawn bicycle ride. I always wondered where he was going at that hour:
There are billboards grandfathered in along the islands and one is unhappily here on Ramrod, in this case advertising a Belgian brand of beer you may have heard of:
And then at the south end of Ramrod where the road ends in a red triangle there is a major construction company yard, all industrial and everything but still decorated by the de facto symbol of the Keys:
The road runs straight and true of course one does need to be careful as at one point it is sinking:
Though most of it isn't:
Key West Diary: keeping it real on the backroads.
There is also a surprising amount of light industry on Ramrod Key, a nursery, a vet, a car mechanic or two, construction yards and even a welding shop to my surprise:The Keys are always pitched as this place that more closely resembles paradise than real living but even here there are lots of people pursuing the American dream of self reliance and taking pleasure in running a business doing something they like. It's messy and doesn't quite fit with the image propagated by the "hospitality industry" but these people are tenacious. Leo set up a car detailing business on a spare corner of land:And I use these storage lockers when hurricanes threaten, to store our powered two wheelers in, if they have any spare lockers I can rent for a quick clean week:Usually they have something available as people tend to accumulate too much stuff even here where houses are small and land is expensive. GFS, Gordon Food Service has a store in Key West and apparently stages its trailers here. When I worked days I saw the truck driver hitching his rig together at four in the morning when I took my pre-dawn bicycle ride. I always wondered where he was going at that hour:There are billboards grandfathered in along the islands and one is unhappily here on Ramrod, in this case advertising a Belgian brand of beer you may have heard of:And then at the south end of Ramrod where the road ends in a red triangle there is a major construction company yard, all industrial and everything but still decorated by the de facto symbol of the Keys:The road runs straight and true of course one does need to be careful as at one point it is sinking:Though most of it isn't:Key West Diary: keeping it real on the backroads.