Ride The Wind

In nine days we have the heralded/dreaded Bike Week weekend when the Overseas Highway fills up with slow moving and noisy pirates on Harley Davidsons stopping on the way from Miami to indulge in the annual Poker Run to Key West. It's a way to get some people into town in the tourist month of the year.

However it does have it's drawbacks. Noise is the big complaint from residents and law enforcement comes out in force. I will be working that Saturday night and it's guaranteed to be busy with endless traffic stops and calls from residents shuddered awake by loud pipes. Loud pipes dont save lives, they just piss people off. And eventually pissed off people vote to ban motorcycles. Get a clue.

A lone Goldwing enjoying the view is the antithesis. Good for him.

The official Peterson's website:

http://philpeterson.motorcyclebikeweek.com/

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Pigeon Key

The little lump of land midway down the North side of the Seven Mile Bridge may soon be cut off from any easy access to the rest of the Keys.


The newspaper reported recently that grant funding which pays to operate the ferry from Knight's Key (Marathon) to the former Flagler Railroad Worker's Camp is running out.


The old trolley service was discontinued after the state decided the bridge was unsafe for any motor vehicle use. So these days a ferry takes visitors out to the island.


The old bridge is still open to bicycles and walkers but it is a hike of several miles with no shade, to get the historic little island.


Pigeon Key is a museum operated by a private foundation and it is also home to an exceedingly popular art fair each year.


However the bridge issue is causing everyone a headache. The
latest study says the Flagler era cement pillars are quite solid apparently but it is the roadway placed atop them in 1938 that is apparently not doing at all well.


The state says it might be able to fix up the roadway if the county or some other body takes over future maintenance. Good luck with that idea in a crumbling national economy.


In happy days past when there was money the stretch of bridge from Missouri Key to the south was converted to a fine fishing pier. Good for them, bad for Pigeon Key.

I have an essay in the files about Pigeon Key when we last visited and rode out in the discontinued trolley/train contraption. Here's the link:

http://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2007/10/pigeon-key.html
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Better Living Through Chemistry

Last night my wife woke up in screaming pain. Which meant we needed to visit Marathon quam celerrime and happily Doctor Collins had a space available before lunch.


There are so many women with auto immune diseases you'd think somebody somewhere would be wondering why, but treating the symptoms becomes the way forward in modern medicine. And we all know that treatments bring side effects but when the agony is unsupportable one bites the chemical bullet.


Rheumatoid arthritis is a disease that immobilizes thousands of women, so my wife uses a regimen of strict and copious exercise and a large helping of good luck to keep the insidious disease at bay. Some women are completely immobilized by rheumatoid arthritis, but so far she isn't. When exercise and chemistry and luck sometimes fail her we end up chatting with Dr Collins' skeletal assistant.


It was the ankle that flared horribly this time but it was better by the time we left the house, such that slow supported hobbling was in order.


I guess it was a joint in them there bones that was giving trouble but the more I checked the plastic ankle and compared it to the x ray chart and the less convinced I became that science was the answer. I used to work for the Cristian Scientists years ago on their radio service and they never offered health insurance because when they get sick they pray. I remember my editor was laid up in bed with a broken bone when I filed a story and he edited me through gritted teeth. He was cheerful and prayerful though and never minded I thought his was an act of lunacy. Could he have been right to pray to mend a broken bone? Bollocks I say, thank God for modern medicine is my prayer.


We had to wait a bit but the good doctor provides more entertainment than a mere x ray for his waiting patients. There was a table full of bones which we waggled happily for ten minutes as we waited and speculated about her condition.


"What do you suppose this is for?" she asked as I studied the skeleton for answers. The good doctor came by soon enough, diagnosed no broken bones and prescribed better living through chemistry and no exercise for four days.


We were out $20 later and on our way to lunch. I guess we could have stayed home and done the Christian Science thing for free but science science got my vote today. Oh, and health insurance. Tough for those that have none. Don't you hate those Canadian socialists who don't have to worry out such trifles?

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A Little Keys Mystery

I have walked past this home for some years now and nothing has changed.


There is something completely forlorn about a home no longer used.


A home is in fact most people's largest asset when speaking in terms of money, but in terms of emotional attachment what object can there be of greater attraction than one's home?


Private property perhaps but whose and where are they, the affixers of the signs?


And there under the house in its proper place the vehicle that every home must boast, for what is a home without a means of transport, in modern America?


A garden formed and maintained now abandoned and overgrown...


And there out front the ultimate Keys accessory, a boat, with, of all things, a tricycle inside.


And the boat bears the hint of ownership, registration from North Carolina, a place whence go the many that decide that Keys living is too expensive for them.


A hot summer afternoon, a quiet day on Cudjoe Key. And no sign of anyone come to reprieve the home from the encroaching weeds.

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Cudjoe Suburb

Someone get me a cannon and let me take a shot.


It doesn't seem likely anyone would get hurt.


Snowbirds are Up North sweeping mud out of their New England front yards and backing up their hard pressed firefighters in Texas. Millennial drought followed by wind fanned flames. Gross.


I'm going swimming this evening in eighty degree salt water while Keys winter residents are Up North watching their days get short, feeling temperatures plummet while they wait for the first snow.


There are enough people left down here to keep yards clean and trimmed and put the garden trash out.


The post office, that much maligned national institution delivers mail through hot wet September afternoons and holds mail and keeps it safe, or forwards it Up North as needed, no problem. I notice my mail carrier comes by much earlier in summer, so I have to remember to get my Netflix discs out before the little white van rolls by.


Feel that breeze...Watch the palms flutter.


This is Fall as it should be.


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