You should have seen Cheyenne when I parked the car in Key West in the early dawn grayness and she stood looking at me with a giant shit-eating grin, her tail circling like a slow motion propellor. She loves her Key West walks and when she got out of the car she knew where she was. We set out from James Street she with her nose down me with my phone/camera firmly in my pocket. I thought I wasn't in the mood for picture taking but it didn't take long for Key West to wake me up. A lot of people love the Half Shell Raw Bar, not surprising as it's a funky dive right on the water and what visitor doesn't dream of seafood on the water in a place like this? Just as well really as I ate here once with some friends after a day on the water and I seem to recall it was okay.
I saw this sign outside and out came my Android once again. It's a first for me: No Geocaching! The cemetery has a sign forbidding letter boxing which I believe is the same thing, but I suppose Key West Bait and Tackle has had enough of people using them as a landmark. Strange obsession, geocaching, stranger still to forbid it.
That other symbol of Key West is the hammock. I had lunch Sunday with an out of town visitor and while she lamented the state of my sinuses she suggested an afternoon lounging in a hammock under the warm February sun. Maybe it's time I bought myself a hammock? There's even a store on Duval that does nothing but sell hammocks...on the other hand they are a bit of a pain to deal with, requiring you to bend double and balance to get in them, and then I am an obsessive rocker so it's probably not that great for me as I would be focusing on going back and forth and not on relaxing.
Then we were on Fleming and at the Eden House, an all-comers welcome guest house, I saw a picture of a penny farthing used to represent all bicycles which I thought was rather cute. Most as you can see have two wheels of similar size:
As we wandered down Eaton Street it dawned on me slowly that this might be garbage collection day, as I'm pretty perceptive. The sidewalk was a real slalom of cans and it struck me how much waste we as a society generate. Look at them all...
Cheyenne does her part to clean up where she can. No wonder she loves walking Old Town Key West.
The blue cans are the new recycling bins, replacing the yellow topped cans which were deemed too ugly. And no matter what the color, recycling is a work in progress in this town. The rules of recycling seem to still be a mystery to most people.
Welcome to Key West, now pay! If you overstay your welcome in a parking lot they love to leave their mark on your car. Booted until you pay the overage, and believe me when the visitors find this the first thing they do is dial 911 to get an officer to explain the charges. I like that my job ends when I send them the cops. I'd go nuts trying yo mediate between angry people. I love my job luckily, but not many people seem to think much of dispatching.
This extraordinary sign advertises what exactly? Turds or cigars? Some people might argue there's no difference but I actually don't mind cigar smoke. I loathe cigarettes and all their chemical additives but even though I don't smoke anything I don't mind cigars. I like to think its because they are just dried leaves, not adulterated like cigarettes. The flying turd shop.
This bicycle outside the Chamber of Commerce at Old City Hall made me smile. All the no parking signs in the world don't mean a thing to people even when there's an empty bike rack ten feet away. Who knows, maybe it's an employee's or perhaps the rack was full, who knows.
Early morning Key West looks so different from the lunch time, afternoon and evening crowded streets. I like it like this, no doubt because I'm not a businessman.
Deep content snores, make the walk even more worthwhile. I like strolling Old Town anyway but making her happy makes it even better.