Life of Brian

While Cheyenne and I were breakfasting at Anne's Beach last Thursday morning we were invaded and at first it didn't look good. Two adults, a child and two Labradors carefully leashed came striding down the waterfront boardwalk. Frequently I find encounters with other dog owners to be encounters with people who worry about their dogs far too much. Left to their own devices dogs find their natural place in the pack and adapt easily and quickly to each other's company. Would that people could do the same...When the spare adult and child had walked on by the owner of the dogs, not affiliated with other humans present, let go his hounds and I thought to myself he can't be all bad. It turns out Brian was all good.Let me list the ways: he rescued his dogs, one found wandering the streets of Key West completely abandoned, and the other from the pound where he worked as a volunteer helper and dog walker. A Good Man.The dogs circled and sniffed and Cheyenne sat down as close to me as she could get; she is still not sure I might not prefer another dog and we talked briefly. Brian left Key West for the Upper Keys in search of an easier life of less expense but clearly he wouldn't mind a return to the Rock and I for one can't blame him. The Florida Keys to an outsider may look like an amalgam of similarities but each island has it's own character and Key West's is unique among them all. Which is why it is expensive, naturally, especially for a single person. With Molly and Missie in tow.We talked allergies and Brian told me he had a trick for goopy ear which affects a lot of dogs in this hot humid climate. The vet told him, as I was also told it is pretty much permanent. He said he cured his problem with delicate application of Q tips day after day, a little at a time and his dog no longer scratches her ear. Cheyenne is not thrilled by this plan but in some weird way I trust this stranger's advice. He also told me of snake bites Missie got which left a large lump on her neck. Application of Benadryl cured her feverish symptoms- I think it was a pygmy rattler-but the bite left a lump especially after Missie went back to the same spot to teach the snake a lesson and got a second bite for her troubles. Brian is no control freak when it comes to dogs. I rather liked that about him as I feel the same way and like to let Cheyenne find her own way as much as she can.I learned a lot from our brief encounter. I hope he moves back to Key West, I'd like to meet him at the Higgs Beach dog park.

Moon Pie At The Beach

There are those who say you have to travel north from Miami to see the South. I say that just because there are lots of us immigrants in South Florida doesn't mean it isn't The South. To prove it I eat the occasional moon pie.There are variations on the Moon Pie all over the place but it was invented in Chattanooga in 1919 after a salesman watched miners dip graham crackers in the new marshmallow cream imported from Up North as a new and weird delicacy for people to taste. Nowadays it is an industrial product with flavor to match. I had my double decker chocolate with coffee as befits breakfast but one i supposed to drink RC Cola with the thing. And O prefer the banana flavor single decker but this isn't the real south so choices were limited in Islamorada...
We paused at Anne's Beach to read the paper and sniff the seaweed and read the health warning signs about fecal matter not in the water around here.They have picnic tables along the boardwalk but I figured Cheyenne needed beach access so I sat on the steps and read the paper and ate dry crumbly moon pie and thought about the meaning of life, which was fruitless exercise, it always is, and watched the ocean instead.A thousand calories later I was no closer to a conclusion so we made haste to make tracks. We live in a world made industrial for profit and it's hard to imagine living in a world where things could ever be made by hand once again. "There isn't time!" is the universal cry, which is undoubtedly true. And how sad that is.

Check out my last photo essay from this useful pause along the Overseas Highway:

http://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2009/09/annes-beach.html and ask yourself: would i rather have a home made Moon Pie or the no surprise conformity of an industrially produced marshmallow cake? As it's always been factory made I guess the truth is a home made Moon Pie would be a contradiction as fundamental as any.

Vignettes XXVI

Fausto's grocery stores with two outlets in Key West bill themselves as a social center as much as a grocery store, and the Fleming Street store serves the downtown area in a town where lots of people have trouble driving ten blocks from their home base. I stopped in to pick up a head of broccoli for my wife and I noticed something. The former mayor of Key West, Jimmy Weekly married into the family that founded the store and he is running again, this time for city commission. However he has no campaign signs on his store that I could see. The building across the street did though, which I thought was funny.Jimmy Weekly is a mild little man, often seen slicing meat behind the counter, but he made his share of noise when he was in office, both in his private life and in his role as first citizen. I sort of hope he gets elected to the commission especially if his arch enemy Morgan McPherson makes it back into the mayor's seat. I live in the county so I am a bystander in all the noise making, but I am an employee so one has to hope that city leaders keep things rolling without too much acrimony.

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The fourth screen at the Tropic Movie theater is stuck in limbo. Unfortunately they advertised it as probably being ready by July 4th. That deadline came and went and I understand the employees cringe now every time they have to explain that the new 48-seat theater isn't quite done yet.It looks good from the outside though. Further up the street is a coffee shop were a group of regulars meets to play chess. barely visible inside on the left is another mayoral candidate for the city of key west.Sloan Bashinsky has a website called Good Morning Key West and he is an avid supporter of the nude beach concept. His policy ideas aren't all bad but he thinks he gets them from angels in his dreams, which is a concept that may have value but it hasn't got him elected yet.It's all part of the color of Key West, the stuff that doesn't show up at sunset at Mallory Square, the color of Key West that isn't in the tourist brochures. And probably just as well.
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I was at Fort Zachary Taylor with a con leche in hand and a half hour to burn before the movie (O Horten, a delightful Norwegian meditation) started at the Tropic Cinema. My plan was a good one, park the Bonneville in the shade, sip my coffee, read a little and watch the water a little form the comfort of a picnic table. Instead a young couple approached me as I was sorting out my Jeanna's coffee and my newspaper. He held out a business card with a pedi-cab number on it. "Puo..." he stumbled trying to think of the English to say "...make a call."
"Of course I can," I replied in Italian startling him half to death.I don't know how it happened but here was another couple of Italian tourists stranded in Key West. His phone was dead and the unpleasant woman at the concession stand wouldn't make a local call for him to get his pedi-cab to take him to his tour bus appointment. So I called Brian for them and made their afternoon.

We chatted for just a few minutes, they were from Sicily and had come to realize they need to speak English to visit the US...He liked this country saying the US is "disciplined" unlike Italy. Giovanni says that all the time too when I go back to see him in Italy. It must be true but it sounds odd to me.Another good deed in the bag.

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I threw in this picture of Truman Annex.I was walking back to the Bonneville at the Westin parking lot when i saw this endless sidewalk view. I liked it, so I snapped it. Key west looks much bigger when you see the island from a certain angle.

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I was riding into town on Highway One of an afternoon and found myself following a Triumph Bonneville with a Maryland tag. The rider and pillion were obviously enjoying the afternoon and were in no hurry so I passed them and as I did I was mildly surprised to see two women on board. Later I got into town and women were everywhere. I have no idea who is here visiting for WomenFest, the annual week long celebration for women but I did notice pairs of women all over downtown as usual for this time of year:

I find it rather nice that Key West can offer women a place to take a vacation and be themselves.Of course I find it odd that most of the rest of the country gets bent out of shape about the love that dare not speak it's name.I saw in the paper that Vermont has approved a gay marriage law so perhaps the tide of history is turning and this may be a civil rights issue that we close the book on before I'm dead. I have a great deal of difficulty identifying lesbians as they walk down the street.Indeed I've worked with a few for quite some time with no knowledge of their lesbian-ness, so I figured I might as well throw a few pictures of women ambling to illustrate the point. And women riding bicycles could be in town for WomenFest or just because they are on vacation.But I'm trying to get smarter about categorizing people and these look like run-of-the-mill tourists:Whatever. Right now it's Lezzie Week and up next it's Bike Week to keep the tourist dollars flowing during the quietest time of year. Personally I prefer the lesbians to the loud pipes and strutting leather nonsense of Bike Week, but that is beside the point. They all help keep the town solvent,so the more the merrier.

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Between waves of tourists the regular denizens of Key West are still hanging out waiting for I don't know what:

I was pretty surprised to see this lot milling around in Mallory Square but I guess the new Sheriff's Deputy patrols at Higgs Beach have moved a lot of residentially challenged along. And here they are:I cannot imagine how boring it must be to sit around all day waiting for the shelter to open, or to go and look for a bush to sleep under.

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I thought this might have been the Bonneville i met on Highway One, but it wasn't. It has the same T100 color scheme but the tag was out of Florida. It had all of 8,000 miles on the clock and looked quite well preserved.

I noticed there was one small modification to the Bonneville and that was an extra in-line fuel filter, which we are told is a good thing to add. I've found this things to be a perfect nuisance over the years. They get tired and blocked up, they spring leaks and they need to be fussed over. I prefer to ride and use the fuel rather than let it sit, and so far the myth of "dirty fuel" hasn't interrupted me.

Over the years it has occurred to me that muscles and machines have one similarity: they go to pieces if they aren't used. I haven't quite closed in on 30,000 miles (48,000 kms) just yet but I'm working on it:

I read on the Triumph forum during the long quiet night shifts of September how unsightly luggage is when it hangs off Bonneville. I think a motorcycle equipped as a daily rider is a thing of beauty. I saw this well used scooter and got the same impression: a daily rider.These Chinese scooters get a lot of grief among the Vespa snobs but in Key West they are work horses, always out and about providing basic and needed transportation. Even if they name their models rather weird, them Chinese folk. Perhaps that's what I should call my Bonneville if I wanted it to break down all the time. The "Sickly."
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I found three pictures of my recent trip to Anne's Beach i didn't use in the main essay but I still liked the shots. This is the south parking lot at Mile Marker 73:Looking south across the Straits of Florida. This car is traveling north toward Islamorada,passing Anne's Beach to the right: This, more prosaically, is the sink in the men's bathroom. Either it's a simple effective way to shore up a bathroom sink that people really shouldn't sit on. Or it's government inefficiency.Personally i find it smart cheap and elegant, like so much the government manages to accomplish, unnoticed. We toil in obscurity, we government bureaucrats.

Anne's Beach

I first heard Anne's Beach described as a destination by a man I worked with when I was employed at Fast Buck Freddie's shipping department. He told me he was taking his family to Anne's Beach on his next day off. Granted, he lived on Little Torch but it seemed a long way away, in Islamorada (pronounced in Anglo Keys Talk as: isle-ah-more-ada and means "purple island" in Spanish though Cubans say it differently). Some beach that must be, I thought. So it has been in my mind to stop and check the place out one of these days...and that day came recently. I've stopped here a few times just briefly to use the facilities as they are quite handy and kept nice and clean. It's worth knowing they are here at Mile Marker 73 between sunrise and sunset, if you are ever unlucky enough to get taken short and don't feel like braving your common-or-garden gas station loo.

It has occurred to me that making a recommendation about one loo opens me up to requests that I publish a list of free toilets in the Keys but let me just point out here and now, that's not going to happen. On the other hand I can recommend not camping here, and there's a sign to support my position:I think if you were planning to camp here, a lot of people might call it "anchoring" instead. The "Village of Islands" as Islamorada pompously likes to be known ( if not islands, what, in the Florida Keys- no duh!) is a fussy sort of place and I doubt they are encouraging people to camp in the parking lot if they find the beach area to be waterlogged.
The brown stuff is not what you are thinking at all, the toilets work fine, it's just dead sea grass washed up on the beach as happens during summer. In winter it dries out but in summer it gets all mulched and soggy and washes up when pushed here by currents and storms. The weed also collects trash as it sits snug against the shoreline:Anne's Beach is a modest spot if you are looking for actual sand above the waterline, but the Village of Keys has built a massive and very impressive boardwalk along the waterfront. I walked the whole thing and am at a loss to confirm if it is indeed a quarter of a mile long as claimed. It seemed longer perhaps because I was busy stopping to take photos all the time, or perhaps because my boots and pant legs were wet from the recent shower I rode through. The tide was also quite high, it having been a full moon and all just recently.

And just to keep it interesting there are shelters, several of them provided with picnic tables overlooking the water or buried deep in the mangroves. The board walk winds it's way on and on:

And yes, from time to time you will see a handkerchief of sand, though if you want long spectacular beaches almost anywhere else in Florida south of Jacksonville on the east coast, or south of St Petersburg on the west coast will yield better beaches than those in the Keys:
You get nice views of water and Islamorada in the distance. You can also get an idea why they call themselves "Village of Islands" from this perspective:
And here is a self portrait. I remembered to douse myself with mosquito repellent I carry in a saddlebag so I wasn't swatting the air wildly, but it was hot and sticky and out there in the deep dark jungle:

The beach at the end of this 50 yard trail was a slab of rock decorated with dead sea grass, no sand to be seen:

But the water views south across the Straits of Florida are quite lovely:

I wasn't the only person sunning themselves after the shower passed through, though I am not sure 'person' is quite the right label for a turkey vulture: And that stuff I mentioned about being lost deep in the mangrove jungle? Anne's Beach, whether it is a quarter mile long or more along the water, is never more than a few yards from the Overseas Highway to the north:

And eventually the boardwalk spits the ardent walker out into the south parking lot where people more appropriately dressed for the scene were taking a gander at open water. This also the spot where the county commission erected a plaque to honor the woman who created this spot, Anne Eaton, and where the park was formally inaugurated in 1995. I was surprised to note that I recognized the names of the commissioners on the plaque. All I could find out about Anne Eaton was that she lived on Matecumbe Key and was a "conservationist." And I suppose that will have to do:
It's impossible to tell from the pictures but I was feeling rather annoyed with myself by this stage. I was wondering why I didn't pack a swimsuit and towel in my empty saddlebag? It would have done me more use than the waterproofs which I declined to put on in the rain showers on the grounds I'd get heatstroke. It was better to get dampened by rain that suffocate in plastic. However it would have been best of all not camp in these waters, but swim, even though the waters are shallow a long way out:
I don't think swimming in one's underwear would get a high approval rating from the Village of Islands, but beyond that the thought of spending a day in the saddle with all my unmentionables in the clutch of damp salty knickers was too much to contemplate. So I just sweated sedately on shore cursing my stupidity. This was not a well planned expedition, more of an impromptu escape from cabin fever. Highway One beckoned, this is the way looking south whence I had come.

I had plans to head north and check out some other waterfront park. Which is a story for another day.